Saudi Arabia stopped trying to support oil prices. Enter America
EARLY IN MARCH the oil market’s central banker seemed to go berserk. Saudi Arabia, the most powerful member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), has long adjusted its supply to help stabilise the price of crude. Russia had teamed up with OPEC since 2016, but as covid-19 drove demand relentlessly down, it…
America’s central bank is not the only one doling out greenbacks
WHEN AMERICA and its allies wanted to cheapen the dollar in 1985, their officials met in the Plaza Hotel in New York. When they sought to stabilise the currency two years later, they gathered in the Louvre Palace in Paris, conversing over turbot soufflé cardinale washed down with Puligny Montrachet, according to Funabashi Yoichi, a…
Airborne particles may be assisting the spread of SARS-CoV-2
Mar 26th 2020POLLUTION AND disease have long been associated in people’s minds. The very word “malaria”, for example, means “bad air” in Italian. But the germ theory of infection, developed in the 19th century, knocked on the head the idea that it is the air itself which causes illness. Rather, bad smells indicate sources of…
Taking people’s temperatures can help fight the coronavirus
Mar 26th 2020STICKING A THERMOMETER into an armpit, mouth, ear or other body cavity is the most accurate way to take someone’s temperature. Understandably, though, this cannot be done at airports or checkpoints set up elsewhere to screen the masses for feverish victims of covid-19. So, in a bid to detect the warmth produced by…
The epidemic provides a chance to do good by the climate
Mar 26th 2020IN VENICE, WATER in the canals is running clear, offering glimpses of fish swimming against the current. As human activity grinds to a halt, natural rhythms resume. A similar, less visible story is being played out in the skies. Around the world, levels of toxic air pollutants are dropping as places go into…
A sex-abuse scandal incenses millions of South Koreans
“FIRST HE JUST asked for a picture of my body, but then he asked if I could send one that showed my face…and then he asked me to play with myself…to use school supplies,” the girl told a local radio show on the morning of March 24th. She went on to describe a weeks-long ordeal…
Let Taiwan into the World Health Organisation
Mar 26th 2020SPARE A MOMENT and admire Taiwan. Its handling of the new coronavirus pandemic has so far saved many, many lives. The figures tell the story. A country of 24m, it has far fewer infections than its neighbours: just 235 as of March 25th, with only two deaths.Taiwanese officials seem to know what they…
Bangladesh releases a jailed opposition figure
Mar 26th 2020LIKE MANY others, the government of Bangladesh has issued a ban on public gatherings to curb the spread of covid-19. Yet not even the threat of a pandemic could deter supporters of Khaleda Zia, a jailed opposition leader, from turning out en masse to witness her release on bail. The 74-year-old, who leads…
Covid-19 forces Japan to delay the Olympics
WHEN THE annals of the new coronavirus are written, a chapter will surely be devoted to the dogged insistence by Japan’s prime minister, Abe Shinzo, that despite a galloping global pandemic the Tokyo Olympic Games would go ahead as planned in July. Mr Abe—the most assertive prime minister since his beloved grandfather, Kishi Nobusuke, who…
As covid-19 spreads, Arab states are clamping down
Mar 26th 2020IF YOU BELIEVE the official numbers, covid-19 has not yet hit the Middle East and north Africa as hard as the rest of the world. Excluding Iran, where an outbreak is raging, the virus has killed around 100 people in the region, compared with thousands in Europe (which has more people). Nevertheless, Arab…