The World & Us
Piracy at a 34-year low: 94% of hostages taken by Somalis
Thirty-eight acts of piracy were recorded worldwide in the first half of 2026, the lowest total since 1992. Yet 94% of the seafarers taken hostage were held by Somali pirates. A falling counter can conceal a risk that has changed its nature.
Mercator projection: Africa is 14 times Greenland’s size
Togo and the African Union have persuaded the UN to stop treating a map drawn in 1569 for sailors as the world’s default. The debate looks symbolic. It rests on an unavoidable geometric constraint, and on the peculiar power of an assembly where every country votes but no one is obliged to comply.
Rhine at 5 centimetres: when depth sets the freight price
Rhine levels have rebounded and the headlines have moved on. The mechanism has not. At the river’s narrowest point, a vessel needs roughly 150 centimetres of water to load to full capacity. In mid-August, five were left. What was missing was not the river, but its depth.
Russia refines the least oil since 2002: crude is not fuel
Ukrainian drones have stopped aiming at wells and started aiming at refineries. Russia still pumps as much oil as before, yet processed less of it in July than in any month since 2002. The crude leaves for export while the pumps at home run dry.
Gulf allies stopped a US strike on Iran, and here is why
Washington called off a large-scale strike on Iran after requests from the Gulf, starting with Riyadh. Those countries host the bases the strike would have flown from. Hosting a foreign army means arming it, and it also means being able to hold it back.
Why modern democracies erode from within, not by a coup
Armenia's ruling party wins again, the opposition warns of a democracy hollowed out from within. The case is not isolated: 44 countries are now autocratizing, many of them former democracies. Understanding how a regime tips without a coup, legally, is key to reading world affairs.
Rare earths: why China still controls the world’s magnets
Despite the 2025 trade truce, Chinese magnet exports to the United States remain about a fifth below their pre-trade-war level. Behind that figure sits a quiet mechanism: a country’s power over a resource is decided not in the ground, but in the plant that transforms it.
Gulf desalination: when drinking water becomes a target
Iran has again struck a desalination plant in Kuwait. Behind the military news lies a staggering dependence: several Gulf states manufacture nearly all of their drinking water from the sea, turning an infinite resource into a strategic vulnerability.
The Hormuz toll: who really owns an international strait
A 20% toll on every cargo, some $30 million per supertanker: Washington intends to charge for passage through the Strait of Hormuz. The International Maritime Organization says no legal basis exists. The dispute is less about oil than about an old question: who owns a waterway nobody dug?
Health systems: how they are funded and what they deliver
The United States spends two and a half times the OECD average on health, and lives nearly three years less. Spending measures neither the quality of care nor the protection of patients. Behind every system sit three functions, four financing models and one universal trade-off. Every system rations care somewhere: the only question worth asking is where the constraint has been placed, and who quietly pays for it.
Education systems: models, performance and inequalities
The United States spends almost 30% more per student than Estonia, and scores 45 points below it in mathematics. Money explains almost nothing about the gap between wealthy countries. What explains everything happens elsewhere: who pays, who decides, and above all at what age children are sorted into separate tracks. Here is how an education system actually works, and what international rankings never tell you.
Media and information
You have never had access to so much information, and never trusted it so little. Behind that paradox lies an economic shift: advertising has left newsrooms for three platforms, and falsehood travels six times faster than truth. Understanding this link changes the way you read the news.
Political systems and democracy
For the second year running, the planet holds more autocracies than democracies. Yet almost nobody openly rejects democracy. How can a model so widely desired retreat so fast? This Fundamental decodes the four main regime types, measures the scale of the shift, and reveals why decline no longer comes through coups, but through legal reforms.
Germany’s pensions don’t add up: enter Sweden
Germany is debating a structural overhaul of its pension system, drawing on the Swedish model. What’s at stake in Berlin is not a simple parametric fix, it’s a question of whether a pay-as-you-go system can still absorb an accelerating demographic squeeze.
Hormuz reopened, but the threat that closed it didn’t
For three months, a 33-kilometer strait was enough to disrupt 20% of the world’s oil supply. The US-Iran deal moves the Brent price, not the underlying logic.
Demographic transition: aging, fertility, consequences
Global fertility has been halved over sixty years. At the same time, the share of people aged 65 and over has doubled. This dual shift is placing unprecedented pressure on pension systems, labor markets, and economic growth. The question is no longer whether this will happen: it already has.
India is ageing, decades earlier than expected
India has just entered its demographic ageing phase, earlier than expected. A structural shift whose mechanical, long-term effects will unfold over decades.
International migration: flows, causes and impact
The countries tightening immigration rules the most are often those facing the sharpest labour shortages. This paradox is no accident: it reveals the structural tension between economics, demographics, and sovereignty that migration has exposed for thirty years.
China adds 3 years of work, the world will follow
On January 1, 2025, China raised its official retirement age for the first time in 70 years. It won’t be the last country to do so, and the mechanism driving that decision is the same one reshaping pension systems on every continent.
Retirement systems: demographics, funding and reform
In 1970, every retiree was backed by more than five workers. Today that ratio has collapsed, and most people don’t realize their pension system was never designed to survive this shift. A complete breakdown of how retirement funding works, why it’s under pressure, and what reform actually looks like.
International institutions: who really sets the rules
The IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the UN Security Council, these institutions shape global decisions that affect billions of people, yet most of us couldn’t explain what distinguishes one from another. How they were built, what power they actually hold, and where their limits lie.
Natural resources: control, scarcity and geopolitics
Oil, lithium, fresh water, sand: natural resources rarely dominate public conversation until prices spike or two countries go to war over their control. Understanding how they are distributed worldwide and what governs their value is the key to decoding a large share of global economic and geopolitical news.
Global geopolitics: the forces that shape the world
Every conflict, every trade dispute, every alliance makes more sense once you understand the underlying geography, interests, and power dynamics. A structured framework for reading the international order, from great-power competition to regional flashpoints, without a degree in political science.
Venezuela had the most oil, then killed its currency
Venezuela once had the largest proven oil reserves in the world. By 2018, its currency had lost 99.9% of its value, and a kilo of tomatoes cost more than a monthly salary. What the collapse of the bolivar reveals about the mechanics, and the political roots, of hyperinflation.