Why the demographic transition is speeding up
Dec 11th 2021AS BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENTS go, it was momentous. On November 24th India’s government declared that the country’s fertility rate had dropped to 2.0 children per woman. That is below the replacement rate—at which new births are sufficient to maintain a steady population—and puts India in the company of many richer economies. Indeed, fertility rates…
Why the dollar’s ascendancy won’t last
Dec 11th 2021THERE IS SOMETHING slightly tedious about the dollar’s rude health. It seems as inevitable as lying politicians and stormy winters. The DXY, a gauge of the dollar against half a dozen other rich-world currencies, is up by almost 7% since the start of the year. The broad dollar index, which measures the dollar…
South-East Asia is awash in drugs
OCTOBER WAS a stellar month for the Lao police. On the 27th an officer in Bokeo, a northern province, waved down a truck packed with Lao Brewery beer crates. Contained inside them were 55.6m methamphetamine pills and over 1.5 tonnes of crystal meth, a more potent version of the drug. It was Asia’s largest drug…
Can Facebook be blamed for pogroms against Rohingyas in Myanmar?
Dec 9th 2021THAT FACEBOOK was used to spread rhetoric that incited carnage in Myanmar is hardly up for debate. According to the lead author of a UN report published in 2018 the firm’s platform played a “determining role” in the violence inflicted on Rohingya Muslims by marauding Buddhists. Facebook acknowledges that it did not do…
Africans are winning top jobs at international institutions
THE WORLD’S big multilateral institutions are always keen to trumpet their global outlook. Art from far-flung corners of the world adorns their headquarters—and should a visitor ever need to consult a massive map of the world, one is rarely far away. Yet in one area their global credentials have not always matched up: leadership. Most…
Congo’s president has not kept his word
LOUIS BAHATI, a teacher at a primary school in Goma, a city in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has not been paid for more than two years. Struggling to feed his family and on strike for a second time, he took up a job painting a neighbour’s house. When a passing pupil…
How to build machines from liquid metal
Dec 8th 2021GEARS ABRADE, pistons crack, pumps clog. If engineers had their way, machines would have no moving parts at all. Alas, a sedentary lump of metal would be a paperweight, rather than a useful machine. So, perhaps just one moving component would be an acceptable compromise.Such machines are now beginning to appear. The component…
Chickpeas, a neglected crop, may soon get a high-tech makeover
Dec 8th 2021PLINY THE ELDER, a Roman administrator with a sideline in philosophy, appreciated the complexities of the chickpea. In his master work, “Naturalis Historia”, he wrote of it: “This plant presents considerable differences in reference to size, colour, form and taste.” One type, he reported, came in the shape of a ram’s head. Another,…
Bipin Rawat, India’s chief of defence staff, is killed in a helicopter crash
Dec 8th 2021IT WAS A short daytime flight, ferrying a grandee from an airbase to a nearby defence college. But the Mi-17V5 carrying General Bipin Rawat, India’s chief of defence staff, and 12 others including his wife, did not make it. The 23-year-old Russian-built helicopter slammed into a wooded slope just a few minutes short…
Bipin Rawat, India’s chief of defence staff, is killed in a helicopter crash
Dec 8th 2021IT WAS A short daytime flight, ferrying a grandee from an airbase to a nearby defence college. But the Mi-17V5 carrying General Bipin Rawat, India’s chief of defence staff, and 12 others including his wife, did not make it. The 23-year-old Russian-built helicopter slammed into a wooded slope just a few minutes short…