Новости за 03.12.2020

CHINA BULLIES other countries because it works. Once told that they have crossed a “red line” by harming China’s interests or calling out its misdeeds, many governments crumble swiftly. Others fold after suffering months of threats, trade boycotts and cancelled official meetings. But in China’s long experience, almost all—even sometimes America—climb down eventually, sending envoys to sue for peace. True, some Western leaders pay public lip-service to their own country’s values as they land in far-off Beijing. Читать дальше...

SOME PEOPLE have almost all the luck. Over the past year, as India’s economy has shrunk by around a tenth and tens of millions of Indians have lost jobs or sunk into poverty, the fortunes of the country’s two richest people have swollen. Gautam Adani, whose conglomerate sprawls from ports to coal mines to food, has seen his personal wealth more than double, to some $32bn. Mukesh Ambani’s riches, which derive from oil refining, telecoms and retail, among other things, have grown by just 25%, albeit to an intimidating $75bn or so. Читать дальше...

IF A COAL-FREE future awaits the town of Muswellbrook, in New South Wales, there is little sign of it. It is surrounded by vast canyons of grey and brown rock—open-cast coal mines. Nearby, two huge power plants burn their output for electricity. More is piled onto sooty trains which rumble constantly through the town, conveying its riches east, to the port of Newcastle, from which the coal is shipped across Asia.

EVEN AFTER Tanzanian policemen had hung him from the ceiling and beaten him with sticks, Crispin (not his real name) would not confess to being a rebel leader with plans to overthrow the government of neighbouring Burundi. It was only when they injected a liquid into his testicles that he caved in and said he was plotting a coup.

THE ASSASSIN was not a human. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, erstwhile maestro of Iran’s nuclear-weapons programme, was gunned down on November 27th by a remote-controlled machinegun mounted on an exploding pickup truck—if Fars, an Iranian news agency, is to be believed. “No one was present at the scene,” said Ali Shamkhani, the head of Iran’s national security council. Other accounts suggest that gummen—human ones—were on the ground, and escaped. The bullets were certainly real.

THE FRONT door of Damas 855, a ramshackle building in San Isidro, a poor neighbourhood of Havana, snapped like a wishbone when security agents charged through it on the evening of November 26th. The lock and chain tumbled to the ground. The agents, dressed in medical gowns, arrested 14 people (their pretext was that one of the residents had violated a covid-19 testing protocol). They had locked themselves in for eight days to protest against the arrest of Denis Solís, a young rapper who had been... Читать дальше...

OUT OF THE $4.5bn pilfered from 1MDB, a Malaysian state development fund, at least $1bn is alleged by American prosecutors to have been embezzled into the United States—spent in a Gatsby-esque frenzy on, among other things, a Manhattan penthouse, a Beverly Hills mansion and financing Hollywood films (including, naturally, “The Wolf of Wall Street”). America’s porous rules on anonymous shell companies make disguising the origins of money fairly straightforward. The Tax Justice Network, a good-government group... Читать дальше...

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OVER A CENTURY has passed since the dangers of consuming lead became widely known. Ingesting even small quantities damages young brains and may raise the risk of heart problems. Yet residents of Chicago—and many other cities—still mostly swig from taps fed by lead pipes. About 400,000 lead service lines connect to the mains in the Windy City, linking about four in five of all houses there. One study of nearly 3,000 homes, two years ago, found two-thirds had elevated levels of lead in their water. Читать дальше...

IN THE HEADY days before the elections on November 3rd, when Democrats dared to dream of unified control of Washington and a coming progressive remake of America, two especially optimistic indicators elicited particular giddiness. First, of course, were the horse-race polls showing Joe Biden ahead of President Donald Trump by nine or so percentage points. But there was also the money race, which Democrats were winning handily: Mr Biden’s campaign raised $952m, or nearly 60% more than Mr Trump’s campaign... Читать дальше...

NEAR ONE of Izmir’s main thoroughfares, bulldozers and excavators power through a vast heap of rubble and steel wire, the ghastly remains of an apartment block levelled by an earthquake that struck Turkey’s third-biggest city in late October. Movers salvage furniture and kitchen supplies from buildings awaiting demolition or on the verge of collapse, their facades covered with deep cracks. A few hundred metres away, outside a shelter for those made homeless by the disaster, Meryem, a divorced teacher... Читать дальше...

SVETLANA TIKHANOVSKAYA, a former teacher and a mother of two, did not choose to make history. But history has chosen her for a starring role. Despite her lack of political experience, she has come to personify the struggle to transform Belarus from docile former Soviet republic to free and truly independent nation. The leaders of rich democracies greet her as president-elect. Her own people derive comfort from her simple, calm words. Alexander Lukashenko, the gun-toting dictator who has ruled Belarus for the past 26 years... Читать дальше...

IT TOOK A pandemic to silence Gerhard Schmiderer. For the past quarter-century, the now 70-year-old “DJ Gerhard” has blasted trashy hits for drunken après-skiers at MooserWirt, a bar in St Anton, an Austrian ski resort. This year, however, the speakers will be silent rather than blaring out yet another rendition of “The Final Countdown”, a raucous anthem sung by big-haired Swedes. The usual revellers dancing on tables in ski boots will be absent. The 500-metre run back to the resort will no longer... Читать дальше...

