Philippa Kaur

IMAGINE A beach where for decades people have enjoyed sunbathing in the buff. Suddenly one of the world’s biggest corporations takes it over and invites anyone in, declaring that thongs and mankinis are the new nudity. The naturists object, but sun-worshippers flock in anyway. That, by and large, is the situation in the world’s open-source community, where bare-it-all purists are confronting Meta, the social-media giant controlled by a mankini-clad Mark Zuckerberg. More

Soon after his private jet touched down on August 24th at Le Bourget airport, on the outskirts of Paris, Pavel Durov was arrested by French police. A statement later released by prosecutors said that the 39-year-old billionaire had been detained as part of an investigation into Telegram, the social-media app of which he is the founder and chief executive. French judges have until August 28th to decide whether to pursue charges or release him. More

IF today’s stockmarkets have their version of the great wildebeest migration, it is the stampede of the Nvidia bulls. Wall Street is no Serengeti, and Jim Cramer’s high-pitched narration no match for the dulcet tones of Sir David Attenborough. But in other respects investors’ headlong rush into the American chipmaker’s shares has been every bit as enthralling a spectacle. More

Close to the Czech border, south of Dresden in the German state of Saxony, lies Glashütte, a picturesque town of 6,700 inhabitants. As the German Watch Museum, its main visitor attraction, suggests, the town is the centre of the country’s high-end watchmaking industry. In 1845, after years of apprenticeship with makers of fine watches in France and Switzerland, Ferdinand Adolph Lange opened a workshop in Glashütte with a loan from the Saxon authorities, founding what would go on to become A. Lange & Söhne, one of the world’s priciest watch brands. Today the firm, now owned by Richemont, a Swiss luxury giant, is one of the nine high-end horologists that manufacture watches in the town. More

Regular attendees at Burning Man, an annual week-long festival in the Nevada desert, normally scramble to buy tickets. This year they are scrambling to sell them. The gathering of hippies and billionaires, which begins on August 25th, has failed to sell out for the first time since 2010. Tickets with a face value of $575 are being flogged on the secondary market at less than half-price. More

TheoDORE Roosevelt’s bull terrier once chased the French ambassador up a tree. Commander, President Joe Biden’s German shepherd, had to be rusticated after repeatedly biting Secret Service officers. Sir Gavin Williamson, a British politician, refused to remove a tarantula he kept in a glass tank from the office. He defended the presence of Cronus by insisting the “clean, ruthless killer” was “part of the team”. More

The convenience store, or konbini, is an institution of modern Japanese life. Open at all hours, it offers customers tasty food and household essentials, as well as the ability to pay bills and send parcels. The industry leader, 7-Eleven, perfected new products, such as takeaway onigiri, or rice balls, and eventually took over the American chain from which it sprang. But if Alimentation Couche-Tard (ACT), a Canadian retailer that operates the Circle K chain of shops, has its way, 7-Eleven will no longer be Japanese. More

When your columnist first started writing Schumpeter in early 2019, he had a romantic idea of travelling the world and sending “postcards” back from faraway places that chronicled trends in business, big and small. In his first few weeks, he reported from China, where a company was using automation to make fancy white shirts; Germany, where forest-dwellers were protesting against a coal mine; and Japan, where a female activist was making a ninja-like assault on corporate governance. All fun, but small-bore stuff. Readers, his editors advised him, turn to this column not for its generous travel budget but for its take on the main business stories of the day. So he pivoted, adopting what he called the Linda Evangelista approach. From then on, he declared, he would not get out of bed for companies worth less than $100bn. More