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Liz Truss won the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party leadership contest yesterday, meaning she’ll succeed Boris Johnson as the country’s prime minister. As the UK barrels toward an economic recession, getting the job is like taking the keys to the sputtering family Corolla your sister left you when she went to college.

Who is Liz Truss? The new PM is described by her supporters as loyal and by her opponents as opportunistic. Here is a quick LinkedIn bio:

• In 2014, Truss became the youngest woman to be cabinet minister in British history.
• She’s worked under three prime ministers, most recently as foreign secretary for Johnson.
• Truss originally opposed Brexit, but became one of its biggest boosters after the fact.

Here’s what she’s up against

Inflation that’s even worse than in the US: Annual inflation in the UK is above 10% and some analysts are estimating it may not peak until next year, when it hits 18% or even 22%. The situation is only going to get worse as it gets colder. Annual household energy bills are expected to jump 80% in October as Russia continues throttling gas flows.

Political instability: Truss won with only 57% of the party votes, a much smaller margin than expected. She also wasn’t chosen in a general election. Because Johnson, who resigned in July following years of scandal, was a Conservative prime minister, only dues-paying party members could vote for his replacement. Bookmakers are anticipating that her tenure will be a short one.

Rough international waters: She’s ready to jump right in and scrap the Northern Ireland Protocol, a Brexit agreement that kept trade flowing smoothly through Northern Ireland, which borders The Republic of Ireland, an EU country. This move is vehemently opposed by the EU. Scottish lawmakers are also worried Truss will try to change laws and make it harder for Scotland to declare independence from the UK.

Looking ahead…according to the BBC, Truss’s first order of business will be to freeze energy bills so citizens don’t have to rely on wool sweaters exclusively this winter. It’s unclear how the government expects to pay for that, though, as Truss has staunchly opposed raising taxes on energy companies or wealthy individuals.—MM

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Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-serving British monarch, died yesterday at 96. Buckingham Palace reported earlier in the day that doctors were “concerned for Her Majesty’s health,” and that members of her family were all flying to be with her at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Her 73-year-old son will now take the throne as King Charles III, inheriting a vastly different Britain than his mother did seven decades ago.

It was an unprecedented reign

When a 25-year-old Elizabeth first donned the crown in February 1952, Harry Truman was president, Winston Churchill was prime minister, and NBC’s The Today Show had just debuted. She ruled during the span of 15 UK prime ministers, 14 US presidents, and nearly 30% of American history, providing a stabilizing force during geopolitical upheaval and scandals in the royal family. ~80% of all people currently living in the UK were born after Elizabeth became queen.

Buckingham Palace didn’t wing this: It had a highly orchestrated plan to announce the queen’s death, called Operation London Bridge. The plan began by alerting the current prime minister—Liz Truss, as of this week—who told officials in the overseas territories. At exactly the moment a footman pinned a black-edged notice of the queen’s death to the palace gates, the media began its well-rehearsed, multiday broadcast program that will celebrate the queen’s life and lead the country in its 10 days of official mourning.

Leaders around the world, including President Biden, responded to the queen’s death with condolences and messages of support. But…you might want to avoid Irish TikTok if you were an Elizabeth fan.

Big picture: Britain’s already waning global influence has hit a nadir after most of its colonies bucked the crown for independence. When Queen Elizabeth II first clocked in on day one, Britain held 70+ territories around the world; at the time of her death that number had dwindled to 15.

And yet, the monarchy soldiers on. The British national anthem, which had been sung as “God Save the Queen” since 1952, will get a one-word edit: “God Save the King.”—MM

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Queen Elizabeth II let her corgis roam Buckingham Palace like they were…well…the queen of England. And it wasn’t just her own dogs who benefited from the royal treatment: The late queen’s devotion helped establish a mass market for the breed.

The barkstory: For her 18th birthday, Elizabeth received Susan—not her first corgi, but the first corgi she would breed. All 30 corgis she had during her reign, and a handful of corgi-dachshund mixes, were descended from Susan. The queen reportedly stopped breeding the dogs around 2002 because she didn’t want them to outlive her (and potentially steal the crown).

More influential than Doug the Pug: Demand for corgis spiked alongside public events in the queen’s life. UK Kennel Club registrations for Pembroke corgis jumped in 1944, when she got Susan, and peaked eight years after Elizabeth took the throne, at around 9,000 registered corgis.

By 2012, that number dropped to 241. The Kennel Club blamed the breed’s association with old people, but the downturn was probably also influenced by a 2006 ban on tail docking (a popular practice with corgis). Then in 2017, a year after The Crown premiered and reminded everyone of those fluffy butts, UK corgi registration went up 16% and in 2021, a total of 1,223 corgis were registered in the UK—the highest in almost 30 years.—MM

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Russian men took to the internet to figure out escape routes from the country this week.

Google searches for “how to leave Russia” skyrocketed in the lead-up to a Wednesday morning decree from President Vladimir Putin that drafted nearly 300,000 new soldiers for the war in Ukraine. Putin was expected to announce tapping into military reserves Tuesday night (which is when the Google search first spiked), but the announcement was pushed to Wednesday morning.

One-way plane tickets to the few countries that allow Russians to enter sans visa jumped in price and quickly sold out after Russia ordered its first mobilization since World War II.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said only Russians with previous military experience will get called up, but many men in the country worry their service requirement is not an “if,” but a “when.”

It’s Putin’s biggest move since the invasion. In his announcement, Putin claimed that he decided to bring in backup due to Western aggression that “wants to destroy our country.” He also stated he supported annexing parts of Russian-occupied Ukraine and doubled down on threats to use nuclear weapons to defend his country.—MM

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In China, you can be put in prison if you’re heard criticizing President Xi Jinping.

But after suffering through nearly three years of “zero Covid” policies that have upended people’s lives and confined them to their houses for months, some are starting to risk it. During a series of protests in Shanghai, Beijing, and other cities against Covid restrictions this weekend, Chinese demonstrators were reportedly chanting “Xi Jinping, step down” and “Communist party, step down.” They also held up sheets of blank white paper to symbolize the Chinese government’s censorship of content it doesn’t want spreading around the internet.

China analysts say this kind of public defiance is unprecedented for Xi Jinping’s presidency, and could spiral into the worst political crisis for Beijing since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

What sparked the Covid protests?

They were instigated by a fire that killed 10 people in an apartment block in the city of Urumqi. Many people have claimed that Covid lockdown measures hampered rescue efforts, contributing to the tragedy (officials have denied this).

Also fueling some frustration is the contrast between the bleak situation in China and the festive World Cup in Qatar. Seeing jubilant, maskless crowds and a ~normal~ global event take place has led some Chinese people to question if they are living on a different planet than the rest of the world, as one person put it on social media.

Meanwhile, China’s Covid policies and the increasingly bold public reaction to them are threatening companies halfway across the world. Employees who work at the world’s biggest iPhone plant violently tussled with security staff last week after officials clamped down on an outbreak at the facility. The clashes could lead to major shortages of the new iPhone 14, analysts say—just when everyone is trying to snag one for the holidays.

Looking ahead…all eyes are on the Chinese government’s next moves to quell the dissent that appears to only be intensifying. Oh, and this seems important: Covid cases in China hit a record for a fourth straight day on Saturday.

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