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Expect well-tempered bonhomie as Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, meets Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, in Delhi, the capital on Sunday, before heading south to the country’s start-up hub of Bengaluru. Mr Scholz may seek Mr Modi’s support for Western efforts to isolate Russia—probably to little avail. But discussions on economic co-operation may prove more fruitful. The chancellor will bring a group of German CEOs whose primary interest is expanding access to India’s growing market.

Germany, which is already India’s biggest European trading partner and an important investor in the country, is keen to reduce its economic dependence on China. The leaders are likely to discuss the potential for a free-trade agreement with the EU. There is also scope for co-operation on climate-change mitigation and investment in renewable energy. Thornier issues in India, including assaults on press freedom and human rights, have been missing from announcements leading up to the visit. Like other Western countries, Germany prefers to focus on India’s bright side.

After a year of war, Western leaders are patting themselves on the back for remaining united behind Ukraine. But the mood elsewhere is more ambivalent. Countries in Africa, Asia and South America are less preoccupied with a Ukrainian victory and more concerned with the impact of war on their economies.

A new report from the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank, lays bare these divisions. Pluralities in China (42%), Turkey (48%) and India (54%) say that the war needs to stop as soon as possible, even if that means Ukraine ceding territory to Russia. A whopping 63% of Indian respondents see Russia as having become “much or somewhat stronger” because of the war. Thus, whereas the conflict might have sparked a revival of the alliance between America and Europe, the authors argue that “the consolidation of the West is taking place in an increasingly divided post-Western world”. This, they conclude “may end up being the biggest geopolitical turning point revealed by the war”.

Successful invaders usually have superior weapons, and few invaders have been more successful than Homo sapiens. Those who suffered as a result of sapiens’ expansion into Europe included Homo neanderthalensis. Both species had hand-hurled spears when they first met. But according to a paper in Science Advances by Laure Metz, of Aix-Marseille University, European sapiens also carried bows and arrows, a better hunting and fighting technology, from the get-go. Previously, these were known only from the more recent past.

Dr Metz has been studying finds from Grotte Mandrin in the Rhône valley, a site where strata containing remains of sapiens go back 54,000 years, the oldest yet discovered in Europe. Many of the numerous stone artefacts found at this site were probably weapon tips. She and her colleagues compared the sizes of these, and the pattern of impact-damage on them, with those of others, ancient and modern. They conclude that many are, indeed, arrowheads rather than spear-points. The poor Neanderthals didn’t stand a chance.

Test cricket’s greatest spectacle, the biannual Ashes series between England and Australia, is less than four months away. As a pointer to the outcome, both teams are currently negotiating tricky away assignments, with very different results. Australia are struggling against India. They lost the first two Tests; the third starts on Wednesday but a drawn series is the best that Australia can now hope for. Meanwhile England, and in particular Harry Brook, their new superstar batter, have been putting New Zealand, the World Test Champions, to the sword.

Brendon McCullum, himself a New Zealander, has transformed England’s team since he was appointed head coach in May 2022. It is not just their results—though they have won ten out of 11 tests under Mr McCullum—but the calculated aggression of their batting that might unnerve the Aussies. The tactic has been nicknamed “Bazball” in honour of the coach. Twenty years ago, Steve Waugh’s Australian team redefined Test cricket by aiming to score at four runs an over, a breathtakingly high rate. This England team is managing to go even faster.

Ever since Russia invaded its neighbour, tiny Moldova has worried it might be next. Like Ukraine it was once a Soviet republic and is partly Russian-speaking; Russian soldiers occupy Transnistria, a breakaway statelet along its eastern border with Ukraine. But if Vladimir Putin thinks Moldova will be intimidated, he has not reckoned with its president, Maia Sandu, a pocket-sized pro-European who has spent her career facing down powerful, corrupt opponents.

The 50-year-old Ms Sandu was born in a small village where her father managed a pig farm. After university she worked for the economics ministry, part of a generation of modernising young technocrats, then joined the World Bank. Upon entering politics she became education minister, and won public acclaim for cleaning up a corrupt school-exam system that had obliged pupils to pay bribes.

In 2015 protests brought down the government after $1bn was embezzled from the central bank in a Russian-linked money-laundering scheme. Ms Sandu was nominated for the prime ministership, but turned it down when parties refused to fire crooked officials. She set up the Party of Action and Solidarity and ran for president, but was beaten by Igor Dodon, the pro-Russian leader of the Socialist Party. Ms Sandu then waged quixotic electoral campaigns against the Socialists and parties controlled by Moldova’s oligarchs. While she and her volunteers operated out of a deteriorating 19th-century villa, oligarchs ran their parties out of office towers where TV monitors carried the broadcasts of the propaganda stations they owned.

