Coelacanths live for as long as people
Jun 19th 2021ON DECEMBER 23rd 1938 Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a curator at the East London Museum, in South Africa, dropped by her local fish market. While there, she spotted the most beautiful fish she had ever seen. It was pale mauve, nearly two metres long, and had silvery markings. Though she had no inkling at the…
A midsummer bug hunt
Jun 19th 2021DEPENDING ON WHERE you live, June 21st is either the summer or the winter solstice. For some, this is a moment of celebration, accompanied by strange rituals. And among the celebrants are members of the International Metagenomics and Metadesign of Subways and Urban Biomes Consortium (MetaSUB). If, in Bogotá, Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London,…
Is the pandemic accelerating automation? Don’t be so sure
Jun 19th 2021AS ECONOMIES REOPEN, labour shortages are still worsening. In America the number of unfilled vacancies, at 9.3m, has never been so high. Job postings in Canada are 20% above pre-pandemic levels. Even in Europe, slower out of the post-lockdown gates, a growing number of employers complain of how hard it is to find…
America’s high-yield debt is on ever-shakier foundations
Jun 19th 2021INVESTORS IN COMPANIES issuing high-yield or “junk” debt have had a relatively benign pandemic. Usually such highly leveraged borrowers are stung by economic hardship. During the global financial crisis over a decade ago around a seventh of such firms in America defaulted on their debt in one year. Yet according to Moody’s, a…
Climate change is remaking South Asia’s monsoon
Jun 19th 2021SINCE ARRIVING two days late at its usual landing point at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala near India’s southern tip, South Asia’s annual summer monsoon has made up for lost time. Tearing north, the south-westerly, rain-bearing winds covered four-fifths of the country in the first two weeks of June, reaching even India’s north-easternmost states. The…
Young men in South Korea feel victimised by feminism
WAS IT MERELY an innocent sausage? Last month a poster promoting camping kit sold by GS25, a chain of shops in South Korea, included an illustration of two fingers reaching out to grasp a steaming banger. Angry young men complained. They said the detail, which resembled an emoji that depicts a hand making a pinching…
Africa is blasting its way into the space race
Jun 19th 2021IN THE HOURS after Hurricane Katrina slammed into America in 2005, destroying large parts of New Orleans, the people co-ordinating the disaster response urgently needed satellite pictures to show them what they were facing. The first images to come in were not from the constellations launched by NASA or the space agencies of…
Naftali Bennett’s new Israeli government has its work cut out
WHEN ISRAEL’S new government, led by Naftali Bennett, holds its first cabinet meeting on June 20th, it is expected to appoint an independent commission of inquiry into the disaster at Mount Meron, where 45 people were crushed to death at a religious pilgrimage in April. Mr Bennett’s predecessor, Binyamin Netanyahu, shunned such commissions during his…