The impact of green investors
Mar 27th 2021SUSTAINABLE INVESTING is in the firing line, as two recent events have shown. Last week, the board of Danone, a French food-maker, fired its boss, Emmanuel Faber, who had long championed the benefits of stakeholder capitalism and sustainability. Shareholders were unhappy with the firm’s languishing share price.Listen to this storyYour browser does not…
India’s ruling party finds a new way to hamstring the opposition
WHEN NARENDRA MODI, India’s prime minister, stripped Kashmir of its statehood in 2019, most Indians cheered. The Muslim-majority territory had long been troublesome. The triumphal consensus was that Kashmir’s special autonomy, which Mr Modi abolished using all kinds of constitutional tricks, had only encouraged “anti-national” attitudes, and that Kashmir had got what it deserved.Listen to…
While India and China bicker, ethnic-Chinese Indians move away
THE SUNFLOWER beauty salon on Russel Street in Kolkata has been gutted for renovation, but a row of elegant Indian ladies sits perched inside its temporary digs, an air-conditioned cargo container. The hairdressers, sisters-in-law named Winnie and Patsy, snip away while chatting to their clients in Hindi, Bengali and English—and to each other in Hakka,…
The furious debate about Rwanda and its autocratic president
RWANDA IS PREPARING to put on a show. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting begins on June 21st in Kigali, the capital. And if, despite the pandemic, foreign bigwigs come, President Paul Kagame wants them to be safe, comfortable and impressed. Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts…
Israel’s election has not broken the deadlock
Mar 25th 2021Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.As The Economist went to press, there was no clear winner of Israel’s parliamentary election, held on March 23rd. The parties expected to support a government led by Binyamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, are unlikely…
Lemmy had his ashes placed in bullets to give to his dearest friends
After he passed away, Lemmy, rock ‘n’ roll icon, had his ashes affixed into bullet casings, which were conferred later to his dearest friends.Given that “kickass” and “Lemmy” go hand in hand, the news should really come as no shock with the bullets supplying us with a reminder that the bass guitar giant was all-the-way-through…
Christian Prophets Still Claim Trump Will be Reinstated into Government
Published on Mar 24, 2021 by AnneWho would have known that religious prophets would be among the most loyal supporters of former President Trump? In fact, it has been observed that the most conservative Christians may have been the right amount of push for Trump’s presidential win back in 2016. Since Trump’s election back in…
How female choice creates new species
Mar 27th 2021NATURAL SELECTION, as propounded in Charles Darwin’s master work, “On the Origin of Species”, explains how organisms evolve and adapt to their circumstances. Paradoxically, though, it is a bit hazy on the actual subject of its title, namely how parent species spin off new, daughter species. Darwin recognised that diverse ecological niches encourage…
A route to the much-sought “new physics” may have opened
Mar 25th 2021THE STANDARD MODEL of particle physics is one of the most powerful theories in science. It is, though, incomplete. It describes a suite of fundamental particles and the forces through which they interact, but it fails to include gravity and dark matter (mysterious stuff detectable at the moment only by its gravitational pull),…
The economics of falling populations
Mar 27th 2021BUBONIC PLAGUE killed between one and two thirds of Europeans when it struck in the 14th century. Covid-19, mercifully, has exacted nothing like that toll. Its demographic impact, however, is likely to be significantly larger than the nearly 3m tragic deaths so far attributed to the coronavirus thanks to an associated, worldwide baby…