Новости за 03.06.2021

Paper Trails. By Cameron Blevins. Oxford University Press; 248 pages; $34.95 and £22.99

IN THE 1990S parodies of Clippy from Microsoft Word were a bit of a trend in cartoons and magazines. The annoying paper-clip-shaped figure would pop up as soon as you began writing “Dear…” and say: “It looks like you’re writing a letter,” before offering unsolicited advice on things such as formatting.

Noise. By Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein. Little, Brown; 464 pages; $32. William Collins; £25

IN 1881 SOMEONE donated an antique brass circlet to the Rijksmuseum, the Dutch national museum of art and history. The object (pictured) is a bit of a stumper. Engraved with a heraldic shield and the year 1689, it bears no indication of what purpose it served. The museum staff listed it as a dog collar.

PLANES NO LONGER land in Kai Tak, Hong Kong’s old airport. But nostalgists can stroll along the new “sky garden”, an elevated walkway lined with frangipani, myrtle and acacia, that passes above the old runway. By scanning a QR code along the route, visitors can “augment reality” by superimposing an image of a landing plane on their selfies. The park is part of a redevelopment plan that will eventually yield a hospital, tax office and new homes for tens of thousands of people. On either side of the walkway... Читать дальше...

THE SCALE of Joe Biden’s plans is hard to exaggerate. Where the American president’s former boss, Barack Obama, pivoted quickly to deficit-cutting after the trials of the global financial crisis, Mr Biden’s first budget, which he unveiled on May 28th, will borrow unapologetically. The plans assume that annual fiscal deficits will exceed 4% of GDP through to the end of the decade; net public debt will rise to 117% of GDP in 2030 from 110% today. The largesse raises two big questions. One is whether... Читать дальше...

ROCHE IS A strange entity. The Swiss giant is the world’s second-biggest drugmaker and one of big pharma’s most profitable firms. But its largest shareholding group, mostly descended from Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche, who founded the company in 1896, is led by André Hoffmann, a nature lover and sustainability advocate who believes that the purpose of business is not mainly to make money. Even its bosses are discouraged from making a quick franc. Severin Schwan, an Austrian who has led the company since 2008... Читать дальше...

HOURS BEFORE Jo Phoenix, a professor of criminology at the Open University, was due to give a talk at Essex University about placing transgender women in women’s prisons, students threatened to barricade the hall. They complained that Ms Phoenix was a “transphobe” likely to engage in “hate speech”. A flyer with an image of a gun and text reading “shut the fuck up, TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a slur) was circulating. The university told Ms Phoenix it was postponing the event. Then... Читать дальше...

F EWER THAN 50 days remain before the apparently unstoppable opening of the 2020 summer Olympic games in Tokyo. The pandemic led to their postponement last year. Today the clock is ticking down against a backdrop of resurgent infections of covid-19 in Japan, a state of emergency in Tokyo and nine other prefectures, hospitals filling up and widespread opposition to the games from the public, businessfolk and medical experts.

AFTER A SLOW start, citizens of South-East Asian countries have in recent years taken to the internet with gusto, using it, like their counterparts everywhere else, to shop, to chat with their friends, to watch movies and to listen to music—and to criticise their governments. And as in many parts of the world, governments have found that they do not much like that last feature of this whole internet thing.

WITH HIS 68.7m Twitter followers Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, nestles comfortably between the American celebrities Selena Gomez and Kim Kardashian in rankings of popularity on the service. This is not by accident. Mr Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) have been early and avid exploiters of social media. Whether to lure new members to join the 180m who already make it the world’s biggest political party, to hustle donations or amplify attacks on its critics, the BJP has relied... Читать дальше...

THE BROCHURE writes itself: a scattering of coral ringlets, each encircling its own turquoise lagoon within the Arabian Sea, Lakshadweep is India at its most alluring. These 36 islands, together totalling just 32 square kilometres of land, are peopled by a matrilineal, mostly Muslim society where families make their living through seafaring and coconut harvests.

ASUPERNATURAL DRAMA about evil spirits trying to bring down a medieval dynasty is not, you might think, to be taken too seriously. Yet when “Joseon Exorcist’‘ hit South Korean screens earlier this year, it provoked apoplexy on social media. The show was historically inaccurate, fumed pedants. Not because it showed ancient Korean royals battling the undead, but because it showed them enjoying Chinese snacks, such as mooncakes and preserved eggs. Companies pulled their advertising. The show was taken off the air after just two episodes. Читать дальше...

ON A RECENT Friday evening in Mendoza, the capital of Argentina’s wine country, a group of well-to-do Mendocinos held a Zoom session with Luciana Sabina, a historian. “Self-rule, it’s a big part of our DNA,” she declared, as she took her viewers through earthquakes and economic crises, singing the praises of Italian immigrants who planted fructuous vineyards in the Andes. In her telling, an epidemic was a turning-point in the province’s history. During a cholera outbreak in the 1880s Mendoza wanted... Читать дальше...

“I STILL DON’T feel comfortable here,” says Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, as he walks briskly into an opulent presidential meeting room. A former comedian in a hit TV series, “Servant of the People”, that tells the story of a humble schoolteacher who accidentally becomes president, he is still, it seems, more used to a studio than a palace.

IT IS USUALLY bad news when multiple religions claim the same place of worship. It can lead to conflict, as illustrated by the recent violence at Jerusalem’s holiest site. Or it can be a sign that flocks are dwindling, forcing congregations to share space. But Berlin’s House of One intentionally puts a church, mosque and synagogue under a single roof.

THE SMALL east German state of Saxony-Anhalt is run by a so-called “Kenya” coalition, comprising three parties whose colours match that country’s flag: the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), the Social Democrats and the Greens. But so bad is the infighting it should be named after the similar hues of Afghanistan’s flag, chuckles Oliver Kirchner, local head of the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

SHORTLY AFTER nine o’clock on a Monday night, Giovanni Brusca, his brother, their wives and children had abruptly to abandon their roast-chicken dinner. Armed, masked police burst into their rented villa and arrested both men.

“O NE PERSON, one vote” is a good principle. The ratio in the European Union is a bit more complex: “One Luxembourger, or nine Germans, one vote.” Germany has one MEP for every 860,000 citizens. By contrast Luxembourg—a country roughly the size of Düsseldorf—has one per 100,000.

Letters are welcome via e-mail to letters@economist.com  

Mexico responds

You urge Mexicans to vote against the president and his party in elections to Congress (“The puritan from Tepetitán, May 29th). Your message is surprising, not because of The Economist’s ideological position, but because of the virulence of your writing and the fragility of your reasoning. You seem to believe that the majority of Mexicans, especially the poorest, are wrong and are backing the wrong person. Читать дальше...

Bulgaria should make a serious attempt to issue final convictions for high-echelon corruption, European Commission spokesman Christian Wigand said.

FBI attributes ransomware scheme targeting world's largest meat company to Russian-speaking gang REvil.

(Telecompaper) Russian operator MTS has launched a platform for the development of the MTS IoT Hub...

New Horizons Sling Bag (Nintendo Switch) | $38 | Amazon

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