The Economist

Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm Jason Palmer

And I'm Rosie Bloor.

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

For a long while, interest rates were so low that paying off a mortgage wasn't the smartest way to make your money work.

But borrowing costs are rising and stock market yields are slowing.

We go through the calculation homeowners should now be making.

And businesses have long been jealous of the kinds of super-sharp images

that spy and military satellites take of Earth.

Now some commercial operators are starting to take photos

that are just as good and a lot cheaper.

Thank you. are starting to take photos that are just as good and a lot cheaper. First up, though.

Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in December, a key question has been how the

Aloitites would figure into Syria's sectarian patchwork.

It's an ethnic group that practices an offshoot of Shia Islam, a group that the Assad's and

their loyalists came from, one that held sway over Syria for more

than half a century. Would the rest of the country, now led by Ahmed al-Shara and his Sunni

Islamist government, seek revenge on the Alawites for the crimes of a brutal civil war?

Would the Alawites simply accept that their time in power, their self-determination, was over?

Those questions are as live as ever, but recent days have revealed one thing about them.

They won't be resolved without bloodshed.

...