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.

Cybercrime is getting decidedly more dramatic. Ransomware attacks this year have hit a fuel

pipeline, a beef conglomerate, a national health system. As more industries and institutions

are being literally held to ransom, we ask how better to protect them.

And once upon a time, eels were so abundant in Britain that they were scooped up from

the rivers and used as fertilizer, not so anymore. Now efforts to up their numbers by giving

them a hand shimmying up river seemed to be working.

But first, there's an unfolding assault taking place in America today. An attempt to suppress

and subvert and write to vote and fare in free elections.

President Joe Biden gave an impassioned speech yesterday defending voting rights. In Republican

held state houses around the country, moves are underway to change how and when voters can

cast their ballots. What's really at issue is how much those change who casts a ballot

and Mr. Biden called on Republicans to take a principled stand.

We ask our Republican friends in Congress and states and cities and counties to stand

up for God's sake and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and

to shake it right to vote. Have you no shame?

The speech came as democratic lawmakers from Texas find themselves in the middle of a

kind of tactical field trip.

Joe Biden gave a speech in Philadelphia yesterday in which he described attempts by Republican

led state legislatures to change voting rules in those states as the most significant

test to our democracy since the Civil War. John Prado is the economist, United States

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