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.

In Hong Kong, students' voices are getting quieter. Authorities have been invoking the sweeping year-old national security law

to shut student unions down and shut students up.

Academic freedom is just the latest kind under threat in the territory.

And alcohol-free beers used to be pretty awful,

but with more abstemious customers, the big brewers are making it ever more palatable,

and they see opportunity positioning it as a kind of adult soft drink,

rather than just a sop to the designated driver.

First up, though,

Five, four, three, two, four, three, two, one.

At the stroke of midnight on what was dubbed Freedom Day in Britain last week,

clubbers hit the dance floor, starting what is, in effect, a grand epidemiological experiment watched by the world. Restrictions on the

size of gatherings, social distancing, and masks all lifted. This weekend, a major music festival

called Latitude happened in the county of Suffolk, with

40,000 attendees.

The unlocking is powered by a belief in the strength of Britain's vaccination campaign.

Although deaths remain low and cases have fallen from a peak last week, nearly 30,000 people

a day are still catching COVID, and 5,000 people are hospitalized.

The architect of this bold plan is Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has, as of this weekend,

been in office for two years.

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