Everything changed in 2019, when Mr Dodon cut a deal (with Russian and American approval) to make Ms Sandu prime minister. Political scheming soon brought down Ms Sandu’s government, but in 2020 she beat Mr Dodon in the presidential race. She has since appointed two pro-EU, anti-corruption prime ministers.

Mr Putin has tried to cow her by cutting gas deliveries and sowing disinformation. On Thursday Russia alleged that Ukraine was planning a false-flag provocation in Transnistria to justify invading it. Ms Sandu promptly rebutted that and reiterated her defiance of Russian pressure. There would be no “puppet government enslaved to the interests of the Kremlin” in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, she said. She seems to be getting what she wants: last June the EU granted Moldova candidate status.

Tech problems are especially embarrassing when everyone is watching. As the world awaited the release of the euro zone’s January inflation figures on February 1st, Eurostat, the EU’s statistics bureau, announced that Germany’s contribution was missing because of a technical problem that had forced the agency merely to estimate the country’s figure. On Thursday the euro area’s price data was updated and released.

Inflation came in slightly higher than the estimate, at 8.6% compared to 8.5%. Germany published its full January figures on Wednesday. They show consumer prices rising by 9.2% year-on-year, or 0.5% on the previous month (not seasonally adjusted). The energy data show why. As a one-off government rebate on utility bills ran out, energy prices increased by 8.3% between December and January. Energy costs have come down in wholesale markets, but it is not clear if or when that decline will be passed on to consumers. Europe’s inflation data over the coming months may be volatile, IT problems or not.

When the Federal Reserve publishes new balance-sheet figures on Thursday, they will probably show another step downwards. Since mid-2022 the Fed has shrunk its assets from $9trn to $8.4trn. This carefully managed decline is known as quantitative tightening (QT), the reverse of the quantitative easing (QE)—purchases of bonds on a massive scale—used by the Fed to support the economy during downturns.

The Fed wants QT to play out quietly. It plans to shrink its balance-sheet by about $2.5trn in total by mid-2024 in order to bring it closer to its pre-covid size. But the Fed’s monetary operations may soon get trickier. Many investors think that it will shift from raising interest rates to cutting them later this year as economic growth falters. That could create a conflict in which the Fed is cutting rates (a form of easing) at the same time as shrinking its assets (a form of tightening). Markets would go from QE to QT to Q-confusion.

China’s reopening after three years of zero-covid measures is great news for consumer-tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent. The attempt by the country’s president, Xi Jinping, to shut out the pandemic depressed consumption, and these companies suffered. The extent to which they braced the pain became clearer on Thursday when Alibaba reported its final quarterly earnings of 2022.

The results were better than expected. Revenue grew 2% year-on-year when many analysts had predicted a decline; its net income of 46.8bn yuan ($6.8bn) was also above expectations. The company’s figures were partly buoyed by ruthless cost-cutting measures as it shed nearly 20,000 jobs in 2022. Still, investors will hope the worst is nearly over. Some believe that opening up will result in a consumption boom, boosting sales on Alibaba’s platforms of discretionary goods such as clothing and cosmetics. Others hope Mr Xi’s crackdown on big tech is over.

Britain’s FTSE 100 share index has been on a tear of late, but few of its companies have done as well as BAE Systems. The share price of Europe’s biggest defence contractor has risen by more than 50% over the past year. And its financial results for 2022, released on Thursday, showed that revenues rose 8.9% year-on-year. As a manufacturer of everything from frigates and fighter jets to electronic-warfare systems, it has done very well out of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A BAE product, the 155mm howitzer shell, is at the heart of the West’s struggle to keep Ukraine’s arsenal stocked. Having exhausted their Soviet-era ammunition, Ukraine’s army increasingly relies on NATO countries for such shells. Yet America and Europe combined currently make enough in a year only to maintain a three-month barrage. That is a worry as Ukraine faces the prospect of a new Russian offensive. BAE’s earnings will interest investors. But of more general concern is how fast it can ramp up production.

Growing up, Vivian Yoon hid a secret behind her baggy jeans and emo records. The Korean-American was raised in Los Angeles’s K-town, the centre of its Korean diaspora. But one thing she would never reveal: she loved K-pop.

