Heatwaves are more dangerous in cities
Pavement and plants can counter the urban heat-island effectJul 21st 2019AMERICA HAS been baking this weekend. An estimated 128m people along the East Coast and in the Midwest were affected by excessive-heat warnings on July 20th. This particular heatwave is likely to fade quickly, but such events are becoming more common.The US Global Change Research…
Alan Turing, a computing pioneer, will feature on Britain’s £50 notes
Jul 18th 2019AT THE MOMENT, Bank of England £50 notes feature James Watt, whose steam engines powered the Industrial Revolution, and his business partner Matthew Boulton. On July 15th, however, the bank announced that from 2021 fifties will instead depict Alan Turing, the man who built Colossus, the world’s first programmable, electronic, digital computer and…
Elon Musk wants to link brains directly to machines
Jul 18th 2019SAN FRANCISCOELON MUSK, perhaps the world’s most famous entrepreneur, is sometimes referred to as “the Trump of technology”—not for political reasons, but because of his habit of making, at short notice, spectacular pronouncements that stretch the bounds of credibility. On July 16th he was at it again, unveiling a new type of brain-machine…
Contrary to the fears of some, penguins and people do mix
Jul 11th 2019IN 1969 A cruise ship called MS Lindblad Explorer, the first vessel purpose-built for such a trip, and carrying 90 passengers, arrived in Antarctic waters. Since then, Antarctic tourism has increased dramatically. Nowadays, well over 35,000 visitors a season make landfall in the austral summer. Most of these landings take place on the…
Relations between Thailand’s army and king are becoming one-sided
Sep 5th 2019BANGKOKRIGID AND austere, King Chulalongkorn, the fifth monarch of Thailand’s Chakri dynasty, gazes across Bangkok’s Royal Plaza from a gleaming steed. The bronze statue is just one immovable legacy of the Thai monarchy. The mindset of the country’s armed forces is another. The king overhauled them late in the 19th century, founding a…
The army and the people face off in Algeria
Aug 29th 2019CAIROA COUNTRY THAT could not get rid of its ruler for 20 years seems unable to pick a new one. By now, many Algerians thought they would have a new president. After months of protests brought down President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in April, an election was set for July. That deadline came and went,…
A spying furore rocks Credit Suisse
Oct 3rd 2019AT NOON ON September 17th, in central Zurich, Iqbal Khan confronted a man he suspected of following him. The suspicion was correct. The incident sparked a criminal investigation, still under way, and a speedy inquiry by Homburger, a law firm, for Credit Suisse, Mr Khan’s former employer. The inquiry led on October 1st…
America is preparing to hit $7.5bn-worth of European imports with tariffs
Oct 3rd 2019WASHINGTON, DCMOST MUSEUM exhibits are beautiful—or at least old. But an exhibition in 2015 at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) included 60 cardboard boxes of documents. The point was to give a sense of the scale of two of the body’s longest and largest legal disputes, over American and European subsidies for aircraft…
IEX loses a battle but not yet the war
Sep 28th 2019TECHNOLOGY HAS robbed stock exchanges of their theatrics. Opening days are an exception. Blue-chip firms listing on Nasdaq, America’s second-biggest exchange, get an hour of exclusive advertising on its tower in Times Square. On the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the biggest, they earn the right to be deafened by a bell above…
2019 in review: Asia’s many troubles, natural and man-made
From Hindu-nationalist zealotry in India to a looming nuclear crisis over North Korea, Asia has had a worrying yearDec 23rd 2019THERE WAS no shortage of alarming moments in Asia in 2019. India and Pakistan almost went to war after a terrorist attack killed lots of Indian paramilitary police in the Indian bit of Kashmir. Bombs…