Songbirds can taste sugar. That may explain their ubiquity
Jul 10th 2021IMAGINE A WORLD without bird song. Yet this might have come about if it had not been for a genetic change that happened some 30m years ago, at the beginning of the evolution of the Passeri, to give songbirds their proper name.Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio…
The pandemic has widened the wealth gap. Should central banks be blamed?
Jul 10th 2021THE GLOBAL financial crisis of 2007-09 was socially divisive as well as economically destructive. It inspired a resentful backlash, exemplified by America’s Tea Party. That crisis at least had the tact to spread financial pain across the rich as well as the poor, however. The share of global wealth held by the top…
In Africa, foreign firms are often disconnected from local ones
IN 2016 DANIEL KINUTHIA started a small business in Kenya making shoe uppers for the local subsidiary of Bata, a multinational footwear company. He was short of finance and equipment, and his contract with Bata ended when covid-19 hit. But he says supplying Bata and visiting its factory taught him “what happens, how the shoe…
China is not happy about Myanmar’s coup
Jul 10th 2021A LMOST AS SOON as the tanks rolled into Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, in February, rumours began circulating on social media about how China would respond. It is a sign of its influence: China is probably the only country that could coax Myanmar’s generals to the negotiating table. The speculation was laid to rest…
The Philippines’ secret weapon against Chinese incursions
IN THE COLD WAR over the warm waters of the South China Sea, one combatant, the Philippines, has discovered a new weapon for keeping its adversaries out of the areas it claims: the voices of women. On June 30th the Philippine Coast Guard vessel Cabra spotted seven foreign craft, five of them Chinese, in waters…
Mired in crisis, Lebanon begs for foreign assistance
Jul 10th 2021LEBANON IS “days away” from a “social explosion”. So said Hassan Diab, the acting prime minister, on July 6th. The country has been mired in a crisis that has seen the value of the local currency plummet and left much of the population short of food, fuel and medicine. “I am calling on…
South Sudan’s second decade may be as troubled as its first
MOST NATIONS are born in a flurry of optimism. South Sudan was no different. Ahead of its independence day on July 9th 2011, Salva Kiir, the country’s first and only president, promised his people “a just, equitable and prosperous nation”. Unshackled from its former overlords in the north, the new state would be “united and…
Ants, acacias and shameless bribery
Jul 7th 2021AESOP’S FABLES are supposed to illustrate a moral point. If he had lived in Central America rather than Greece, though, he might have thrown in the towel at writing one entitled “The Ant and the Acacia Tree”. For, as Sabrina Amador-Vargas and Finote Gijsman of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in Panama, have…
Why convertible bonds are the asset class for the times
Jul 10th 2021IN THE MIDDLE of March last year, as the coronavirus pandemic was taking hold, a private-equity boss in America was asked how his industry would deal with the shock. The businesses owned by buyout firms would first look to raise debt wherever and however they could. Drawing equity from private-equity investors would be…