Which way a wind turbine turns might not seem to matter
May 16th 2020IF THE HANDS of dial clocks swept over their faces the other way around, that would be the direction known as “clockwise”. And they would tell the hour just as faithfully. It is convenient to have all clock hands turn in the same direction, but it is an accident of history which direction…
Wireless charging of electric cars looks increasingly promising
May 16th 2020THEY MAY BE facing extinction in the electric-transport revolution, but one benefit of cars with internal combustion engines is that they are easy and quick to refuel, so travelling a long way in one is rarely a problem. Not so for their successors. In the absence of universal standards, electric cars come with…
Award
May 16th 2020Award: Alice Fulwood, our Wall Street correspondent, has been named Young Journalist of the Year at the Wincott Awards, an annual set of prizes for British journalists. Henry Curr, our economics editor, was highly commended in the Journalism of the Year category.This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print…
Why the pandemic could eventually lower inequality
May 16th 2020FOR AMERICA’S poor, the covid-19 pandemic has delivered a swift and brutal reversal of fortune. At the start of the year unemployment was plumbing new lows. Years of wage growth for low-income workers had healed some of the scars left by the global financial crisis. Already by 2016, the most recent year for…
Washington fires its first financial salvo at Beijing
The White House seeks to stop a government pension fund investing in ChinaMay 14th 2020Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our…
Jail Inmates Attempt to Get the Coronavirus For Early Release
According to reports, a group of inmates in an L.A. detention center tried to get COVID-19, expecting that would be their get-out-of-jail-free card. Sheriff Alex Villanueva said roughly two dozen inmates shared a mask and passed around a cup of water, in the hopes of passing the deadly infection to each other, figuring that would…