Новости за 03.06.2021

JIANGHANG AIRCRAFT EQUIPMENT has struggled to tantalise investors with the fuel systems and detachable petrol tanks it builds for Chinese warplanes. The company, controlled by Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the country’s biggest aerospace-and-defence conglomerate, had witnessed its share price slump by 50% since it went public in Shanghai last year. But in the first three months of the year demand for its wares has soared. On May 28th Jianghang said that net profit for the period nearly doubled, year on year. Читать дальше...

AT FIRST CRITICS doubted that “Demon Slayer: Mugen Train”, which hit American cinemas in April, could replicate the success it achieved in its Japanese home market. The animated feature is set in early-20th-century Japan, an unrelatable era for non-Japanese viewers. Defying the odds, the film raked in $19.5m during its opening weekend, breaking America’s box-office record for a foreign-language debut.

MOST PEOPLE feel, from time to time, that their work is meaningless. David Graeber, the late anthropologist, built an elaborate thesis out of this insight. He argued in a book in 2018 that society has been deliberately creating more and more “bullshit jobs” in professions such as financial services to fill the time of educated workers who need the money to pay off student debts but who suffer from depression because of their work. His thesis has been cited more than 800 times by academics, according to Google Scholar... Читать дальше...

“IT IS A branding message that fits into the moral confusion of our time,” thundered Albert Mohler, the high-profile president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, in one of his daily podcasts at the end of May. Christian evangelical leaders and pundits at Fox News, a conservative cable network, are up in arms about the international launch on June 1st, the first day of Pride month, of LEGO’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and anyone who is not included ( LGBTQIA+) set. Читать дальше...

AS BIRTHDAY PRESENTS go, a 435km railway line that is expected to open this month in Tibet will be among the most lavish. To seekers of high-altitude thrills, it is one that will be cherished. The 37bn-yuan ($5.7bn) track extends from the region’s capital Lhasa eastward to the city of Nyingchi, which is Tibetan for “Throne of the Sun”. It is the region’s first electrified railway; its trains will be Tibet’s fastest. Officials call it a gift for the Communist Party’s 100th birthday, which will be officially celebrated on July 1st. Читать дальше...

COUNTRIES HAVE to make revealing choices as they craft patriotic messages for children. To put it kindly, young minds are tiny treasure-houses that deserve to be stocked with only a nation’s most precious beliefs. To be more blunt, small children are easily distracted, so are best taught only a few important things.

EVERY DAY many groggy Jordanians are woken by the sound of Beethoven blasted down the street. Trucks selling gas cylinders drive around playing a tinny electronic version of “Für Elise” in the early hours of the morning, alerting customers in the style of an ice-cream van. Residents in need of gas flag down the van when they hear the sound. Some consider the gas-truck music a part of Jordanian life’s rich soundtrack. Others think it is noise pollution.

THEY GRABBED blankets, clothes and mattresses and rushed out of their houses at dawn on May 27th. In their tens of thousands, they streamed out of the city of Goma, in eastern Congo, terrified of what its volcano might do next. Some fled east towards the border with Rwanda (see map). Others hurried west to the Congolese town of Sake, around 20km away, clogging the dirt road from Goma with motorbikes, cars and pedestrians. Hundreds of people rushed down to Goma’s port to pile onto boats heading to Bukavu... Читать дальше...

F RANCE “MUST look history in the face and recognise the share of suffering that it inflicted on the Rwandan people”. So declared President Emmanuel Macron at the genocide memorial in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, on May 27th (pictured). “In ignoring the warnings of the most clear-sighted observers,” he said, “France bore damning responsibility in a chain of events that led to the worst.” He hoped survivors of the genocide might “perhaps forgive” France.

IN 2019 LUCY JACOBSON and her colleagues at Rossmönster Vans flew to San Francisco carrying “suitcases full of cash”. They were on their way to purchase five retro Volkswagen vans made in the 1980s in order to drive them back to Longmont, Colorado and turn them into custom adventure-mobiles. The road trip home took them to Las Vegas (“to let our freak flag fly”), through Utah’s canyons and over the Rockies. It was the kind of expedition increasing numbers of Americans are hankering for.

“SINCE WE TOOK office,” tweeted President Joe Biden on May 23rd, “hunger rates have dropped 43%.” That statistic, although astonishing, is broadly correct, according to data from the Census Bureau. “That’s the American Rescue Plan at work,” Mr Biden added. The claim of causality, however, is less certain.

SENATOR HARLEY KILGORE, a West Virginia oil prospector’s son who carried around a horse chestnut for good luck, had a vision for American science. It was too dominated, he thought, by big business and by the university system: the country’s practical needs were an afterthought. In 1942 Kilgore proposed creating a federal bureaucracy, responsive to the public, that would guide scientific research for the good of the country and distribute its benefits geographically.

