Новости за 02.08.2018

FOR a generation the Saudi antiquities authority has kept it under wraps. The ruins remain out of bounds behind metal gates and wire fencing. A guard shoos the curious away with threats of arrest. But if independent studies are correct, tucked in the dunes and palms near the eastern oilfields lies a 7th-century monastery, the existence of which suggests that Islam once tolerated church-building in Arabia.

ERITREA, one of Africa’s newest countries, was born in battle. First it fought for 30 years to break away from Ethiopia, its bigger neighbour to the south, achieving that goal in 1993. In 1998 it was embroiled in another bloody war that cost perhaps 70,000 lives after it invaded Ethiopia over a trifling border dispute. A decade later it invaded tiny Djibouti over an argument about whether the border ran along the top or sides of some hills in the desert.

The courageous few

FEW believed President Bashar al-Assad would survive the rebellion that swept his country seven years ago. But Syria’s blood-soaked dictator is on the brink of defeating those who tried to topple him. The only rebels left are boxed into a corner of Syria’s north-west, in Idlib province. Regime forces are mustering at its edge, having recently seized rebel-held areas near the border with Jordan and Israel, in the south. The fall of Idlib would sound the rebellion’s death knell. Читать дальше...

BRAZIL’S economic weather tends towards extremes. During the 1980s and early 1990s hyperinflation raged. From late 2014 to late 2016 GDP shrank by 7.7%, its longest contraction ever. Conditions are now enervatingly calm. GDP grew by just 1% last year, and in June the central bank cut its growth forecast for 2018 from 2.6% to 1.6%. A truckers’ strike in May and uncertainty about the outcome of elections in October have curbed economic activity, weakened the currency and pushed up government-bond yields. Читать дальше...

Taking party parsley to parliament

“RELAX. Unwind. Centre. Enhance.” These hippy-dippy blandishments will appear in big bright letters on government-owned shops in Nova Scotia, a province in Canada’s north-east. They will add colour to outlets that otherwise resemble post offices. Business will begin on October 17th, when the sale of recreational cannabis will become legal across Canada. In the western province of Alberta, Tokyo Smoke, a private-sector firm, plans to open pot shops that are more like hipster cafés. Читать дальше...

ONE morning this year, in a windowless modern courtroom, Jorge Alberto Rodríguez faced justice. He was accused of driving a stolen car with changed number plates. The judge began by explaining his rights to him. His lawyer then tried to trip up the policemen whom the prosecution had produced as witnesses. To no avail: after an adjournment to allow a missing defence witness to appear via video link, the judge found Mr Rodríguez guilty. That seemed to square with the evidence. Having been on bail for the nine months since his arrest... Читать дальше...

COWS, sheep, pigs and llamas are the stars of ExpoRural, Argentina’s biggest agricultural show, which took place on July 18th-29th. They made a racket in their stalls at a Buenos Aires showground as their owners brushed and vacuumed them to prepare for a barnyard-themed beauty contest. Outside, spectators filled a grandstand to watch Hereford bulls parade before a judge, the beasts’ hooves sinking into the mud. Nearby, Toyota, Ford and other manufacturers showed off new 4x4 pickup trucks. House-sized combine harvesters loomed over the crowd.

IN SOME democracies, politicians must be cajoled into spending money on armour and missiles rather than schools and hospitals. Not in America. The $716bn defence bill for 2019 now passing through Congress provides for an even faster arms build-up, of ships and submarines in particular, than President Donald Trump’s administration proposed.

STATISTICAL releases seldom propel presidents onto the White House lawn for press conferences. But on July 27th President Donald Trump was “thrilled” to announce that America’s economy grew by the “amazing” rate of 4.1% in the second quarter of 2018—enough to put it on track for average annual growth of over 3%. Most important, he bragged, “these numbers are very, very sustainable.”

WITH their German and Austrian ancestry, midwesterners lovingly cultivate many traditions brought from their Heimat. In autumn gallons of beer and brats are consumed at Oktoberfests, to the sound of polka bands. Christkindl markets follow in December. But perhaps the most rarefied and labour-intensive import from Mitteleuropa to the Midwest was the care of 20 Lipizzans that Tempel Smith, a steel magnate, brought from Austria to Illinois 60 years ago. Known outside America as Lipizzaners, they are Europe’s oldest and finest horse breed. Читать дальше...

IN MARCH 2011 a tsunami engulfed the Fukushima power plant in Japan, ultimately causing a meltdown. The worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, it was a devastating blow to an industry that has been in the doldrums since the 1980s. Nuclear plants closed around the world. The amount of electricity generated by nuclear power plunged 11% in two years and has not recovered since. Within this declining industry, one country now dominates the market for design and export of nuclear plants: Russia.

ON SOME Swedish trains, passengers carry their e-tickets in their hands—literally. About 3,000 Swedes have opted to insert grain-of-rice-sized microchips beneath the skin between their thumbs and index fingers. The chips, which cost around $150, can hold personal details, credit-card numbers and medical records. They rely on Radio Frequency ID (RFID), a technology already used in payment cards, tickets and passports.

