Algerians fear their election will be a blow to democracy
Dec 7th 2019BEIRUTTHE MOST popular candidate in Algeria’s presidential election might be a rubbish bag. On December 12th Algerians will choose a successor to Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who stepped down in April after 20 years of dictatorial rule. Or, rather, a small minority of Algeria’s 41m people will choose one. Much of the country seems unenthused…
How the Iranian regime put down economic protests
Dec 7th 2019ALMOST IMMEDIATELY after the government of Iran switched the internet back on, the stories started coming out. Near the city of Mahshahr alone, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps surrounded, shot and killed 40 to 100 protesters in a marsh, witnesses told the New York Times. Altogether, between 180 and 450 people are thought…
Arabs are losing faith in religious parties and leaders
Dec 7th 2019“NO TO RELIGION or sect,” cry the protesters in Iraq. “No to Islam, no to Christianity, revolt for the nation,” echo those in Lebanon. Across the Arab world people are turning against religious political parties and the clerics who helped bring them to power. Many appear to be giving up on Islam, too.These…
Social Media Addiction Can Lead to Divorce
In simple terms, social media is a way in which people interact and exchange messages and views over issues affecting them in life. It could be enjoyable topics, painful issues, or even just sharing information with others. People can share information by text, image, or video, privately or to a wide audience. However, for many people,…
Man Arrives Late at Own Wedding, Bride Finds Herself Another Groom
Arriving late for his own wedding proved costly for one groom, as the bride replaced him and got married to another fella from her neighborhood instead.Rather than showing up at the scheduled time of 2:30 pm, the groom and the baraat arrived at the wedding venue late in the evening, much to the resentment of…
How cetaceans got so large
Dec 14th 2019WHY ARE whales so big? One answer is simply that they can be. The size of land animals is constrained in part by their need to support themselves against the force of gravity. Marine creatures have that support provided free, by the medium they live in. Even so, what is possible is not…
Transparent solar cells could be used to glaze office blocks
Dec 14th 2019OVER THE past few decades, photovoltaic cells have gone from being exotic and expensive power-packs for satellites and similar high-end applications to quotidian generating equipment for grid-scale power stations. One area where they have not yet fulfilled their potential, though, is as local sources of electricity to keep office buildings and the like…
Tuberculosis kills more people than any other pathogenic illness
Dec 14th 2019IN 1882, WHEN Robert Koch discovered Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the microbe that causes tuberculosis, the disease caused one in seven deaths in America and Europe. Transmitted through droplets from coughs, sneezes or just talking, tuberculosis felled rich and poor alike. In the century that followed, TB (as the illness is called for short) beat…
DNA could be used to embed useful information into everyday objects
Dec 12th 2019A HARD DRIVE is a miracle of modern technology. For $50 anyone can buy a machine that can comfortably store the contents of, say, the Bodleian Library in Oxford as a series of tiny magnetic ripples on a spinning disk of cobalt alloy. But, as is often the case, natural selection knocks humanity’s…
Wealth managers are promising business-class service for the masses
Dec 18th 2019LINDA, A 54-YEAR-OLD event consultant in Los Angeles, is neither disorganised nor innumerate. Ask about her finances, however, and you lose her for two hours. She opens her current (checking) account on a mobile app, then cites a rainy-day fund at another bank. She has 14 credit cards, five mortgages, six insurance policies…