Новости за 28.11.2019

AT A RABBI’S home in London, a dozen or so guests take their seats for Shabbat dinner, a Friday staple of Jewish households. Before digging in to hunks of challah bread and home-made hummus, each answers a question from their host: “Which non-politician should be prime minister?” One guest nominates Greta Thunberg, a climate-change activist. Another plumps for Prince Andrew on the grounds that he has time on his hands and has already managed to unite the country. The oldies are baffled by a teenager’s choice of Lizzo. Читать дальше...

THE PUMP whirrs as it sucks salmon from their pen. Then the prospective MP helps feed the fish into a stunner, which whacks them on the back of the head. Having slaughtered a hundred or so, Craig Harrow pauses for a photo with a suitably attractive specimen, before delivering a stump speech to a dozen taciturn, blood-spattered fish farmers. He apologises for taking up their time. “If there are any ardent nationalists here,” the Liberal Democrat candidate says, “I’m sorry about that, too, because... Читать дальше...

DESPITE THE ideas of Julia Monk and her colleagues on the frequency and normality of same-sex mating behaviour among animals (see article), some species do work hard to attract the opposite sex. That is why birdsong fills the air during the spring and summer breeding season. What has proved vexing to ornithologists is understanding why birds that migrate to warmer climes in winter often carry on singing even though there is no breeding to be done and no need to defend a territory. But a study... Читать дальше...

ON NOVEMBER 25TH China National Radio launched a mini-series to laud President Xi Jinping’s stewardship of the economy. For a state broadcaster, that might sound perfectly normal. But the theme of its first report was neither China’s stellar growth nor its sparkling innovations. Rather than such standard fare for propagandists, it focused on creditor committees, which aim to restructure companies that have run into financial difficulties. It was the latest sign of China’s rapid shift from denying... Читать дальше...

“WINTER IS COMING,” warned a Norwegian representative on November 22nd, at a meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The multilateral trading system that the WTO has overseen since 1995 is about to freeze up. On December 10th two of the judges on its appellate body, which hears appeals in trade disputes and authorises sanctions against rule-breakers, will retire—and an American block on new appointments means they will not be replaced. With just one judge remaining, it will no longer be able to hear new cases. Читать дальше...

WHAT DO YOU buy the luxury group that has everything? More diamonds, apparently. On November 25th LVMH, already the biggest beast in global luxury, announced it was taking over Tiffany & Co, where Wall Street bond traders sink a few bucks to improve their chances of turning girlfriends into fiancées. The American marque will become the 76th maison of the Parisian group, joining Louis Vuitton, Dior and Veuve Clicquot champagne. How many more can fit under the corporate umbrella of Bernard Arnault, LVMH’s boss and biggest shareholder? Читать дальше...

“GENUINELY FRIGHTENED” by Huawei. That was the verdict of Wilbur Ross, America’s commerce secretary, delivered recently to an audience of diplomats. The Chinese tech giant is the world’s biggest supplier of mobile-network equipment. American officials worry that it could use that position for electronic spying or sabotage on behalf of Beijing.

EVEN IN A China filled with the shiny and the new, the southern city of Guangzhou stands out. A generation ago it was a smoggy, sweltering sprawl of factories and workshops, a bit embarrassed by its history as a semi-colony of Western powers, who knew it as Canton. Now Guangzhou aspires to be a hub of global commerce. It boasts the 600-metre tall Canton Tower, an opera house designed by Zaha Hadid and high-speed trains that can reach Beijing, 2,300km to the north, in just eight hours. Yet Guangzhou’s rise had human costs. Читать дальше...

TO THE HOUTHI rebels, aid workers are spies and food is a tool of espionage. For nearly five years the Houthis have waged war against the Yemeni government, capturing much of the country and helping to create what the United Nations calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. About half of the population relies on food aid. But instead of helping it reach the needy, the Houthis are getting in the way. Over the past two years they have detained dozens of relief workers. The UN accuses them of blocking aid of all kinds to some 5m people.

THE RALLY’S organisers feared that turnout would be low. Even after a flurry of text messages and a big internet campaign, an underwhelming crowd of several thousand people showed up in downtown Tel Aviv on November 26th to protest against the “coup d’état”. That is how Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, refers to the legal campaign against him. Five days earlier he was charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust stemming from three corruption cases. Mr Netanyahu is the first sitting prime minister to be indicted. Читать дальше...

“THIS IS WHERE the magic happens,” says Carl Lokko, a boxing coach. His gym in Accra, the capital of Ghana, has two punchbags, a weights machine and a tin roof. A dozen young men, all sweat and sinew, are shadow-boxing or skipping furiously. “Everybody wants to be a boxer,” says one, fists thudding into an invisible opponent. He calls himself “Rich Man” Ashiley, a name which betrays his ambition. He says he fights for money and the chance “to go outside”, to Europe or America.

