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

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

In 2016, a presidential candidate pitched himself as a no-nonsense corruption buster, a man

of the people. I'm talking of course about Rodrigo Duterte. We look at his very short

list of accomplishments as the Philippines leader and what he leaves behind.

And you've probably heard about the metaverse. Virtual copies of the real world where businesses

are already setting up shop, from nightclubs to fashion houses to realtors and speculators

who have some swamp land in a digital floor to tell you.

But first, today children in Chicago are returning to school. The city's public schools had

cancelled all classes last week after the teacher's union voted against in-person learning,

saying it was unsafe during the Omicron surge. It's the latest skirmish over how American

children should be taught during the pandemic.

So it's all, it's all who knows what's happening. Tracy Sandlin is the head of Chicago Collegiate,

which teaches middle and high school on Chicago's south side.

Yes, so we are currently in-person. We just came back on Monday. Last week we were remote.

As a charter academy, her school wasn't part of the union discussions. Nevertheless, it

closed for in-person teaching last week.

We identified approximately 40% of our staff was either positive or would be actively quarantining.

But we would need to come back to school last week. And we said, hmm, that makes running

school kind of difficult to do.

As is familiar now for many schools, they flipped to teaching remotely.

We're able to be nimble and responsive to families that was happening on the ground.

...