For more than a decade now, K-pop has been globally popular and Ms Yoon (pictured) is ready to confess. A writer and actor, her new podcast, “K-pop Dreaming”, recounts the rise of K-pop and Korean-Americans’ contribution to it. The first two episodes, released on Thursday, suggest that both the music and the diaspora have been explored better elsewhere. But then the podcast’s real subject is Ms Yoon herself. Her attempts to figure out how her Korean heritage and K-Town upbringing have shaped her life are the podcast’s most compelling elements, and perhaps its most divisive. Listeners charmed by Ms Yoon’s openness will enjoy her frequent autobiographical recollections. For others, her confessional style may be a distraction from her musical and sociological themes.

As the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, President Joe Biden made a surprise trip to Kyiv, the capital, on Monday, his first trip since the war began. He was scheduled to travel to Poland, keeping a safe distance from Ukraine’s border. But the opportunity to visit the war-torn country proved too symbolic to resist—many Western leaders (and Mr Biden’s wife) have already made the trip.

Mr Biden will pledge continued support to Ukraine, while fending off calls to release American-made jets. In Poland the president will meet his counterpart, Andrzej Duda, and the leaders of eight other eastern members of NATO. Mr Biden will encourage them to keep shuttling weapons to Ukraine. In turn, they will push for an increased American presence in the region. Last year America established its first army base on NATO’s eastern flank in Poland. But with the threat of Russia looming, NATO’s frontline states will seek more assurances.

When Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, many predicted disaster for its economy. The West introduced sanctions, and the rouble collapsed. But Russia’s economy has proved surprisingly resilient. GDP only fell 2.2% in 2022, compared with early predictions of a 10% contraction. The IMF now forecasts growth of 0.3% for 2023.

Russia’s central bank, which releases its latest monetary-policy report on Monday, continues to exude calm. Soon after the outbreak of the war it increased interest rates from 9.5% to 20%, signalling that it was serious about tackling inflation and stemming a bank run. It gradually brought down the rate and has kept it at 7.5% since September, saying inflation is elevated, but manageable.

Recent Western sanctions on Russian oil have proved underwhelming, though this month’s extension of the measures to include refined products like diesel will be harder to dodge. Still, the damage will not persuade Russia to halt the war.

Air India began this year in inglorious fashion. Many Indians were outraged when it emerged that a drunk man allegedly urinated on a fellow business-class passenger. To some, the episode summed up the decline of the flag carrier, once a source of national pride. Tata, the conglomerate which retook the airline from the government last year, is now hoping to return the company to its former glory. It is betting on expansion. Last week it placed a record order: 470 aircraft from Boeing and Airbus, two planemakers, for $70-80bn.

There is plenty of scope for growth. India’s aviation market is close to fully recovering from the pandemic and is expected to be the third-biggest in the world within a decade, after America and China. But competition will also be tough. Air India is India’s third-biggest airline, with a market share of less than 10% in 2022, and is generating losses. So too is SpiceJet, another big airline, which reports results this week. Meanwhile, IndiGo, an industry behemoth with more than half the domestic market, is profitable and awaiting the delivery of 500 more aircraft.

On Monday fresh consumer-confidence figures buoyed hopes that the euro zone will avoid a recession. An index released by the European Commission showed a reading of -19 in February, compared with -20.7 in January. A result below zero still indicates overall pessimism, but the score is the index’s highest in a year.

Energy prices have tumbled thanks to a warm winter and plentiful gas storage, and stimulus from the European Union’s pandemic recovery fund has propped up member states’ economies. The European Commission has also raised its outlook for GDP growth in 2023 to 0.9% from 0.3% in its November forecast. All EU countries except Sweden are expected to grow.

Yet there are still headwinds. Inflation is easing but remains high. The war in Ukraine is showing no sign of ending soon. And next winter energy prices could shoot up again as China rapidly recovers from its zero-covid regime, increasing the demand for gas.

The left-wing senator from Vermont is the longest-serving independent in US congressional history. But Bernie Sanders’s dedication to his usual cause is undimmed in his fourth book. “It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism”, released this week, takes aim at the concentration of riches in the hands of a few. Mr Sanders offers his ideas to cure America’s economic and political systems of their ills. Chief among them are increasing tax on corporations and reforming campaign-finance rules to free political parties from big donors.

Mr Sanders’s message may not be new, but by unpacking problems from wealth inequality to health-care access he taps into some of the frustrations felt by working Americans who struggle to make ends meet. An “uber-capitalist” system, he argues, is what drove disaffected, working-class Democratic voters to support Donald Trump and the Republicans. Mr Sanders is often teased for his grouchy demeanour. His book shows why he sees few reasons to be cheery.