MEN WITH guns fill the town of el-Fasher in western Sudan’s troubled Darfur region. At the airport dozens are boarding or disembarking from planes, wearing uniforms of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a unit formed from Sudan’s murderous militia known as the Janjaweed.

UNTIL LATE November the staff at Mada Masr, an online newspaper, would sometimes wonder, only half in jest, why they had not been arrested. These are bleak times for Egypt’s press. No country, except for China and Turkey, locks up more journalists. A private-equity firm with links to the security services has snapped up once-popular newspapers and television stations. Most media outlets are now controlled by the state or its allies. The regime dictates headlines to servile editors.

SINCE 2003 the boringly named Asset Administration and Disposal Service, or SAE, has sold off cars and houses seized by Mexico’s government mainly from smugglers and tax-dodgers. The SAE used to split the proceeds among the police, the judiciary and the health service. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president since December 1st last year, has jazzed things up. He now refers to the SAE as the “Institute for the Return of Stolen Goods to the People”. In June he promised 25.7m pesos ($1.3m)... Читать дальше...

AURÉLIE, AGED 50; Justine, 20; Martine, 64; Safia, 35; Denise, 58; Monique, 72; Aminata, 31. The names on the placards, carried by tens of thousands of protesters through the streets of Paris and other cities on November 23rd, were those of women murdered by their partners in France so far this year. Strangled, stabbed, suffocated, shot or beaten to death, the victims now total 138. The grim phenomenon, which campaigners call féminicide, has long been under-reported and poorly handled in France. Читать дальше...

IN THE DISTANCE, Orvieto’s cathedral sits majestically on the massive outcrop over which the city spreads. Nearby, at the edge of the Alfina plateau, stands a castle encircled by fields—part of the landscape, between Orvieto and Lake Bolsena, in which Alice Rohrwacher, an Italian director, set her prize-winning film “The Wonders”. After a long absence, Ms Rohrwacher returned to find it transformed. “Fields, hedges and trees [had vanished] to make way for hazel plantations as far as the eye could... Читать дальше...

LISA SMITH’S path from Dundalk, a town in Ireland halfway between Belfast and Dublin, to the murderous caliphate of Islamic State (IS) and back, has taken a few turns. A former soldier, Ms Smith converted to Islam and travelled to Syria in 2015 to live under IS rule. Detained by Kurdish fighters who helped bring down the caliphate, she escaped when Turkey launched an offensive against the Kurds in October, only to be captured by Turkish proxies. Now Ms Smith and the two-year-old daughter she had... Читать дальше...

GERMANY OWNS no nuclear weapons. It renounced the very idea when it reunified in 1990. But if war were to break out in Europe today, German pilots could clamber into German planes, take off from Büchel Air Base in Rhineland-Palatinate and drop nuclear bombs on Russian troops.

SO LONG AS they disappear within 48 hours, manifestos seldom matter. Yet everyone recalls the 2017 Tory “dementia tax” to fund social care that was hastily dropped days later—one reason why this year’s Conservative prospectus is so bland. And manifestos count in government, as well as setting the tone for an election. This time, the three main ones offer two related themes—and, in the shape of Brexit, one big elephant in the room.

EVEN AS BOTH main parties promise more spending, they insist that most voters will not pay a penny for it. Labour says those earning under £80,000 ($103,000) will see no rise in income tax, despite its promise of more than £80bn a year of extra day-to-day spending (equivalent to 4% of GDP). The Conservatives, who plan a more modest spending rise of £3bn, say they can afford to do this while reducing the number of workers who have to pay national-insurance contributions, a payroll tax. Can taxpayers really get something for nothing? Читать дальше...

THIS IS AN age of political surprises. Donald Trump won the presidential election of 2016 after being treated as a no-hoper. The Brexiteers won their referendum despite being dismissed as cranks. Jeremy Corbyn is now widely seen as a lost cause, particularly after a week in which the chief rabbi accused him of anti-Semitism and a large poll suggested the Tories could win a majority of 68. But history could easily have another surprise up its sleeve.

THE NEW YORK TIMES noted in 1859 that the telegraph was doing a lot to clean up politics. “The telegraph gives the speaker in the furthest East or West an audience as wide as the Union,” it wrote. That made it harder for politicians to promise to relax drinking laws in one city and impose Prohibition in another.

WWE superstar Dana Brooke said on Twitter that she had sent the legend her number 'sealed with a kiss' as the two arranged a gym date

Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire. By Alan Gallay. Basic Books; 576 pages; $40 and £30.95.

EVOLUTION HAS NO foresight. But occasionally it flukes something ideally suited to develop into something else. Biologists call this preadaptation, and it seems to explain the existence of three small bones, known as ossicles, that are found in the ears of mammals. Ossicles evolved from jaw bones, and the fossil evidence indicates this happened three times. That suggests the bones in question were indeed preadapted. And a newly discovered Cretaceous mammal called Jeholbaatar kielanae may help explain why. Читать дальше...