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…
Strenuous exercise is linked to motor-neuron disease
Jun 16th 2021ILLNESSES ARE often named after those who discovered them. An exception is a motor-neuron disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is widely known as Lou Gehrig’s disease after a famous baseball player of the 1920s, who died of it. As the name of its class suggests, ALS kills motor neurons—the cells through…
Betelgeuse’s great dimming
Jun 16th 2021These images show Betelgeuse, a star that marks one of Orion’s shoulders, as it was in January and December of 2019 and January and March of 2020. They were assembled from data collected in those months by the Very Large Telescope, an array of four instruments in northern Chile. Between November 2019 and…
The methods and menace of the new bank robbers
Jun 16th 2021TALK TO BANKERS and some will tell you that when it comes to cyber-crime, they are second only to the military in terms of the strength of their defences. And yet trawl the dark web, as Intel 471, an intelligence firm, did on behalf of The Economist in May, and it is obvious…
Ethiopia’s flawed elections risk dividing the country further
Jun 16th 2021KHALID JEMAL, a merchant from the western Ethiopian town of Agaro, is no stranger to elections. The poll on June 21st will be his fourth as an opposition candidate—and, barring divine intervention, his fourth successive defeat. Since 2010, when the ruling party and its allies won all but two parliamentary seats, Khalid has…
A life-saving new drug for covid-19 is found
Jun 16th 2021AN ANTIBODY THERAPY from Regeneron, a firm in upstate New York, improves the survival of patients with covid-19 and offers renewed hope for the treatment of those most seriously ill with the disease. A study in British hospitals found that Regen-Cov saved the lives of many of those unable to make their own…
Business is booming as regulators relax drone laws
Jun 14th 2021ALTHOUGH DRONES, or autonomous aerial vehicles (UAVs) as they are also known, were originally developed for military target practice and surveillance, the civilian versions that have emerged over the past decade have created a thriving new industry. Commercial UAVs, especially the hovering type, are now used for jobs ranging from inspecting power lines,…
Uneven vaccination rates are creating a new economic divide
IN THE 1970S the fortunes of the world economy, in all its infinite variety and unfathomable complexity, seemed to turn on one solitary product: oil. Exported by a narrow clique of countries, this vital input was hostage to ferocious political forces. Today the world’s economic prospects similarly depend on another all-important input, vaccines, which are…
Naftali Bennett pushes Binyamin Netanyahu out of power in Israel
ISRAEL HAS little in the form of ceremonies or protocols for the transition of power—and what little it has was largely forgotten, as the country has not seen a change of power in over 12 years. So minutes after its new government won a confidence vote on June 13th, the outgoing prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu,…
Mauritania may be changing for the better
“FIRST I WILL buy food,” says Fatou, smiling as she receives 2,000 ouguiya ($55) in crisp notes. She needs the help. Her lodgings, a few small rooms in a seedy quarter of Nouakchott, Mauritania’s capital, are home to her elderly mother, her sister and five children. The cash is part of a government effort, backed…