Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

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

In China, seasonal floods have come early and in abundance,

wiping out crops and tens of thousands of homes and displacing millions of people.

Our correspondent visits a town that is for now anyway on an island in the middle of the Yangtze River.

And you're getting very, very sleepy.

Or maybe not, the pandemic is causing a lot of lost shut-eye.

So people are increasingly turning to bedtime stories for adults.

Why not drift off to the tones of Matthew McConaughey, Stephen Fry or John McEnroe?

But first,

Earlier this year, Israel seemed to have marshaled one of the most effective responses to COVID-19.

By late May and early June, it had pushed new cases down to a handful a day.

At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was upbeat, boastful even.

He said Israel had handled the virus better than nearly any other country in the world,

and predicted that by the end of this, we will be the best in the world.

But recently, the virus has flared up again.

Now it's spreading faster than in any developed country, except for America.

In response, thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets in protest.

So what went wrong?

Just a couple of months ago, Israel seemed to have its coronavirus outbreak under control.

Roger McShane is the economist's Middle East editor.

...