The oldest burial in Africa
May 6th 2021THESE ARE THE are the remains of an infant Homo sapiens, nicknamed Mtoto by their discoverers, found buried in Panga ya Saidi, a complex of caves near Mombasa, Kenya, in 2013. They are 78,000 years old, making them the most ancient human burial yet unearthed in Africa. The lefthand group of bones are…
Why foreign banks’ forays on Wall Street have gone wrong—again
May 8th 2021THE IMPLOSION of Archegos Capital, a New York-based investment firm, in April splashed egg on many faces. Banks that had lent it vast sums to bet on volatile stocks have revealed over $10bn in related losses in recent weeks. America’s leading investment banks, barring Morgan Stanley, were largely absent from the big casualties,…
The broader lesson from booming copper prices
May 8th 2021BLESSED ARE the cheesemakers. A revival in restaurant visits in America has fed demand for one of the more obscure financial instruments—cheese futures. The number of contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange surged last month. It is not only cheese that has melted up. A year-long rally in broader commodity markets shows…
Australia’s debate about China is becoming hot, angry and shrill
May 6th 2021CHINA’S COMMUNIST PARTY has given Australians plenty to be dismayed about, from its vituperative anger when the Dalai Lama visits, to buying off Australian politicians, to trying to influence academic research at Australia’s universities. China is not best pleased, either. In an extraordinary outpouring of bile last year, the Chinese embassy in Canberra…
Water in Bangladesh is either unhealthy or pricey
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Foreign workers in Qatar get some basic rights
May 8th 2021IN MOST COUNTRIES a worker’s best bargaining tool is the ability to say: “Take this job and shove it.” Knowing staff can go elsewhere gives employers an incentive to treat them well. But foreign workers in Qatar have long lacked this basic freedom. Under the emirate’s kafala system, their visas were linked to…
Houthi rebels look to take Marib, prolonging Yemen’s war
May 8th 2021JUST TWO years ago, from the mountains to the east, forces loyal to the Yemeni government could see the capital, Sana’a. It was the closest they had got to the city since the Houthis, a group of Shia rebels, overran it in 2014. But now the government’s forces are on the defensive. They…
Satellite-navigation systems such as GPS are at risk of jamming
May 5th 2021THE PHRASE “critical infrastructure” conjures up solidly earthbound images: road and rail networks, water and sewage pipes, electricity grids, the internet, and so on. Such stuff is so wound into the warp and weft of life that it is simultaneously both essential and taken for granted. One piece of infrastructure which has become…
Roadkill provide a novel way to sample an area’s animals
It could also show the places where wildlife is most at risk from carsMay 5th 2021TRAFFIC AND wildlife do not mix. Anyone who keeps an eye on the verges while driving along a country road knows that. But such carnage does bring zoologists an opportunity. Counting roadkills is a rough and ready way of sampling…
Why sending criminals to prison might be good for their kids
A new study causes controversyMay 5th 2021IN A FORTHCOMING paper in the American Economic Review, one of the discipline’s most prestigious journals, three economists conclude that “[p]arental incarceration has beneficial effects on some important outcomes for children.” Unsurprisingly the study has provoked outrage from keyboard warriors. Some are uncomfortable with the very notion that prison…