2025-05-22
23 分钟The Economist.
Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist.
I'm Jason Palmer.
And I'm Rosie Bloor.
Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.
Our correspondent takes a trip to Baltimore,
one of those American cities with a past reputation for violent crime.
But recent statistics show a dramatic national decline in violence.
What are Baltimore and other cities at last getting right?
And our culture correspondent and a familiar voice looks at a mammoth new biography of Mark Twain.
It argues that the author jump-started celebrity culture and single-handedly invented a way of being American in the world and on the page.
But first...
I'm standing on the border between Lithuania and Belarus in the middle of a beautiful forest of fir trees and pines with the birds seeing on a spring day.
David Renne, our geopolitics editor, has been spending some time in the Baltics.
But right in the middle there is a huge metal fence.
with razor wire on the top and then beyond that still on the Lithuanian side coil after coil of razor wire and a thick mask to stop people even getting to the fence and cameras every few meters on posts guarded with sharp spikes against climbing to keep a watch on what would be the front line
if Russia ever tried to test NATO and the European Union at this border with Lithuania.
David, you're back in the UK after enjoying the birdsong of Lithuania.
Tell me, it's not just Lithuania that's beefing up its borders, is it?
No. So every European country that borders Russia clearly has a real headache that Russia has shown what it's capable of.