Water in Bangladesh is either unhealthy or pricey
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Foreign workers in Qatar get some basic rights
May 8th 2021IN MOST COUNTRIES a worker’s best bargaining tool is the ability to say: “Take this job and shove it.” Knowing staff can go elsewhere gives employers an incentive to treat them well. But foreign workers in Qatar have long lacked this basic freedom. Under the emirate’s kafala system, their visas were linked to…
Houthi rebels look to take Marib, prolonging Yemen’s war
May 8th 2021JUST TWO years ago, from the mountains to the east, forces loyal to the Yemeni government could see the capital, Sana’a. It was the closest they had got to the city since the Houthis, a group of Shia rebels, overran it in 2014. But now the government’s forces are on the defensive. They…
Satellite-navigation systems such as GPS are at risk of jamming
May 5th 2021THE PHRASE “critical infrastructure” conjures up solidly earthbound images: road and rail networks, water and sewage pipes, electricity grids, the internet, and so on. Such stuff is so wound into the warp and weft of life that it is simultaneously both essential and taken for granted. One piece of infrastructure which has become…
Roadkill provide a novel way to sample an area’s animals
It could also show the places where wildlife is most at risk from carsMay 5th 2021TRAFFIC AND wildlife do not mix. Anyone who keeps an eye on the verges while driving along a country road knows that. But such carnage does bring zoologists an opportunity. Counting roadkills is a rough and ready way of sampling…
Why sending criminals to prison might be good for their kids
A new study causes controversyMay 5th 2021IN A FORTHCOMING paper in the American Economic Review, one of the discipline’s most prestigious journals, three economists conclude that “[p]arental incarceration has beneficial effects on some important outcomes for children.” Unsurprisingly the study has provoked outrage from keyboard warriors. Some are uncomfortable with the very notion that prison…
Private equity is losing its mystique
May 5th 2021THERE HAS long been an element of the gentlemen’s club about the private-equity (PE) industry. It is still predominantly male. It has a buccaneering history filled with mystique. It cherishes discretion. And its fees are exorbitant compared with the services it provides. If anything covid-19 has made it even more exclusive. Despite what…
A blood test may help the diagnosis and treatment of depression
Snippets of RNA are the giveawaysMay 3rd 2021MAJOR DEPRESSION is a serious illness, but also an elusive one. It wrecks lives and may drive people to suicide. It sometimes, though not always, alternates with periods of mania in a condition called bipolar disorder. And it is disturbingly common. Reliable figures are hard to come by,…
Will going digital transform the yuan’s status at home and abroad?
May 3rd 2021WITH A FEW taps on her phone, Lu Qingqing, a 24-year-old office worker, leapt into the monetary future. She was one of 50,000 people in the city of Shenzhen selected late last year for a trial of China’s digital currency, officially called eCNY. She downloaded an app, received a gift of 200 yuan…
India’s second wave of covid-19 feels nothing like its first
WE ARE AMID an ocean of human suffering but cannot see it. Having returned abruptly to the kind of isolation we hoped we had put behind us months ago, my wife, our two little boys and I are staying put in our nice flat, in a leafy “colony” near the centre of Delhi. Our new…