No one is likely to win the oil-price war
Mar 14th 2020SAUDI ARABIA and Russia are used to fighting their enemies via proxies. But the oil-price war that has broken out between them is head-on and has swiftly escalated. It started when Russia refused to slash production during a meeting with the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna on March 6th. Saudi…
Myanmar’s army blocks constitutional reforms
AS THE SHOUTING slalomed around the chamber, Myanmar’s parliamentarians stiffened in shock. They had only just begun debating a number of proposed amendments to the constitution, and tempers were already fraying. One MP, Major-General Tin Swe Win, bellowed repeatedly at the speaker of the house. The ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) was hoping to…
Nuclear power plants are coming to the battlefield
Mar 14th 2020WAR ZONES are dangerous places. Where better, then, for a nuclear reactor? On March 9th America’s government awarded a trio of firms $39.7m to design “microreactors” that can supply a few megawatts of power to remote military bases, and be moved quickly by road, rail, sea and air.The idea of small reactors is…
Plastic rubbish smells good to turtles
Mar 14th 2020TURTLES HAVE an unfortunate habit of devouring plastic objects floating in the sea. These then get snared in their alimentary canals, cannot be broken down by the animals’ digestive enzymes and may ultimately kill them. It is widely assumed that this penchant for plastics is a matter of mistaken identity. Drifting plastic bags,…
American researchers want to fill the oceans with sensors
Mar 14th 2020THERE IS TWICE as much water on Earth as land. Oceanographers are nevertheless fond of saying that science knows less about the high seas than it does about the moon. If John Waterston gets his way, though, that could soon change.Mr Waterston is the head of the “Ocean of Things” project at the…
Yes Bank’s rescue deepens worries about Indian finance
INDIA, WHICH has few declared cases of covid-19, has not escaped the turmoil in global markets. On March 9th its stockmarkets suffered their biggest one-day fall in absolute terms ever, notwithstanding the positive impact low oil prices should have on a big energy importer. Its problems go beyond people’s health.On March 6th a different crisis…
Throughout history, pandemics have had profound economic effects
Mar 14th 2020PANDEMICS ARE the inevitable attendants of economic progress. Interconnected trade networks and teeming cities have made societies both richer and more vulnerable, from the empires of antiquity to the integrated global economy of the present. The effects of covid-19 will be very different from those of past pathogens, which struck populations far poorer…
Entering a bear market
Mar 14th 2020IT MAY HAVE been lost amid the stockmarket panic but on March 9 America’s bull market turned 11 years old. Two days later, it was history. Concerns about the covid-19 epidemic have caused a rout in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, pushing it down more than 20% from its high on February 12th—a…
The challenge of addressing covid-19’s economic effects in Europe
Mar 14th 2020FEW PEOPLE would wish to trade places with Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s prime minister. As covid-19 spread he put the entire country into lockdown for the first time since the second world war. Now he must try to contain the economic effects. But he is finding that tackling them also depends on lenders and…
Victims of rioting in India are bashed by the police and courts, too
LAST MONTH a judge in Mangaluru, in the southern state of Karnataka, did something increasingly unusual in an Indian court. Not only did he grant bail to 21 Muslim men charged with joining a riot, he also roundly condemned the police for fabricating evidence against them. They had failed to establish a link between the…