AT 6.42PM ON November 21st, three policemen forced their way into a recording studio in a smart area of Paris and savagely beat up Michel Zecler, a black record producer. Pursued for not wearing a face mask, Mr Zecler initially spent 48 hours in detention for violence against the police, and says that during the beating he was called a “sale nègre (dirty negro)”. On November 30th, four days after a surveillance video of his beating was posted on social media, contradicting the officers’ account... Читать дальше...

A PHOTO of Thierry Baudet from a newspaper profile in 2014 shows him sprawled on his grand piano, gazing fetchingly to camera. The Chopin-playing Dutch intellectual, then 31, had written a book denouncing the EU. Two years later he co-founded a party, Forum For Democracy (FVD), which won the largest vote-share in provincial elections in 2019. In a speech that night Mr Baudet described it as a world-historical turning point, invoking Hegel’s “owl of Minerva”, a symbol of wisdom that “spreads its wings only [at] dusk”. Читать дальше...

UNABLE TO COMPETE with the convenience of shopping online, the high street has been crumbling for years; and the covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the trend. Arcadia, a retailing conglomerate, announced that it would enter administration on November 30th. The next day Debenhams, a 207-year-old department store chain, which has been in administration since April, said it would start winding down its business. Some 25,000 jobs are at risk across the two companies. The real estate they occupy, some... Читать дальше...

THE HEAD of America’s Cyber Command, Paul Nakasone, is a four-star general whose chest is plastered in medals. The commander of Britain’s National Cyber Force (NCF) is a bespectacled, middle-aged man in a beige blazer—a 20-year veteran of GCHQ, Britain’s signals-intelligence service, whose name the government has asked to keep secret. Unassuming as he may be, his agency, responsible for offensive cyber-operations, now stands at the centre of a sweeping overhaul of British defence capabilities.

ACCORDING TO SHELAGH O’RIORDAN, a consultant in geriatric medicine, patients often experience the National Health Service (NHS) as a conveyor belt. “You feel ill, you call this number. This number calls an ambulance. That ambulance tells you that you should go to hospital. You go to hospital. And then, if you’re frail, you might not come out.” Her job, as she sees it, is to help people off the conveyor belt, and even on a quiet Sunday morning the telephone keeps ringing. Most calls are from nurses, paramedics or care-home workers. Читать дальше...

THE FIRST months of Boris Johnson’s tenure as mayor of London, back in 2008, were, by common consent, a mess. Projects fizzled. Senior aides flounced. Chaos reigned. Then “bungling Boris”, as the newspapers dubbed him, appointed a talented chief of staff. The self-effacing but effective Simon Milton brought order to chaos and turned dither into decisiveness. Mr Johnson became Britain’s most popular Tory and was re-elected by a landslide.

VAST, BUREAUCRATIC and amorphous, health care has long been cautious about change. However, the biggest emergency in decades has caused a revolution. From laboratories to operating theatres, the industry’s metabolism has soared, as medical workers have scrambled to help the sick. Hastily and often successfully, they have improvised with new technologies. Their creativity holds the promise of a new era of innovation that will lower costs, boost access for the poor and improve treatment. But to sustain it... Читать дальше...

“I’M STRUGGLING TO find any redeeming features in these people at all,” says Margaret Thatcher to her husband Denis in the course of a visit to Balmoral Castle, where the Thatchers are snubbed, humiliated and forced to play an after-dinner game called Ibble Dibble in which players smear their faces with burnt cork while getting drunk. Oliver Dowden, Britain’s culture secretary, takes a similar view of the portrayal of the Royal Family in “The Crown”. He believes that the real royals have been traduced by Netflix... Читать дальше...

FOR THE past four years Iran’s enemies in the Middle East have had a friend in the White House. President Donald Trump blamed Iran for the region’s problems, sold arms to Israel and Arab states, and pulled America out of the deal that saw Iran limit its nuclear programme and agree to inspections in return for the lifting of international sanctions. In November Mr Trump retweeted news of the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the architect of Iran’s past nuclear-weapons programme.

GREEN MEANS humiliation, which may involve sexual abuse or the threat of rape. It is reserved for young men sporting dreadlocks, long hair or piercings. Yellow paint, when daubed on those who ask too many questions or argue with riot police, spells a beating. Those who try to run away or resist arrest are sprayed with red paint and subjected to torture so severe that it could leave them disabled for life.

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Left to stand alone

You warned of the dire implications of America withdrawing from Afghanistan (“Leaving too soon”, November 21st). Certainly, the parallels with the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and the eventual collapse of the Najibullah regime are uncomfortable. However, it was not the withdrawal of Soviet combat troops that brought about the collapse, but the ending of Russia’s subsidies in 1992.

Other pivotal moments... Читать дальше...

The New York lawmaker will succeed Cheri Bustos, who stepped down as DCCC chair after House Dems suffered unexpected losses in November.