The effects of a warmer world are visible in animals’ bodies
Sep 11th 2021FOR HUMANS, adapting to climate change will mostly be a matter of technology. More air conditioning, better-designed houses and bigger flood defences may help ameliorate the effects of a warmer world. Animals will have to rely on changing their bodies or their behaviour. In a paper published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution,…
Why scientists are deliberately infecting volunteers with covid-19
Sep 11th 2021IF YOU ARE going to catch covid-19, jokes Jacob Hopkins, a university student, the safest place to do it is in a hospital. So in March Mr Hopkins lay down on a bed in the Royal Free Hospital in London while doctors placed droplets of liquid carrying the SARS-CoV-2 virus into his nose.…
How to turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs
Sep 11th 2021ECONOMISTS DO NOT agree on much, but they do almost all think that a shortage of housing is a big drag on the economy. Zoning laws and conservation rules have proliferated since the 1960s, with diktats on everything from the number of car-parking spaces to how pitched a roof must be. These have…
Do physical assets offer investors refuge from inflation?
Sep 11th 2021LIKE PENGUINS and the melting ice cap, investors’ natural habitat is changing. Inflation is typically bad news for mainstream assets such as stocks and bonds, because it reduces the present value of future earnings and coupons. Yet this is where, after a decade of slow growth and sluggish inflation, investors have parked much…
India’s caste system remains entrenched, 75 years after independence
Sep 11th 2021THE EVIL of India’s caste practice is almost as old as the gods, and is the most noxious and evolved example today of how humans attempt to impose superiority and suffering on others by virtue of their birth. Hindu texts speak of four tiers, or varnas, making up a broader caste pyramid in…
Suga Yoshihide’s resignation heralds an era of uncertainty for Japan
Sep 11th 2021SUGA YOSHIHIDE, Japan’s prime minister, had been plotting for his re-election as late as September 2nd. The next day, he emerged from a meeting with the other leaders of his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) looking crestfallen. With his approval ratings wallowing and his support inside the party hollowing, he declared that he would…
Qatar’s unique role in Afghanistan
IT TAKES AN hour to drive to the shimmering towers of Doha from the sun-baked tarmac of Al-Udeid air base. For America, though, the journey took eight years. In 2013 the Taliban set up a diplomatic mission in the Qatari capital. Opened with America’s consent, the office was meant to launch a peace process that…
Iranians worry that their new government is inept
Sep 11th 2021IT WAS FITTING that Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s new president, spent the first working day of his government visiting a cemetery, since he had helped orchestrate the mass execution of political prisoners in the 1980s. The setting also fitted the country’s glum mood. Since Mr Raisi’s victory in a rigged election on June 18th,…
How the kakapo beat the genetic odds
Sep 8th 2021ISLAND-DWELLING flightless birds suffer when they meet humans. After arriving on New Zealand around 700 years ago, the Maori quickly discovered that the kakapo—a type of flightless parrot—was delicious and easy to catch. Things got worse once Europeans came. By 1995 there was just one kakapo left on the mainland, and 50 on…
The economy that covid-19 could not stop
Sep 2nd 2021HAVING IMPRESSED the world by taming the virus last year, Vietnam is now in the middle of its worst outbreak of covid-19 by far. Parts of the country are in strict lockdown and a swathe of factories, from those making shoes for Nike to those producing smartphones for Samsung, have either slowed or…