Abe Shinzo still looms large over Japan
The menus during President Joe Biden’s visit to Tokyo this week reflected the tastes of Japan’s prime minister, Kishida Fumio, whose family is from Hiroshima. There were Hiroshima beef fillets, Hiroshima vegetables and Hiroshima lemon sodas. The agenda, however, owed more to Abe Shinzo, a former prime minister who led the country from 2012 to…
The UAE’s new sheikh may jolt both succession and federation
Transitions do not get much easier. On May 13th the United Arab Emirates (uae) announced the death of its president, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Though he had held the job since 2004, a stroke in 2014 pushed him largely out of the public eye. Running the country fell to his half-brother, Muhammad bin Zayed,…
How e-commerce looks different in Africa
May 26th 2022 | Tatu CityTo the untrained eye Wakulima market in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, looks like pandemonium. Scores of workers push handcarts laden with fruit and vegetables, jostling past heaving crowds. Buyers and sellers loudly debate the quality of a papaya or the merits of an onion. It seems chaotic. But not to James.…
Business
Glencore, a Swiss-based commodities company, resolved various long-standing corruption allegations against it. In America it pleaded guilty to wide-ranging graft that the Justice Department described as “staggering”, involving hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to officials in numerous countries, and to running a scheme to manipulate oil prices. In Britain it indicated it would…
Politics
An 18-year-old gunman murdered 19 young children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas. After a stand-off with law-enforcement officers he was shot dead by a border-patrol agent. Parents were asked to provide dna samples to help identify the children’s bodies. The perpetrator had a semi-automatic rifle and wore body armour, as did…
Follow These Tips If You Want to Quickly Recover From A Car Crash
No one ever expects to be in a car crash, but it happens all the time. If you find yourself in this situation, it is important to know how to recover and quickly get back on your feet. Depending on the severity of the crash, it may take some time for you to recover. This…
The spread of monkeypox
Since britain reported a case of monkeypox on May 7th, more than 300 further instances have been noted across the world. The disease, which is usually confined to Africa, is now present in at least 17 countries in Europe and five other non-African ones (see map). The symptoms (fever, exhaustion and pustules which spread across…
Ukraine’s agricultural research is threatened by the war
It was a moment of horror. In a video posted on the internet on May 14th Sergey Avramenko, a researcher at the National Gene Bank of Plants of Ukraine, the world’s tenth-largest such facility, ran his fingers through bags of charred seeds. “Everything turned to ashes,” he grieved. It later emerged that only an outpost…
Wall Street’s housing grab continues
Spring weather often lures a stampede of homebuyers. Blossoming flowers and gushing sunlight after the winter slog make homes look more inviting. Not this year, though. Across the rich world house-hunters perturbed by high prices and rising rates are holding fire on mortgage applications. In America new home sales have crashed to two-year lows. One…
How economic interdependence fosters alliances and democracy
On his whirlwind tour of Asia, concluded on May 24th, President Joe Biden conducted himself with the awkward urgency of a man trying to correct a costly error. China may be reeling, but the ambivalent reaction, outside rich democracies, to America’s late search for solidarity reveals how Washington’s global influence has faded relative to Beijing’s.…