ALI AL-WAZIR is no ordinary businessman. The 47-year-old Yemeni, who is known as “Prince”, plies his trade in Guangzhou in southern China. The bustling port is about 7,000km (4,500 miles) from Yemen. But distance has not prevented Mr Wazir from playing a part in his country’s long civil war. In 2024 he was accused of

POLAND’S Constitutional Tribunal is supposed to embody democratic stability, but has spent the past decade as a battleground for fights between populists and liberals. The latest conflict looks like a full-blown constitutional crisis. On the evening of October 30th a group of judges picked by parliament this year, but whom the country’s president has refused

There has never been a better time to be a North Korean hacker. Last year the country’s cyber-thieves stole $2bn-worth of cryptocurrency, triple the level two years before, according to Chainalysis, a research firm. This year’s haul is set to be much bigger. On October 29th $6.3bn was swiped from Binance, the world’s largest crypto

DEMOCRATS NEED a net gain of four Senate seats to take control of the upper chamber of Congress. Now, with election day looming on November 3rd, a state crucial to that effort is descending into chaos. Republicans have asserted for months that Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher living in a small fishing village, launched

SINGAPORE—In 1998, a shadowy entertainment company based in the gambling hub of Macau made an unusual purchase: an aircraft carrier. Called the Varyag, it was originally ordered for the Soviet Union, but was left to rust unfinished in a Ukrainian shipyard. Its Chinese buyers said they wanted to turn their $20 million acquisition into a