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.

Indonesia's leaders say they're worried about pandemic-driven food shortages,

so they're resurrecting a plan to turn vast swathes of peatland into rice paddies,

exactly what the government did in the 1990s with disastrous results.

And one of the more compelling uses for a bit of artificial intelligence is to get it to do some writing.

We take a look at the most well-read AI ever developed

and ask whether it's at any risk of putting novelists, poets, and journalists out of work.

But first...

In Belarus this week, protests have grown to the largest the country has ever seen,

and they included unlikely participants the Minsk Philharmonic.

This quiet has grown since elections earlier this month, when Alexander Lukashenko once again

claimed a presidential victory, once again amid widespread accusations of fraud.

Mr. Lukashenko's promising election challenger is now in exile,

and it seems that people have had enough.

On Monday, the president was heckled with chance of go away

by usually loyal workers at a tractor factory.

True to form, Mr. Lukashenko, often described as Europe's last dictator,

has tightened border controls and ordered riot police to end the protests in Minsk, the capital.

Few international observers believe the result,

and at an emergency summit yesterday, European Council President Cheryl Michel said so.

The people of Belarus deserve better.

...