Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist.

In London, I'm Jason Palmer.

And in New York, I'm John Fasmin.

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

Usually you think of spying and espionage as things that states do to each other.

James Bond, after all, was on her Majesty's Secret Service, not on Tesco's or Wal-Mart's.

Turns out, corporate spying is getting more common and more sophisticated.

And compared with other rich countries, America has an unusually high rate of road deaths.

Some American states try to scare drivers by reminding them how many people have died.

But it turns out that this has an astonishing side effect.

First up, though.

As it became clear last night that France's president, Emmanuel Macron, was set to lose his parliamentary

majority, it was those at the country's political polls who were celebrating.

It's less than two months since Mr. Macron's centrist platform convincingly won him a second

term.

He'd asked voters to deliver him an equally convincing win in elections to the National Assembly,

so that he could push through an ambitious set of reforms.

Instead, a brand new coalition on the left called New Pes, scooped up enough votes that

its convener Jean-Luc Mélenchon called it totally unexpected a total defeat of the president's

party.

It's a totally unexpected situation, absolutely unexpected.

The defeat of the presidential party is totally and without majority of this president.

...