NOTHING SAYS spring like the thwack of cowhide on maple. It follows that nothing says mass vaccination like the sound echoing through a crowded ballpark. Lexington and 3,000 other Marylanders experienced this thrill one sunny evening last week in Frederick, Maryland, home of the redoubtable Frederick Keys.

AFTER THE sweet tea was poured but before the tomato soup arrived, in the middle of a crowded restaurant, Bill White lifted his shirt-tail to reveal the rubberised grip of a .38 revolver. “Everyone’s got one these days,” he says. Over lunch, he and two other residents of Buckhead, the wealthy northern section of Atlanta, swap stories: packs of cars blocking intersections for illegal street races, would-be thieves casing houses, neighbours too frightened to leave their homes. Lenox Square, an upscale mall... Читать дальше...

“REMOTE DEBATES are absolutely poisonous,” says a Conservative MP. “They need to go as soon as possible.” Almost all parliamentarians acknowledge that covid-19 made remote working necessary—few are keen to see it continue beyond the pandemic.

TO THE UNTRAINED eye, the small football pitch and bumpy grass mounds between two post-war council flat blocks in Bells Garden estate do not look like much. To Lewis Schaffer, a professional comic from New York who lives nearby, they are the front line in a battle with Southwark council. If the council gets its way three new blocks will soon fill the space. Mr Schaffer sees this as the height of stupidity. “You wouldn’t build on Central Park, would you?”

PANDEMICS ARE an expensive business for governments. In the past year the British state’s borrowing came to more than 14% of GDP, the highest figure in over seven decades. All that extra borrowing helped push the ratio of government debt to GDP from around 80% to nearly 100%.

I N FEBRUARY THE government appointed Sir Kevan Collins, a former teacher, council boss and head of an education charity, to advise it on how to help children catch up on learning lost as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. Boris Johnson, the prime minister, said he was “absolutely determined” no child would be held back by the crisis. Just four months later, on June 2nd, Sir Kevan resigned as “education-recovery commissioner” because of a lack of ministerial determination.

IN GARDENS across Britain the grass has stopped growing. They are not parched or drought-stricken. In fact, they are greener and more immaculate than before. That is because the lawns are actually synthetic substitutes made from thermoplastic polymers.

THE BRITISH government thought its preparations for a pandemic to be among the best in the world. In 2016, 950 officials drilled for an outbreak of “swan flu”, a hypothetical illness which killed 400,000 people. It gave ministers some useful pointers on enlisting retired doctors and drafting emergency legislation.

BRITAIN HAS a glorious tradition of writers getting on their bikes, real or metaphorical, and pedalling off to discover the country. Two of the best examples of the genre were published during the Great Depression, J.B. Priestley’s “English Journey” (1934) and George Orwell’s “The Road to Wigan Pier” (1937). Bill Bryson had such a hit with “Notes from a Small Island” (1995), selling more than 2m copies, that he decided to repeat the exercise with “The Road to Little Dribbling” 20 years later.

DAYS BEFORE he retired at the end of 2015, Neil MacGregor addressed colleagues and friends at the British Museum. As they raised their glasses, he quoted T.S. Eliot: “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.” A few years on, however, the commanding voice in museumland is not his successor as director of the British Museum, nor is it another grandee. It is the government.

IN RECENT WEEKS diversity at work has taken on a new meaning. As vaccination progresses in the rich world and restrictions ease, some huge office tenants, such as Goldman Sachs, a bank, want staff back full-time, while others, like Citigroup, a rival, expect some employees never to set foot in a central business district again. Behind the posturing, a consensus is slowly emerging that white-collar desk-warriors should be allowed to stay at home more often post covid-19—and that many probably will. Читать дальше...

HOSPITALS ARE full, favelas echo with gunfire and a record 14.7% of workers are unemployed. Incredibly, Brazil’s economy is smaller now than it was in 2011—and it will take a lot of strong quarters like the one reported on June 1st to repair its reputation. Brazil’s death toll from covid-19 is one of the worst in the world. The president, Jair Bolsonaro, jokes that vaccines might turn people into crocodiles.

AFTER GEORGE FLOYD’S murder a year ago, Atlanta’s mayor scolded the rioters who were smashing up parts of her city. “This is not a protest…This is chaos,” Keisha Lance Bottoms said. “If you care about this city, then go home.” The speech was so well pitched that some overexcited pundits wondered whether she might one day run for president. One year on, Ms Lance Bottoms has declined even to run for re-election as mayor, in part because Atlanta is suffering from a violent-crime wave which she has been unable to calm. Читать дальше...