Fences are bad for wildlife
Oct 24th 2020EARTH’S LONGEST artificial structure is usually said to be the Great Wall of China. Just how long that is is hard to say, for northern China actually has many walls, built at different times and not always interconnecting. Earth’s second-longest artificial structure, though, is not a wall, but a fence. Its length is…
A driverless lorry takes on the “Top Gear” track
Oct 20th 2020DUNSFOLD AERODROMETHANKS TO “Top Gear”, a British television show for motoring enthusiasts that is now a global brand, a former second-world-war airfield called Dunsfold has become one of the best known testing tracks in the world. On October 15th, however, instead of reverberating to the roar of supercars driven by the show’s anonymous…
Wanted: a new writer to cover finance
Oct 24th 2020Job ad: The Economist is looking for a writer to cover global finance and the City of London. Please send a CV, a covering letter and an unpublished 800-word article suitable for publication to financewriter@economist.com by November 7th 2020.This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the…
Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?
Oct 24th 2020TEN YEARS ago Peter Turchin, a scientist at the University of Connecticut, made a startling prediction in Nature. “The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe,” he asserted, pointing in part to the “overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees”. The subsequent…
The pandemic has exposed South-East Asia’s poor governance
Oct 24th 2020IT HARDLY FOLLOWED the script intended by Thailand’s army-backed government. In the face of growing demonstrations calling for the resignation of the prime minister, a new constitution and a reformed monarchy, on October 15th the government imposed a “severe” state of emergency, banning gatherings of more than five people. Far from being cowed,…
A hard task ahead for Jacinda Ardern’s new government
EVERYONE KNEW that the Labour Party would win. But even its leader, Jacinda Ardern, seemed startled by its landslide victory in New Zealand’s general election on October 17th. Ballots must still be counted from prisoners and expats, but so far Labour has mopped up 49% of the vote, compared with 27% for the main opposition,…
Leaders in the Middle East are watching the polls in America
RESIDENTS OF THE Middle East sometimes quip that they deserve voting rights in America. For decades, after all, American presidents have pursued wars, sanctions and other schemes in the region. The current occupant of the White House is no different. Donald Trump’s first term has been marked by conflict with Iran, one that has brought…
African governments are outsourcing their natural areas
“ALL OF THESE bulls will have AK-47 bullets in them,” says Leon Lamprecht. From his porch the manager of Zakouma National Park, in southern Chad, has quite a view. A dozen or so elephants slosh around in muddy puddles. These days they are safe. But between 2002 and 2010 some 4,000 elephants, 95% of Zakouma’s…