Tomorrow’s soldiers will have their reality augmented
Sep 22nd 2021SUCCESS OR failure in war often hinges on how much soldiers know about the enemy and the areas in which it operates. Tactical intelligence of all sorts helps. Locations of culverts where bombs may lie hidden. Spots from which snipers have scored kills. Water sources likely to have been polluted by agricultural runoff…
Religious belief really does seem to draw the sting of poverty
Sep 22nd 2021″RELIGION IS the sigh of the oppressed creature…it is the opium of the people.” So wrote Karl Marx in 1844. The idea—not unique to Marx—was that by promising rewards in the next life, religion helps the poor bear their lot in this one.A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of…
Natural-gas prices are spiking around the world
Sep 21st 2021ACROSS THE world, a natural-gas shortage is starting to bite. Prices of power in Germany and France have soared by around 40% in the past two weeks. In many countries, including Britain and Spain, governments are rushing through emergency measures to protect consumers. Factories are being temporarily switched off, from aluminium smelters in…
Natural gas prices are spiking around the world
Sep 21st 2021ACROSS THE world, a natural-gas shortage is starting to bite. Prices of power in Germany and France have soared by around 40% in the past two weeks. In many countries, including Britain and Spain, governments are rushing through emergency measures to protect consumers. Factories are being temporarily switched off, from aluminium smelters in…
What are the systemic risks of an Evergrande collapse?
CHINA’S FINANCIAL authorities are honing a new skill: the “marketised default”—or an orderly market exit and well-managed restructuring for troubled companies. The term has surfaced in government documents and local media as of late as regulators become adept at managing larger, more frequent and highly complex defaults. They have had some successes. Evergrande, a massive…
China throws a wrench into a transpacific trade pact
China’s request to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (cptpp) landed on the desk of Damien O’Connor, trade minister of New Zealand, on September 16th. The location was a fitting nod to the deal’s history. In 1999 a meeting between the trade ministers of two small export powerhouses, New Zealand and Singapore,…
How World Bank leaders put pressure on staff to alter a global index
THE WORLD BANK’S Doing Business rankings, which are followed closely by leaders in China, India and elsewhere, are supposed to gauge how easy it is to do business in 190 countries. But the rankings have instead become a revealing gauge of how the World Bank itself does business under political pressure. In so doing, they…
Middle Eastern foes are giving diplomacy a shot
Sep 18th 2021DUBAI AND ISTANBULIT WAS A surprising choice for a summer holiday. On August 18th Tahnoon bin Zayed, the national-security adviser of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), turned up in Ankara to meet Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey. The countries have been at odds for years over Mr Erdogan’s support for Islamist…
Is China already the world’s most dominant economy?
IN 2010, WHEN President Barack Obama welcomed his Chinese counterpart to a summit in Washington, DC, he greeted him with a handshake and a swift, shallow dip of the head. The image of America’s president bowing before China made an arresting cover photo for the book “Eclipse”, published the following year. The book, written by…
South Asia’s non-binary communities worry about losing their identity
Sep 18th 2021IN MARCH, WHEN Tashnuva Anan Shishir appeared on Bangladeshi television screens, she created history as the country’s first transgender news anchor. A few weeks later a madrassa exclusively for khwaja saras opened in Pakistan. In India “Phirki”, a television show that ran for 225 episodes last year, portrayed in unprecedented detail the lives…