South Korea’s president wants to take politics out of prosecutions
THE IMAGERY is funereal. The slogans attached to the sides of the vans outside the Ministry of Justice are framed in black, like pictures of someone recently deceased. They read, “Democracy is dead” and “The Ministry of Justice is dead.” The dozens of funeral wreaths made of white and yellow plastic flowers that have been…
Could Australia’s government have handled China better?
Nov 26th 2020IT IS THE oldest move in the Communist Party’s playbook: to lock a country in the doghouse when it has offended the cosmic order. Yet even by China’s standards, the 14 grievances presented to the government of Australia this month are striking in scope and animosity.The charges include speaking out against Chinese activities…
The Ugandan state shoots scores of citizens dead
AMOS SSEGAWA was a 15-year-old schoolboy walking past a shop with his mother. John Kittobe was a retired accountant on a trip downtown. Sophie Kusasira was selling food in a market. All were shot dead by Ugandan security forces on November 18th and 19th, along with scores of others, in the worst violence seen in…
Donald Trump’s sanctions in the Middle East have had little effect
PERHAPS HE SHOULD have done a bit more shopping on his last trip to New York. Last autumn Gebran Bassil, the head of a Christian party in Lebanon, was his country’s foreign minister and aspired to be its next president. On a trip to America in September he visited West Point, a military college, where…
Giant prehistoric sharks left their young in nurseries
Nov 28th 2020IF SHARKS HAD bony skeletons, which preserve easily as fossils, rather than cartilaginous ones, which do not, then Otodus megalodon would probably be as famous as Tyrannosaurus rex. Even though only its teeth are routinely available for study, it has starred in at least one film, “The Meg”, released in 2018. Were it…
Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate
IN THE EARLY 1970s American women gave birth, on average, to 2.12 children each. By 2018 that figure had fallen to 1.73. Many alterations in people’s lives have been invoked to help explain this change, including the facts that women now are better educated, more likely to have jobs or run businesses, and have better…
Why it is misleading to blame financial imbalances on a saving glut
Nov 28th 2020IN 2005 BEN BERNANKE, then a governor of America’s Federal Reserve, noted a “remarkable reversal in the flows of credit” to several emerging economies, especially those in East Asia. These countries had begun to save more than they invested at home, becoming a “net supplier of funds” to the rest of the world.…
Hawala traders are being squeezed by regulators and covid-19
PACKED TRADING floors are rare these days. An exception is the Shahzada currency-exchange market in Kabul. Seven days a week hundreds of men crowd into a modest courtyard. Each has a bundle of banknotes; some have piles several feet deep. Prices—for American dollars, Iranian rials and Pakistani rupees—ring out and deals are done, on the…
Public order in Singapore has been shaken by a hand-drawn smiley face
Nov 28th 2020IN MARCH AN activist named Jolovan Wham stood outside a police station, held up a piece of cardboard with a smiley face drawn on it and got somebody to take a picture. Passers-by, if they noticed at all, might have wondered what he was doing. None reported Mr Wham and his badly drawn…
Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority has become more politically fractured
HANGING ABOVE the desk of Emmanuel Arnold, the mayor of Jaffna, are images of three Hindu deities, as well as the Buddha, Jesus and the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina. He has to respect all the religions of his city, he explains. Most Sinhalese, the country’s biggest ethnic group, are Buddhist; Tamils, who predominate…