Will an F1 race mark the end of Saudi Arabia’s ban on alcohol?
Dec 4th 2021Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. THIS YEAR the drivers of Formula 1 (F1) made a change: instead of celebrating after a race by spraying each other with champagne, they switched to sparkling wine. Not to be frugal—F1 is not that…
Omicron latest: China’s economy looks especially vulnerable to the spread of Omicron
Dec 1st 2021FacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppIF THERE IS one lesson the covid-19 pandemic has taught the world, it is that acting early pays off. So when news emerged on November 25th in South Africa of a worrying new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, countries immediately began scrambling to tighten the rules on international travel. By November 29th suspected…
How to generate better, cheaper, more abundant random numbers
Dec 1st 2021RANDOMNESS IS A valuable commodity. Computer models of complex systems ranging from the weather to the stockmarket are voracious consumers of random numbers. Cryptography, too, relies heavily on random numbers for the generation of unbreakable keys. Better, cheaper ways of generating and handling such numbers are therefore always welcome. And doing just that…
The explosion in stablecoins revives a debate around “free banking”
Dec 4th 2021THE FAST-MOVING frontier of financial innovation can seem an intimidating place. Concepts such as decentralisation, distributed ledgers and symmetric encryption can befuddle the outsider. Scholars and regulators may therefore have been relieved to spot parallels between the burgeoning world of stablecoins—digital tokens that are pegged to an existing currency or commodity—and America’s free-banking…
Managing the world’s biggest sovereign-wealth fund is about to get complicated
NICOLAI TANGEN brings an unusual set of skills to the task of leading the world’s largest sovereign-wealth fund. In addition to a career in finance, the head of Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which oversees Norway’s oil fund of $1.4trn, holds degrees in art history, economics and social psychology. Mr Tangen’s public profile and his…
Hybrid power will make helicopters safer and more productive
Dec 1st 2021SCORES OF ELECTRICALLY powered vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft are under development, heralding a future where air-taxis whisk people from one place to another. Provided their batteries are charged up using renewable power, these new flying machines will also travel in a green, planet-saving way. They therefore appear to be the nemeses…
Unbreakable phone screens could be made with a new material
Dec 1st 2021SINCE 2006, when Corning, an American glassmaker, developed Gorilla Glass to give Apple’s first iPhone a scratch-resistance screen, many other types of toughened glass have appeared for use in handsets. But as rugged as they are, people keep cracking and breaking them. Jingwei Hou thinks he has found a way to prevent that.Dr…
China’s economy looks especially vulnerable to the spread of Omicron
JACK MA, THE founder of China’s giant e-commerce platform, Alibaba, started his first web company after a visit to America in 1995. Cao Dewang, the boss of Fuyao Glass, a Chinese company made famous by the documentary “American Factory”, ventured into manufacturing after a trip to the Ford Motor Museum in Michigan. (The museum’s significance…
As nuclear talks resume, Iran is rattled by protests over water
THE ATMOSPHERE in Vienna is suitably grim. On November 29th diplomats gathered for yet more negotiations meant to salvage the nuclear deal that Iran signed with six world powers in 2015, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The two main parties to the talks, America and Iran, are not talking directly (at…
Omicron latest: why the variant is not a punishment for vaccine inequity
Nov 29th 2021FacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppIF THERE IS one lesson the covid-19 pandemic has taught the world, it is that acting early pays off. So when news emerged on November 25th in South Africa of a worrying new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, countries immediately began scrambling to tighten the rules on international travel. By November 29th suspected…