Новости за 24.02.2022

THE INTERNET, microchips and semiconductors are all products of American defence spending during the cold war. Another, less well-known, is a school of social psychology that President Joe Biden has drawn on heavily in recent weeks. It has been evident in his administration’s remarkable openness with intelligence in both its diplomacy and public messaging on Ukraine.

BELEAGUERED AND almost alone in his party’s headquarters, abandoned by its powerbrokers and most of its MPs, a bemused Pablo Casado this week suffered the implosion of his leadership of the People’s Party (PP), Spain’s mainstream conservative opposition. At a meeting that lasted into the early hours of February 24th, the party’s regional barons allowed him to save face by staying on as a figurehead until an emergency party congress on April 2nd. In return he agreed to back as his successor Alberto Núñez Feijóo... Читать дальше...

THOUGH HE never showed an interest in doing it, running for political office often occupied P.J. O’Rourke’s mind. Nothing bothered him so much as the sorry state of the American system, when compared with the fine way it had started out. The nadir came in 2016, when he watched the Trump/Clinton circus with ever-increasing horror. (“How the Hell Did That Happen?” was the book that followed.) Mr Trump was clearly unstable; Mrs Clinton was wrong about absolutely everything, but wrong within normal parameters. Читать дальше...

ONE HUNDRED years ago, in March 1922, the first major film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” had its premiere in Berlin. Not that it was called “Dracula”. The film-makers hadn’t asked for permission to adapt the famous vampire novel of 1897, so they changed the characters’ names. Jonathan Harker, the estate agent who ventures to Transylvania, was renamed Thomas Hutter (and played by Gustav von Wangenheim). Harker’s fiancée, Mina, became Hutter’s wife Ellen (Greta Schröder). Count Dracula is Count Orlok (Max Schreck). Читать дальше...

The Naked Don’t Fear the Water. By Matthieu Aikins. Harper; 336 pages; $27.99. Fitzcarraldo Editions; £12.99

The President’s Man. By Dwight Chapin. William Morrow; 480 pages; $29.99 and £20

IZTAPALAPA, A TEEMING neighbourhood on the outskirts of Mexico City, is largely a sprawl of grey concrete. But look down from the cable car that soars above it—a city initiative that helps densely packed residents get around—and the aerial view is punctuated by brightly painted rooftops. Down here, a likeness of Mercedes Hernández, an actor. Over there, a boy and a girl at play, beneath the slogan: “We are equal”. On the ground, pedestrians navigate streets lined with portraits of locals, past and present... Читать дальше...

The Books of Jacob. By Olga Tokarczuk. Translated by Jennifer Croft. Riverhead Books; 992 pages; $35. Fitzcarraldo Editions; £20

IF ALL GOES to plan for Communist Party leaders, the year 2022 should show the world that China represents the future. State television kicked off the lunar new year with greetings from the crew of the country’s first space station, the Tiangong, beamed to over a billion viewers. February saw the capital, Beijing, safely host a Winter Olympics during a global pandemic. Athletes were secluded in high-technology quarantine bubbles, before competing on slopes of artificial snow. In a sign of the country’s allure as a sporting power... Читать дальше...

JUDGED AGAINST his own high standards Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s outgoing president, is a failure. He took office in May 2017 in a snap election after Park Geun-hye, his predecessor, had been jailed for corruption and abuse of power. There had been months of protests against Ms Park and the discredited political class; Mr Moon campaigned on a platform of social, political and economic renewal. He promised to end the cosy links between politics and big business and create an egalitarian economy. Читать дальше...

KRUNG THEP MAHA NAKHON may be a mouthful, but it is less likely to provoke sniggering among those with a teenage mindset than its better-known alternative, “Bangkok”. That is one interpretation for guidance published on February 16th by the Office of the Royal Society, Thailand’s answer to the Académie Française. A dense press release noted that this pithy four-word version of the much longer formal Thai name for the country’s capital should be the standard for official purposes and should be used when writing in Roman script, too. Читать дальше...

TANVEER AHMED, afraid to leave the near-darkness of his home, sits on his bed fretting. He is a civil engineer; his wife was the headmistress of a private school. They enjoyed a comfortable life together. An accusation of blasphemy levelled at his wife swept all that away, and he now cowers in a dilapidated couple of rooms in a suburb of Lahore. His wife, Salma Tanveer, is on death row. He has lost his home and job and worries that a mob could kill him at any time. “My wife is a very good woman, she did not deserve this,” he says. Читать дальше...

HUN SEN likes doing things his own way. Cambodia’s prime minister has ruled the country for 37 years and counting. Satisfied with his own performance, he banned the main opposition party in 2017. In January he flew to Myanmar, deciding that he was the man to bring peace to that country, racked by war since the army seized power last year.

