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AMERICAN AND British intelligence agencies watched as Russia massed its troops on the border with Ukraine in the early weeks of 2022. They knew that Vladimir Putin had planned an invasion—they had stolen his plans. But would Mr Putin go through with it? One indicator that he would, says Major-General Tim Hodgetts, the surgeon-general of Britain’s armed forces, was that field hospitals were moving to Russia’s border with Ukraine.

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LIKE THEiPod and MySpace, theBRICSbloc is a product of the benign optimism of the 2000s. In 2001 Goldman Sachs coined the acronymBRICin a paper about the economic potential of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The quartet ran with the idea, holding its first summit in 2009. A year later South Africa was invited to join. Some analysts feared theBRICSmight soon start to rival theG7,but the grouping quickly lost momentum. The non-AsianBRICSeconomies stagnated in the 2010s. At summits the bloc would issue garbled communiqués about the perfidious West—which the perfidious West would promptly ignore. TheBRICSlooked dead.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Is a bigger party a better one?”

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THE FORCESof Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, struck soon after 2am. Residents of Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, told reporters that they heard a strange noise, as if someone was opening a bottle of Pepsi. A local doctor, fighting back tears, explained that many people had sought shelter underground, but the gas was heavier than air and it pooled in basements and cellars. Had they climbed the stairs instead, they would have lived. More than 1,000 people perished that night. The doctor distributed some 25,000 ampoules of atropine and 7,000 of hydrocortisone to medical teams so they could try to save those who were suffering the effects of nerve agent.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Investigating America’s lost credibility”

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Fromofficesin America’s State Department and Russia’s Ministry of Defence, officials take turns “pinging” each other every couple of hours just to check the line is working. Then, almost always, silence follows. It is the dying heartbeat of global nuclear arms control.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Oppenheimer’s nightmares”

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FLANNERY ASSOCIATESdid not even have a website until the end of August. But a lawsuit involving the firm, first filed in a federal court in May, has uncovered the huge extent of its land holdings in Solano County, which lies around 60 miles (97km) north-east of San Francisco in California. The suit revealed that Flannery had committed to buying 140 properties for a total of more than $800m and was paying well over the market odds: as much as $15,000 per acre, for land valued to tax authorities for as little as a tenth of that. The entire scheme spans 50,000 acres, an area far larger than that of San Francisco proper.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Giving the thumbs-up”

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Read more of our recent coverage of theUkraine war

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Are Ukraine’s tactics working?”

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THE SIGHTof North Korea’s chubby leader, Kim Jong Un, shaking handswith Vladimir Putinon September 13th—having travelled by train to a spaceport in Russia’s far east to discuss selling its dictator a stash of North Korean weapons—was remarkable both on its own terms and for what it said about the business of selling arms. The world’s five biggest arms-sellers (America, Russia, France, China and Germany) account for more than three-quarters of exports. But up-and-coming weapons producers are giving the old guard a run for their money. They are making the most of opportunities created by shifting geopolitics. And they are benefiting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Young guns”

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The murderof Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist activist who was shot in Canada in June, has causedan explosive rowbetween Canada and India. It has also brought into sharp relief an incendiary facet of the new world disorder: assassinations. Killings of dissidents and terrorists, and of political or military figures, are as old as politics itself, but their incidence may be rising. Ukraine targets occupiers and collaborators; Russia has tried to kill Ukraine’s president. On September 25th Ukraine claimed to have killed the head of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, only for him seemingly to appear in a video a day later.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Assassin’s creed”

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FOR MANYyears, coups in Africa seemed a thing of the past. But in the 2020s they are back with a vengeance: the nine this decade account for more than a third of successful African putsches this century. At this rate there will be more of them in the 2020s than in any decade since the 1960s.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “
Africa’s broken politics ”

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“We need tobe good stewards of our planet. But that doesn’t mean I need to do away with my gas vehicle and drive an electric vehicle with a battery from China,” said Kristina Karamo, the chair of the Republican Party in Michigan, on September 22nd. America’s Democrats, she warned, are trying to “convince us that if we don’t centralise power in the government, the planet is gonna die. That seems like one of the biggest scams [since] Darwinian evolution.”

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “The anti-climate backlash begins”

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Sweden is banning OnlyFans content as the lines around sex work blur

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Donald Trump prefers deals to regime change