Ivory Coast’s economy is booming, but its politics look wobbly
Sep 26th 2019ABIDJANFEW WEST AFRICAN countries excite investors quite as much as Ivory Coast. Its economy, which is forecast to expand by more than 7% this year and next, is among the fastest growing in Africa. Its efforts to cut red tape and make it easier to start a company or get loans have won…
Muhammad Ali, a former actor living abroad, is riling up Egyptians
Sep 26th 2019CAIROTHE EGYPTIAN police seemed caught off-guard by the protests on September 20th. That was understandable, given that almost no one had dared protest in years, and it was a Friday night, the start of the football season, when arch-rivals Zamalek and Al Ahly were playing each other. The authorities did not expect Egyptians…
How to Make Your Instagram Outstanding Fast and Easily
Whether you are trying to build social proof for business or for personal influence, your Instagram account is essential to your success. The process of developing it is also crucial. You can only defeat the competition if you put in the extra work.Fortunately for you, we have 10 simple tips that will help you make…
Is Instagram The Most Trendy Social Media Platform?
Instagram is quite possibly the leading social media platform out there. Part of the reason is its diverse and vast audience— from teenagers to adults and business owners to influencers, almost everyone with an internet connection uses Instagram. People and businesses, as a matter of fact, love to share their activities, either in the form…
New ways to make vertical farming stack up
Aug 31st 2019INVERGOWRIEFROM THE outside it looks like a tall, metal-clad barn. But step in, through a large airlock designed to keep out the bugs, and a kaleidoscopic scene emerges. A central aisle is flanked by two pairs of towers. Each tower is stacked with a dozen or so trays on which are growing strawberries,…
Cerebral organoids are becoming more brainlike
Aug 29th 2019AT WHAT POINT does a mass of nerve cells growing in a laboratory Petri dish become a brain? That question was first raised seriously in 2013 by the work of Madeline Lancaster, a developmental biologist at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, Britain. That year Dr Lancaster and her…
Gravitational astronomy proves its maturity
Aug 22nd 2019ON AUGUST 14TH, just after 9pm Universal Time, a ripple of gravitational waves reached Earth. Until a few years ago no one would have noticed such an event. But 2015 saw the reopening, after an upgrade, of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of detectors in Washington state and Louisiana. These…
Leopard seals share their suppers
Aug 17th 2019LEOPARD SEALS resemble their terrestrial namesakes in two ways. They have polka-dot pelts. And they are powerful, generally solitary carnivores that are quite capable of killing a human being if they so choose—as has indeed happened once, in 2003, when a British marine biologist was the victim.Curiously, though, there have also been reports…
Is the board overseeing Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy unconstitutional?
Oct 19th 2019WASHINGTON, DC“ARE YOU and your client here just to defend the integrity of the Constitution?” asked Samuel Alito, an associate justice of the America’s Supreme Court, on October 15th. “Or would one be excessively cynical to think that something else is involved here, involving money?” The court had heard arguments from Donald Verrilli,…
Britain’s equity market is shrinking
Oct 17th 2019A FEW MONTHS ago Trian, a hedge fund, revealed that it had built a 6% stake in Ferguson, a London-listed company that supplies the building trade. Trian is run by Nelson Peltz, who has a long history as the sort of activist investor who buys stakes in firms and then uses his influence…