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.

Daring foreign assassinations of dissidents by nefarious regimes are the stuff of spy novels.

In real life, they're rare. These days, exploitation of extradition laws is more common,

alongside subtler and simpler forms of repression and surveillance abroad.

And good luck getting a cheap car in Algeria.

Plummeting foreign reserves have forced the country to crimp imports of all sorts.

Following a failed effort to spin up a domestic car industry,

a set of wheels is increasingly hard to come by.

But first...

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, good afternoon.

Welcome to the press conference of joint expert team of China, WHO SARS-Co2.

In Wuhan yesterday, the World Health Organization reported its initial conclusions from its first fact-finding mission to the region to determine the origins of the coronavirus.

I would like to salute those who we have seen every day following us on cold days for long hours in the rain and bad weather.

The WHO has long been attempting to gather more clues on how the virus got its start

and how it eventually passed into humans.

But after much backroom dealing, researchers were only allowed into China in January.

In the interim, there's been widespread theorizing.

Some believe the answer involves bats because they harbor a variety of related viruses,

like that which causes SARS.

Then there's the Huanan Sea Food Market, the first known center of the outbreak.

Others have gone further, suggesting a laboratory accident hushed up by the state.

Conspiracies have swirled around the Chinese state-backed lab.

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