The first computer chip with a trillion transistors
Dec 7th 2019SILICON CHIPS have lonely lives. They are born together, often as tens of thousands of identical siblings a few millimetres across, on a single wafer the size of an old-fashioned vinyl record. They are then broken from their natal wafers like squares of chocolate from a bar, and packaged individually in plastic and…
Why are people attracted to 50:50 probabilities?
Dec 12th 2019BARACK OBAMA’S intelligence officers told him, variously, that there was a probability of between 30% and 95% that Osama bin Laden was in the Abbottabad compound in Pakistan in April 2011. The president was having none of it. “This is 50:50,” he said. “Look guys, this is a flip of the coin.” That…
A Nordic pioneer of negative interest rates gets cold feet
Dec 12th 2019THE WORLD’S oldest central bank, Sweden’s Riksbank, is a trendsetter. In July 2009, in the depths of the financial crisis, it was the first central bank to cut interest rates below zero. It set the global record, of minus 1.25%, for the lowest interest rate on deposits parked with it by domestic banks.…
Why it is hard for foreign investors to be bullish on South Africa
Dec 12th 2019THE FIRST question to consider in any reckoning of South Africa is whether you can get through it without a story about Nelson Mandela. You can’t, of course. So here is one that seems apposite. Mandela and his fellow prisoners on Robben Island were allowed one book other than the Bible. They opted…
The revised USMCA pleases both Democrats and Donald Trump
Dec 12th 2019WASHINGTON, DCUNION LEADERS and Democratic lawmakers were cool at first towards the USMCA, a replacement for the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which was signed by American, Canadian and Mexican trade negotiators over a year ago. But on December 10th, after months of further talks, they swung behind a reworked version.…
Aung San Suu Kyi has gone from hero to villain
Dec 12th 2019THE COMMITTEE that awarded the Nobel peace prize to Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991 described her as “an important symbol in the struggle against oppression” and an inspiration to those “striving to attain democracy, human rights and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means”. But to the crowd of protesters who gathered outside the…
China’s successful repression in Tibet provides a model for Xinjiang
A little-remarked anniversary is a reminder of China’s victory against dissentDec 10th 2019IN AN ANNUAL ritual, hardy groups of activists gathered outside Chinese embassies around the world to mark International Human Rights Day on December 10th. They protested about many Chinese abuses: the encroachment on the freedoms promised Hong Kong; the persecution of the mostly…
India’s new citizenship law outrages Muslims
Dec 12th 2019NEW DELHIWHEN AMIT SHAH, India’s home minister, proposed his bill in parliament on December 9th, he framed it as an act of mercy. Henceforth, he promised, people who have fled persecution in neighbouring countries and taken refuge in India would be granted quicker access to citizenship. His Citizenship (Amendment) Bill would right the…
Aung San Suu Kyi defends Myanmar at the ICJ in The Hague
Unless she distances herself from the army, her global reputation may be ruinedDec 8th 2019SHE DID not have to do it. Indeed, when Aung San Suu Kyi announced that she would personally be defending Myanmar against accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague this week, it was an enormous…
The wheels of justice are finally turning in South Africa
Dec 12th 2019PRETORIASO BAD WAS corruption under Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president from 2009 to 2018, that people referred to it as “state capture”. Cyril Ramaphosa, Mr Zuma’s successor, thinks it cost the country 1trn rand ($95bn) in looted funds and lost GDP. And that is just the tangible expense. State capture also deepened a…