Новости за 07.05.2020

Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub

WHEN INDIA was hit both by the failure of a big bank and a nationwide lockdown in March, bankers, fearing runs from rattled depositors, rushed to stuff cash machines with notes. In fact the demand for cash was relatively subdued. Activity hummed along the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), an electronic-payments network that is on its way to becoming the country’s financial lifeline.

A LONG TIME ago in a galaxy far, far away—February, to be precise—Bob Iger quit as head of a wildly successful company. Disney ruled the box office, with seven of the ten biggest hits of 2019. It had just launched a streaming service, Disney+, to take on Netflix. And it had completed a $69bn debt-fuelled acquisition of 21st Century Fox. In Mr Iger’s 14 years in charge, the firm’s share price quintupled. On May 5th he was back, like a Jedi summoned from semi-retirement, to introduce a first-quarter... Читать дальше...

Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub

Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub

CHINA OR AMERICA: which is the land of rugged self-reliance and which of the government handout? Judging by support for people on low incomes amid the coronavirus crisis, the answer is surprising. America has dramatically scaled up benefits for those out of work. Its federal stimulus has allocated an extra $600 a week to each jobless person—enough, on average, to replace 100% of lost income. The Chinese government, meanwhile, has given an extra 12 yuan ($1.70) a week to its poor. That is enough for a daily bowl of noodles. Читать дальше...

IN THE CITY of Ergun, about 60km from China’s border with Russia, the feast of Pascha last month was one that Father Pavel Sun Ming will long remember. Because of covid-19, he could not open his Eastern Orthodox church for celebrations of Christ’s resurrection. Police wearing surgical masks stood outside, stopping passing cars to check people’s health. But it is last year’s Pascha in Ergun that will go down in history. For the first time in more than six decades, the church’s midnight service was led by a local. Читать дальше...

THE GRAVEDIGGERS of Kano know something is up. Death has not come as rapidly to this town in northern Nigeria since a great cholera outbreak 60 years ago, one told the BBC. Local newspapers are running long lists of names of people who have died after showing symptoms of covid-19. Among them were two professors, a newspaper columnist, the former editor of a paper and the mother of a film star. “They all died on Saturday,” read one report. Nobody knows whether they died of the virus, because nobody has checked. Читать дальше...

Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub

WHEN HE WAS a child, Lauben Kabagambe’s grandparents in western Uganda would boil cannabis leaves to treat sick animals. “I grew up knowing that it is a medicine,” he recalls. Today, as the boss of Industrial Hemp, a Ugandan cannabis company, he is growing weed in computer-controlled greenhouses in partnership with a subsidiary of Together Pharma, an Israeli firm. In April they exported 250kg of medical cannabis to Israel, the first commercial batch ever to leave Uganda.

IT IS 1790 in Asunción. Today the capital of Paraguay, it was once an early colonial hub but by the end of the 18th century had become a backwater, the end of the line in a Spanish empire fast approaching the end of its time. Diego de Zama, the legal adviser to the governor, is a man with a brilliant past but, he confesses, now “subjugated by circumstances and without opportunities”. While he waits and waits for a half-promised posting, he is tortured by his desire for illicit love despite his... Читать дальше...

BETWEEN 2004 AND 2012 BNP Paribas helped funnel $30bn into Sudan, Cuba and Iran, all then under American sanctions. It hid its tracks using a network of “satellite” banks and by stripping payment messages of incriminating references. Whistleblowers tipped off American prosecutors. The bank pleaded guilty, expecting to pay €1.1bn ($1.2bn). It was fined $8.9bn by American authorities in 2014, and the case escalated to a diplomatic row.

IN ANUARY AN American former general spoke at a gathering of senior global financiers. Used to thinking about strategy and hard power, he warned that America is dealing poorly with its most complex array of threats since the cold war—from Iran and Russia to the novel coronavirus. But he also spoke of a much less visible threat: how, through its aggressive use of economic sanctions, America is misusing its clout as the predominant financial power, thereby pushing allies and foes alike towards building a separate financial architecture. Читать дальше...

