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 Pete Land 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 to Minsk fill harmonic.

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 Xiaomi-Shell said so.

The people of Belarus deserve better. The deserve, the democratic right to choose their leaders and shape their future.

EU leaders said they would impose sanctions on election officials and the security services that have been suppressing demonstrations.

In truth, the EU has little leverage, what may matter far more is the response of Russia, with which Mr. Lukashenko has an increasingly fraud relationship.

Yesterday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said that what is happening in Belarus worries us very much.

After 26 years in power, it's increasingly unclear how Mr. Lukashenko can hang on.

This time, it was not just rigged, it was actually stolen. In the past, Lukashenko conducted some support inside the country and had a degree of legitimacy and he simply bumped up the numbers.

Arcadeoshtrovsky is the economist's Russia editor.

And that evidently fraudulent election has drawn a lot of protesters out into the streets.

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