DIRTY MONEY has long been an open secret in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Oligarchs and foreign officials would fly in with stacks of cash, buy houses under their own names and showcase their lives of luxury on social media. Guests at a hotel in downtown Dubai last year might have shared a lift with a Turkish mob boss who had moved in for a while. With its beach-front villas, luxury hotels and fine dining, the UAE’s glitzy business hub is a magnet for money, licit and otherwise.

A VISITOR’S LASTING memory of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, may be that it’s not very memorable at all. Unlike the fashionable beaches of Rio de Janeiro or the splendour of Buenos Aires’s poshest districts, few parts of the city stand out. The centre (pictured) is pleasant but many buildings look in need of a lick of paint. The most famous feature is the Rambla, a coastal avenue which is possibly the longest continuous pavement in the world.

BRAZILIANS ARE no strangers to inflation. In the mid-1980s people crowded around supermarket gates and, as soon as they opened, raced in to buy as much as they could carry. With inflation running on average at 300% that decade, it paid to be early. If an unlucky customer missed the morning rush, they would end up paying higher prices in the afternoon.

IT WAS A swift public humiliation. On February 15th, just 19 days after he left office as his country’s all-powerful president, Juan Orlando Hernández was arrested at his mansion in Tegucigalpa and taken away in handcuffs. The arrest was in response to an extradition request from prosecutors in New York who have charged him with taking part in a violent conspiracy to export 500 tonnes of cocaine to the United States since 2004. He says he is innocent. His arrest holds out the possibility of a new dawn in a country benighted by corruption... Читать дальше...

“I’M A BUFFALO BILLS fan. I always have an underdog mentality,” said Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, earlier this month. Last summer she succeeded Andrew Cuomo, who had resigned amid sexual-harassment and abuse allegations. Few then would have predicted she would be the front-runner in November’s governor’s race and scoring umpteen political touchdowns. The recent state Democratic convention, where she was introduced by Hillary Clinton, resembled a coronation. Supporters carried tote bags depicting Ms Hochul as Rosie the Riveter. Читать дальше...

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK is almost always brimming with visitors. For two weeks each February, however, the crowd intensifies. For just a few minutes each day, the setting sun lines up with Horsetail Fall, lighting the waterfall so that it appears to be lava. “Firefall” has become a tourist spectacle: it drew over 2,000 visitors on a single day. Big crowds have big drawbacks, though, risking environmental degradation, unsafe conditions and wildlife disruption.

CLEVER ROAD cyclists who run out of puff keep up the pace by discreetly tucking themselves behind faster riders. Carried by this slipstream, it is easy to get comfortable, if not outright lazy. Why expend the effort needed to forge ahead if you can get away with this dolce vita? Occasionally laggards have to soothe the tired (and increasingly irate) front-runner with a vague pledge to “pull their weight”. That seems like a small price to pay. Only much later, perhaps ensconced in the comfort of a peloton... Читать дальше...

FOR THE past few months, rivals in April’s French presidential election have dwelt to excess on questions of national identity and immigration. This should soon shift. Emmanuel Macron, a former economy minister and one-time investment banker, is expected shortly to confirm officially that he is running for re-election. This is likely to turn the focus to the economy. Voters will be judging not only Mr Macron’s economic management since he took office in 2017, but how he and his rivals plan to improve competitiveness... Читать дальше...

TRAFFIC ON THE Bosporus, the waterway that splits Istanbul and connects the Marmara and Black seas, has been busier than usual of late, and more dangerous. Making their way past supertankers, passenger ferries and the occasional pod of dolphins are Russian warships heading north towards Ukraine. Since the start of February, at least six Russian amphibious assault ships, as well as a Kilo-class submarine, have passed through. Russia now has four such submarines in the Black sea, each armed with... Читать дальше...

FOR A WHILE it looked as if all was going to plan. In a move cheered by climate activists, the European Union began in 2015 to restrict the production and import of gases known as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs are widely used in refrigeration, air-conditioning and manufacturing, but they are also potent greenhouse gases. The first big shortages hit in early 2018. Prices across Europe multiplied sixfold or even more. The EU wanted to push HFC users to adopt pricey, climate-friendlier alternatives. Читать дальше...

IT HAD BEEN billed as the trial of the century. It would spotlight Pope Francis’s determination to stamp out financial jiggery-pokery by establishing whether and how the Vatican was tricked and extorted out of tens of millions of euros in a botched property deal. Among the defendants was a “prince of the church”: Cardinal Angelo Becciu (pictured), former deputy head of the Vatican’s most exalted department, the Secretariat of State. Yet seven months after Cardinal Becciu and nine other defendants were arraigned in court in the Vatican... Читать дальше...

IN MAY 1941 Archie Cochrane was captured by the Germans. Clever, curious and bored, the young doctor passed the time in his Greek prisoner-of-war camp treating his fellow inmates—and conducting trials on them. In one, he measured the effects of yeast consumption on beriberi (it worked splendidly). In another, he tried international relations: did Yugoslav prisoners like British ones more or less after meeting them? (The results “were depressing”.) But one question obsessed him: did his medical treatments work? Читать дальше...