CAUSEWAY BAY is back in business. Even as the world shuts down, the retail heart of Hong Kong, which enforced an early lockdown, is beating again. Yet normality is not complete. The local branch of ICBC, a symbol of Beijing’s sway, remains barricaded. Its managers fear that pro-democracy protesters, free after weeks of quarantine, might target it again. This points to a tension within China’s global ambitions. Its political system can suppress problems fast by mobilising everything in the pursuit of one goal. Читать дальше...

TWO WEEKS before Christmas, executives from OneConnect, a Chinese technology firm, boarded a plane to New York. They landed in a chilly atmosphere: American legislators were about to bar Huawei, a telecoms giant suspected of spying for Beijing, from supplying American agencies. But OneConnect did the job. On December 13th it listed on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $312m, which valued it at $3.7bn. Analysts expect the loss-making firm’s share price to climb by more than 70% in the next 12 months. Читать дальше...

AMERICAN BANKERS make for bold bosses. From his roomy office in Manhattan, in early February, the boss of one of the country’s biggest suggested he has few serious rivals—and all are just a few blocks away. “US banks continue to gain share from European banks.” Asia barely gets a mention. “Chinese institutions have generally proven incapable of expanding globally. When they buy sports cars and flashy hotels, it just doesn’t feel solid.” Days later Morgan Stanley, America’s sixth-largest bank, announced its $13bn acquisition of E-Trade... Читать дальше...

MANY INDIANS will remember the coronavirus epidemic less for social distancing, or for watching re-runs of “Ramayan”, a popular 1980s television saga based on Hindu myth, than for the endless queues. Destitute migrant workers hoping for a train home are not the only ones who have been made to line up and wait. Nor are the millions now surviving on charity, or the hope of it. Many in the middle class, too, have been stuck in monstrous tailbacks while trying to make urgent journeys, the victims of arbitrary decisions by babus... Читать дальше...

“EVEN MILITARY dogs are grateful to the army,” said Apirat Kongsompong, its commander, earlier this year. He was implying that if mere animals could muster the appropriate emotion, people should be overflowing with gratitude. After all, the army is a “sacred” institution, he believes. Yet ordinary Thais do not seem to realise how lucky they are. Indeed, they have been showing signs of sacrilege.

FARAH REYNALDI loathes the sun. Yet for the past month, the 19-year-old law student has been soaking up the rays several mornings a week. At the behest of her father, she takes off her hijab, puts on a T-shirt and shorts, and sweats on the balcony for about half an hour. She is not alone. Over the past month or two, Indonesians have begun sunbathing en masse. Bare-chested soldiers and police officers prostrate themselves before the sun every morning. Residents of a slum abutting a metro line in Jakarta... Читать дальше...

IN ALMOST all its modern crises, America has looked to its merchants for leadership. In 1914 John Wanamaker, the greatest retailer of the age, made headlines by dispatching 2,000 tons of food aid to Belgium—then suggesting America buy the little country to make the peace. In 1942 his New York rival, Macy’s, announced it was cancelling its annual Thanksgiving parade and donating 650 pounds of balloon rubber to the war effort: “We’ve enlisted!” Department stores, America’s temples of commerce, could... Читать дальше...

A FEW YEARS ago Britain liked to think of itself as the belle of the globalisation ball. David Cameron invited Xi Jinping, China’s president, for a state visit that involved a trip down the Mall in a gilded carriage and a banquet in Buckingham Palace. He wooed Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, in a bid to breathe new life into Britain’s membership of the European Union. He liked to boast that his friendship with Barack Obama, America’s president, was so close that Mr Obama had once tucked him up in the presidential bed on Air Force One. Читать дальше...

My little niece enjoying her watercan in the back garden.

You just need to corral and nurture the stuff, which should be easy for anyone with some time and patience.

WHEN OIL supply threatened to overwhelm storage tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma, in April, the pain was felt as far as Chongqing. Retail investors in the Bank of China’s oil bao, or “treasure”, a speculative vehicle linked to crude futures, took a hit as the May contract for West Texas Intermediate settled at an astonishing -$37.63 a barrel on April 20th. The market’s gyrations have led to consternation in China—regulators have reportedly called for an investigation—and revealed unexpected victims. Читать дальше...