Iran vows vengeance after America kills Qassem Suleimani
The strike on Iran’s most prominent commander will have profound consequences for the regionJan 3rd 2020WASHINGTON, DCPERHAPS HE CAME to believe his own myth, the aura of invincibility he worked so hard to cultivate. Early on January 3rd General Qassem Suleimani, Iran’s most storied and feared commander, stepped off a plane from Syria or Lebanon…
Lessons from a radical education experiment in Liberia
Jan 2nd 2020IN 2016 GEORGE WERNER faced an unenviable task. Liberia’s education minister was in charge of one of the most difficult school systems in the world. More than a decade of civil war and an outbreak of Ebola in 2014 had stopped many children from going to class. Those who did learned little. Just…
The new generation trying to overhaul a once racist and sexist club
Jan 2nd 2020JOHANNESBURGWHEN ALICIA THOMPSON was a student in Johannesburg before the end of apartheid, she would often walk past the beautiful cars parked outside a club she was not allowed to join. It was not by chance that the Rand Club, the oldest private-members’ club in the city, was filled with old white men.…
An Algerian general takes over from another general
Jan 2nd 2020ALGIERSIT WAS AS if the old general running the country behind the scenes for the past eight months had not died after all. A bare week after a heart attack felled General Gaid Salah on December 23rd, another septuagenarian in a green uniform under a brocaded peaked hat harangued a hall full of…
Celeb Kept The Skeleton And Penis Of His Dead Dog As An Ornament
Orlando Bloom was so overcome with anguish that he couldn’t wish farewell to his dog when the pooch died – and went to drastic measures to keep his pet ‘alive.’ The Pirates Of The Caribbean star chose to contact a company that would strip the dead dog down to its bones, in order for it…
DNA Analysis Discloses The Identity Of 19th Century Connecticut Vampire
Remains in a Connecticut grave arranged in a manner to forestall the ‘vampire’ from ‘rising and feeding,’ has been identified as laborer John Barber. Back in 1990, kids in Griswold, Connecticut playing near a gravel pit stumbled upon a pair of skulls that were unearthed from graves in an unmarked cemetery from the 19th century.…
Woman Dies After Being Set On Fire During Surgery
A woman in Romania has perished during surgery after being set on fire, said the country’s health ministry, in a case that has aimed a spotlight on the regressing Romanian health system. The victim, who had pancreatic cancer, passed away on Monday after enduring burns to 40% of her body after surgeons utilized an electric…
Finding new physics will require a new particle collider
Jan 2nd 2020GENEVADEEP UNDER the countryside north of Geneva, straddling the Franco-Swiss border, one of the most advanced scientific machines ever built has been banging subatomic particles together for more than a decade. This device, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), accelerates beams of protons (members of a class of particle called hadrons) in opposite directions…
2019 in review: science and technology
Science past. Science present. And science yet to come.Dec 29th 2019ONE OF THE year’s most significant scientific events was not an item of news, but an anniversary: 2019 was the 150th birthday of the periodic table of the elements. How the table was put together is a classic illustration of the mixture of inspiration and…
China’s industrial policy has worked better than critics think
Jan 2nd 2020EARLY IN ITS trade dispute with China, America declared that Chinese industrial policy was a form of “economic aggression”. America’s negotiators hoped to rein it in. No such luck. The very week in December that America and China announced a mini-deal on trade, China’s president, Xi Jinping, vowed that the Chinese government would…