A new robot may help keep ships’ bottoms clean
May 28th 2020ALL SHIPS suffer from fouling: the build-up below the waterline of shellfish, seaweeds and other organisms. This causes drag, which slows the affected craft and increases its fuel consumption. Regular hull cleaning thus makes a considerable difference to the profitability of shipping. It also results in a useful reduction in the amount of…
Masks probably slow the spread of covid-19
May 28th 2020Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our coronavirus hub“THIS IS A, I would say, senseless dividing line,” said Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, his voice catching as he talked of the rows…
The pandemic could lead statisticians to change how they estimate GDP
May 30th 2020AN AIR-CONDITIONER that overheats in hot weather, or an insurance policy that fails to pay out after a natural disaster: some things do not work as expected, just when you need them most. So it is with official statistics in the pandemic. As they try to gauge the depth of the downturn, policymakers…
Can private-equity firms turn a crisis into an opportunity?
MOST APPARENTLY sound stewards of capital were revealed to be anything but during the 2007-09 financial crisis. Bank bosses were shown to have taken on too much risk. Star hedge-fund managers suffered losses. Nor have the years since then been kind. Banks have been tied up in regulatory knots and returns at hedge funds have…
Gay people in Myanmar have adopted a secret language
WEDNESDAY HAS just turned into Thursday in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, and pleasure-seekers are on the prowl in a glitzy neighbourhood. Drivers slow down to inspect sex workers waiting by the kerb. Three of them, all transgender women, chat brightly. Your correspondent tries to eavesdrop but even her translator cannot understand. Theresa, the most forthright…
Asian countries try to build travel “bubbles”
May 28th 2020IN CONTRAST TO most of Europe and America, still buffeted by covid-19, swathes of East Asia and the Pacific have climbed through the worst of the turbulence and can glimpse blue skies again. Testing and tracing, prompt social distancing and swiftly mobilised health-care systems have brought impressive results: Vietnam claims no deaths, Hong…
Hobbyists hope to halt hunger in Lebanon by growing their own crops
THE COVID-19 pandemic has brought no end of comparisons to Spanish flu, which raced around the globe in 1918. For Lebanon, though, that decade’s defining event was not flu but famine: years of hunger that killed half the population during the first world war. History feels newly relevant as the country tips into depression and…
The covid-19 crisis is boosting mobile money
THE STORY of mobile money is one that turns during crises. In Kenya in 2008, violence broke out after a disputed election the year before. As supporters of the rival candidates clashed on the streets, ordinary folk were afraid to go out. Many started sending money to each other by phone using a newfangled service…
Self-destructing glue solves a sticky environmental problem
May 30th 2020GLUE THAT deliberately comes unstuck sounds like a joke. But it is useful to be able to take things to pieces for recycling once their lives are over, so adhesive that becomes unadhesive on command could be valuable. James Broughton, a chemist at Oxford Brookes University, in Britain, thinks he has just the…
Crew Dragon’s launch is postponed
May 30th 2020THE WORLD WILL have to wait a little longer for the first launch of human beings into space in a craft not run by a national government. Crew Dragon (pictured) is designed, built and operated by SpaceX, a private firm founded by Elon Musk—as is the Falcon 9 rocket its sits on. This…