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.

Two years ago, the biggest virus story in China was one that affected the country's enormous pork industry.

African swine fever is still ravaging farms, and officials' efforts to keep a huge market stable don't look sustainable.

And for a long while, the activist artist Judy Chicago gave up trying to gain the acceptance

of the mainstream art world.

It eventually caught up with her vision.

We take a look at the first full retrospective of her art, from needlework to fireworks. But first... In Afghanistan, Taliban fighters have been parading through the city of Kandahar in celebration.

Some of them aboard captured American armored vehicles.

Western allies have all departed as of this week,

and apart from a few pockets of resistance, the Taliban are now in total control.

At the airport in the capital Kabul, a spokesperson for the group addressed the departed enemies.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, he said, wants strong diplomatic relations with the world, including America.

In the chaos of recent weeks, American forces have in fact worked alongside the Taliban. What cooperation lies ahead is a far trickier business,

a fact noted by America's highest-ranking military official, chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Millie.

This is a ruthless group from the past, and whether or not they change remains to be seen.

And as far as our dealings with them at that airfield, or in the past year or so, in war, you do what you must in order to reduce risk to mission and force, not what you necessarily want to do.

Over the course of 20 years, a coalition of military forces has failed to bring the Taliban to heal.

Now those forces are gone, the calculus has changed on how to protect Afghanistan's citizens

and to keep it from breeding far worse terrorist organizations.

Many people make the argument that America and its allies should now have nothing whatsoever to do with

the Taliban. Ed McBride is the economist's deputy foreign editor. They say it's such a despicable

regime. It's so violent, it's so repressive, it's so puritanical, that it is better to not give it any

...