Anal oxygen administration may save lives
Inspired by fish, researchers are planning oxygen enemasMay 14th 2021FISH BREATHE through their gills. That much is well-known. But some fish are also able to breathe through their bottoms. The guts of vertebrates are well supplied with blood vessels, to enable them to absorb digested food. But this means they can also, in principle, absorb…
Taiwan’s tribes have their day in court (and lose)
May 15th 2021THERE ARE many unwritten rules for hunting in Taiwan. For members of the Bunun tribe, a community of indigenous people who live among the island’s mountains, flatulence and sneezing are bad omens (in addition to scaring off prey). Male deer are fair game, but females, who might be pregnant, are left in peace.…
A worrying new wave of covid-19 is hitting South-East Asia
ON APRIL 25TH Bloomberg ranked Singapore as the world’s best country in which to weather the pandemic, in part because it had almost no local transmission. Two days later a 46-year-old nurse at Tan Tock Seng Hospital tested positive for the virus, revealing a cluster of dozens of infections. Within a week the government identified…
Why camel traders are getting the hump
IN 1906 LORENZ HAGENBECK received a request from the German government to supply its colonial army in South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia) with 1,000 camels. The animal trader sought out the main force in the industry: Somalis. But upon seeing how they haggled, Hagenback was confounded, “for I had not mastered the secret finger-language used in…
Israel and Hamas move closer to war
WHAT BEGAN last month as a dispute over metal barricades in Jerusalem has now, in the surreal logic of the Holy Land, brought Israel and Gaza to the brink of war. Since May 10th Palestinian militants in the territory have fired more than 1,600 rockets at Israel, which in turn has carried out hundreds of…
The bull case for beaten-up Britain
May 15th 2021ONE OF THE vices of Britons is a penchant for mourning the country’s decline. To be cured of this, Britain would probably need a different history. It was the first industrial nation. From that starting-point, its influence could only ever go in one direction: downwards. There is a large literature blaming long-term decline…
What could a new system for taxing multinationals look like?
May 13th 2021WASHINGTON, DCFOR YEARS governments have grumbled, simmered and raged as multinational companies have shifted profits out of tax collectors’ grasp and into low-tax havens. The OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, estimated in 2015 that avoidance robs public coffers of $100bn-240bn, or 4-10% of global corporation-tax revenues a year. Now the fiscal…
South Korea is pushing America for new talks with the North
TO THE CASUAL reader, the biggest danger in perusing “With the Century” may be the book’s propensity to induce a deep sleep. Its author, Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s founding dictator, takes eight volumes and nearly 3,500 pages to recount his heroic revolutionary exploits. Whether the topic is glorious campaigns against the Japanese, earnest conversations…
India’s covid-19 crisis is devastating its most desperate people
PYE DOGS and circling scavengers gave the first clue. When villagers approached the riverbank, the stench confirmed the horror. By the time authorities collected and buried all the bodies on May 11th, the count had risen to 71. And this was at just one bend in the sacred Ganges, by the village of Chausa on…
Israel bombards Gaza as it confronts mob violence at home
Things continue to escalate in the Holy LandFOR THE past four days, the world has anxiously watched Israel’s border with Gaza, where, on the Israeli side, infantry and armoured battalions have been massing. Palestinian militants in Gaza have launched hundreds of rockets at Israel, which has responded with hundreds of air strikes. Scores of people…