Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

In the Soviet Union, television was the public's go-to source of news, so it was the best place

for the state to propagate its propaganda. In the internet age, things are rather different.

Russia's president Vladimir Putin is trying to regain control of the public's attention,

but he may be too late.

And in Bangladesh, there's been a sharp rise in the number of divorces. That's partly

because of changes to laws and to the labor force, but the country's women, it seems,

are modernizing faster than its men.

First up, though.

After two deadly airliner crashes in the space of just months, Boeing's reputation and revenues

are at risk. 157 people died when an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed on Sunday, six minutes after

takeoff. The tragedy came five months after the crash of a lion air flight in the Javas-C,

under apparently similar circumstances involving the same model of aircraft, Boeing's 737-max-8.

America's air regulator announced yesterday that it will mandate design changes to the aircraft

by April. And some countries have chosen to ground all of their 737-max airliners, first among

them China. The resulting sell-off caused shares in the American firm to plummet.

Boeing is a huge part of China's aviation industry. Simon Rebenovich is our Shanghai bureau chief.

It's the world's fastest growing airplane market that got thousands of commercial planes in

operation. Boeing has a roughly even split with Airbus. More than a thousand Boeings are flying

on any given day in China. And nearly a hundred of those are the 737-max and all of those are grounded.

There's been two crashes involving this plane. China is the biggest customer market right now for

...