ONE morning a history teacher wakes up in Kiev to find himself elected president of Ukraine—thanks to a video secretly recorded by a pupil and uploaded to YouTube. It shows the teacher cursing Ukraine’s political class for their lies and its people for their indifference. “Our politicians don’t know history, but they are brilliant mathematicians: they all know how to add, divide and multiply their wealth,” he tells a colleague. The video goes viral, and a local oligarch-prime minister backs him in the hope of gaining a puppet. Читать дальше...

A VISITOR to Germany this summer will find a country living well. Gentle chit-chat and the clink of glasses murmur from sun-dappled beer gardens. Barges laden with exports chug up the Rhine. Prosperous vacationers travel to lakes and seaside resorts in new cars and slick, reliable trains. Yet striking up a conversation with one of these seemingly contented locals, the traveller may well be told that the country is going to the dogs. The discussion might begin with disconsolate reflections on the... Читать дальше...

“OUR mission is what drives us to do everything possible to expand human potential.” As a credo, it sounds suitably inspiring. But which member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average has this as a mission statement? And which company says that “our purpose unifies us in a common cause and growth strategy of improving more consumers’ lives in small but meaningful ways each day?”

A BRANCH of Renaissance, a Japanese chain of fitness centres, would not seem the likeliest place to find crowds of the elderly, but they abound. Older women chat as they leave the facilities with wet hair; a couple of seniors sit in the lounge reading books and sipping coffee. The lounge is something the chain introduced with the grey-haired in mind. “Our older clients like community and hospitality,” says Naoki Takazaka of Renaissance. All staff must make time to chat with them.

Cryptohipster joins the grid

TEPCO, Japan’s largest energy firm, is an unlikely advocate of techno-anarchy. The firm is best known for the meltdown at its Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear-power plant in 2011, during which its buttoned-down executives showed corporate Japan at its most stultified. Yet it is trying to reinvent itself as a pioneer of one of the edgiest forms of energy. It is embracing blockchain technology with an aim, no less, of overthrowing the old order in the electricity business to make it more decentralised. Читать дальше...

Cream of the crop

THE humble oat doesn’t exactly ooze Instagrammable cool. Yet it is fast becoming the star in trendy coffee shops, favoured by baristas as their faux milk of choice thanks to its “mouthfeel”, taste and ability to foam and be swirled into “latté art”. Demand for alternatives to dairy has accelerated over the past six months, says Robert Robinson, the co-founder of Notes, one coffee chain in London where oat milk has become the firm favourite over soya and almond. “It... Читать дальше...

NOBODY likes it when a taxi takes longer than expected to arrive. But that is what is happening with self-driving cars. Building a vehicle that can handle a busy street, with cyclists, pedestrians, roadworks and emergency vehicles, is a tall order. In March a pedestrian was killed in Tempe, Arizona when a self-driving Uber vehicle failed to spot her as she wheeled her bicycle across an empty road at night, and the vehicle’s safety driver failed to hit the brakes. There is a growing sense that the technology has... Читать дальше...

SENSETIME, the world’s most valuable artificial-intelligence startup, was not one to “bow and scrape for five pecks of rice”, said Tang Xiaoou, one of its co-founders, last September. Yet within two months the proud firm, which is worth $4.5bn, had buckled and taken investment from Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce titan. For ambitious entrepreneurs, it was all of a piece with a bleak scene that Mr Tang had described: “Google and Facebook ahead of you; behind you, a gaggle of small companies thinking of copying you. Читать дальше...

IN THE end, it wasn’t enough, at least for now. On July 31st Apple announced results for its third quarter that handily beat analysts’ expectations. Revenues rose by 17% compared with the same period in 2017, and profits were 32% higher. The firm’s shares jumped by nearly 4% in after-hours trading. But Apple did not quite manage to become the world’s first widely held listed company with a market capitalisation of $1trn (see chart).

THE number of chemicals that might come into contact with a human being is staggering. The European Chemical Agency (ECHA) recognises over 130,000 molecules. Its American counterpart recognises 85,000. Testing all of these for toxicity is well-nigh impossible. Animal testing, in particular, is controversial, slow, costly and often cruel. Nor is it reliable. Its results are often irreproducible.

THE first time Mary Ellis, then Wilkins, saw the sleek small fighter aircraft parked in the distance on a runway, she fell in love. Perhaps it sounded like nonsense, to fall for an aeroplane. But when she came to make her first flight in one, as a 25-year-old pilot ferrying aircraft between Britain’s airfields in the second world war, she knew for certain.

Noseda lights the fire

THE birth of Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), in 1931, was modest, not to say eccentric. Milton Schwartz, a local violinist, later described being approached by a “seedy-looking person in an old coat” who announced: “I am here to form a symphony orchestra. I just heard you play and I like you very much.” 

The person was Hans Kindler, then the principal cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Kindler was well-respected, but his reputation—and those of several subsequent music directors... Читать дальше...

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. By Adam Tooze. Viking; 720 pages; $35. Allen Lane; £30.