Hello and welcome to the intelligence from the economist.

In New York, I'm John Fassman.

And in London, I'm Jason Palmer.

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

No country in the world is home to more refugees than Turkey, which is taken in people from

Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

But as the country's elections draw closer, ambitious politicians are using this place

escape goats.

And in the Arab world, girls are doing better than boys in school by a lot.

One reason is segregated classes.

Another is a cushier job market for men, but governments to their cost seem to be doing

little to close the gap.

First up, though.

For more than two years, North Korea claimed to have kept COVID-19 out of the country no

longer.

It recorded its first case of the virus on May 8th.

Within a week, the official case count had risen to 168 infections and one death.

But that leaves out a reported 1.72 million patients with fever symptoms, including 62

deaths as of this week.

The desperately poor dictatorship is now in lockdown, and almost certainly being ravaged

by the highly infectious Omicron variant.

State TV has carried advice from doctors telling people to rest and stay hydrated to keep

...