How to toilet train your cow
Sep 15th 2021PUPPIES CAN be taught. So can human children, though not for the first couple of years. Now, in the hope of fighting climate change, Dr Jan Langbein, of the Fredrich-Loweffler-Institut in Germany, and his colleagues hope they can train cows to use the toilet, too.Cow urine contains urea, a nitrogen-rich compound that, when…
Why carnivores host diseases that jump to humans
Sep 15th 2021IN NOVEMBER 2020, at the height of the second covid-19 wave in Europe, the Danish government revealed that a new strain of the virus had been found in farmed mink. Officials worried that the new strain could become widespread in humans, where it might prove deadlier or more resistant to vaccines. For Clare…
China takes on Delta and its property developers at the same time
FOR SUCH a small place, Singapore has exercised an outsized influence on China’s economy. The city-state proved to reformers in China that a government could open up the economy without losing control. “Society in Singapore is quite orderly,” said Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader, in 1992. “They managed things very strictly. We ought to use…
Australia is getting nuclear subs, with American and British help
Sep 15th 2021ONLY SIX countries in the world—America, Britain, China, France, India and Russia—currently operate nuclear-powered submarines. Australia may become the unlikely seventh. In a statement and joint televised appearance on September 15th, Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison, America, Britain and Australia’s leaders, announced what they described as an “enhanced trilateral security partnership”,…
The arms race on the Korean peninsula is intensifying
OBSERVERS OF MILITARY developments on the Korean peninsula were given whiplash on September 15th. Around lunchtime in Seoul, news broke that North Korea had fired two ballistic missiles off its east coast. Shortly afterwards the South Korean government announced that Moon Jae-in, the president, had observed the successful test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, the…
America’s consumer-price inflation stays above 5% in August
Sep 14th 2021IT IS HARD to overstate the time that goes into calculating a consumer-price index. In America statisticians survey nearly 10,000 people every quarter, construct a sample of some 80,000 things they buy, and then monitor their prices by ringing up thousands of shops, restaurants and offices. So the hard-working boffins might be miffed…
America’s consumer-price inflation stays above 5% in August
Sep 14th 2021IT IS HARD to overstate the time that goes into calculating a consumer-price index. In America statisticians survey nearly 10,000 people every quarter, construct a sample of some 80,000 things they buy, and then monitor their prices by ringing up thousands of shops, restaurants and offices. So the hard-working boffins might be miffed…