Zach Wener-Fligner, Annabelle Timsit

At least 158.8 million people voted in this year’s US presidential election.

To understand Joe Biden, the new US president-elect, one has to know his family history.

Even before it became clear that Joe Biden would win this year’s presidential election, Donald Trump had launched a legal campaign to challenge his opponent’s gains in swing states.

After five long days of voting and vote counting, Americans have made their choice: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are their president- and vice president-elect.

More than 90 million Americans have already voted in this year’s presidential election.

Have you heard of a little thing called Covid-19? So has Big Pharma, and the race to develop a vaccine is on. It’s high-stakes geopolitical chess and every country and company involved badly wants to win, including Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca.

Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is persona non grata in Europe.

Hi [%first_name | Quartz member%],

At midnight on Friday (Oct. 16) London entered into “Tier 2” lockdown. In a reversal of the past few months’ progressive relaxation of public health rules tied to the pandemic, people from different households can no longer meet indoors while bars and restaurants must close by 10 pm. This follows even more stringent restrictions imposed on other UK cities such as Liverpool and European capitals such as Paris, amid a second wave of Covid-19 infections.

Ascher Teich has mixed feelings about the money deposited in his bank account every three months.

In 2017, German chancellor Angela Merkel issued a warning from a Munich beer hall.

Europe is getting tired of trying to pry open the doors of China’s market.

In the early hours of the morning in Washington DC, US president Donald Trump announced on Twitter that he and his wife Melania tested positive for Covid-19, two days after he debated his opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, in Ohio, and 32 days before the election.

US president Donald Trump has tested positive for coronavirus. He and his wife Melania were already in quarantine after one of their advisers also tested positive, and although the president will have the best possible medical care, he’s 74, likely overweight, and generally in a higher-risk category.

Chinese president Xi Jinping made a major and unexpected announcement on Tuesday (Sept. 22) at the UN general assembly: China, the world’s second largest economy and largest polluter, will become carbon-neutral by 2060.

As tensions escalate between the US and China—over trade, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and even TikTok—officials have expressed concern that Beijing could use its stockpile of US Treasury bonds to destabilize the US economy and pressure Washington into backing down. Regular people are worried too: In a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, America’s debt to China was the top concern among respondents in the US, with 89% saying the problem was “very serious.”

The British government’s public health advisors have warned the public that coronavirus is a “six-month problem that we have to deal with collectively,” as cases double roughly every seven days across the UK, especially among younger people.

Eighteen years ago, the US invaded Iraq under the false pretense that Saddam Ḥussein possessed nuclear weapons. It did so against the objections of many of its European allies including France and Germany.

Among the many out-of-body experiences created by this pandemic—moments where I’ve thought, “what would Pre-Covid Me think if she saw me like this?”—none have marked me quite so much as having my temperature checked at the entrance of indoor spaces.

Before Covid-19 connections and money could buy almost anyone the right to live pretty much anywhere they wanted.

The French care a lot about their champagne. But don’t let them hear you call any old sparkling wine by that name—the real champagne, their official Champagne Committee will tell you, only comes from the Champagne region of France, where producers pioneered a unique technique in the late 1600s.

In July, the UK’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab announced the launch of the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations, a sanctions regime that will allow the British government to target individuals and entities that violate human rights around the world. It’s part of a wave of so-called “Magnitsky-style” sanctions—in effect in the US and Canada, and under consideration in other countries—inspired by Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was tortured and imprisoned after uncovering a large-scale tax fraud scheme, and who died in jail in 2009.

On his first diplomatic trip since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi will stop by Italy, France, Germany, The Netherlands, and… Norway. The inclusion of a non-European Union member on a trip whose purpose is, ostensibly, to celebrate the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and the EU, might sound surprising. But it’s a reminder that China’s strategic ambitions for Europe extend beyond the continent’s borders.

The last week of August is not the best time to visit Europe for anything other than empty tourist attractions.