Новости за 02.07.2020

IN HIS FOUR years as education secretary, Michael Gove learned that no subject on the curriculum was as contentious as history. As he acknowledged in a speech in 2013, it can be an “ideological battleground” for “contending armies”. “There may, for all I know, be rival Whig and Marxist schools fighting a war of interpretation in chemistry or food technology, but their partisans don’t tend to command much column space in the broadsheets”.

AT THE MID-JUNE meeting of the Bank of England’s rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee, eight of the committee’s nine members voted to expand quantitative easing by £100bn ($124bn) to provide more support for the economic recovery while one, the bank’s chief economist Andy Haldane, voted against. In a speech on June 30th Mr Haldane set out his reasoning. It makes for cheery reading at a time when most British economy-watchers are still stressing the downside risks to output and inflation. April marked the trough for the economy. Читать дальше...

“THE WORST year in the history of aviation” is how the International Air Transport Association (IATA) describes 2020. The global airline-industry body expects carriers’ revenues to fall by half and debt to swell by $120bn to $550bn. To cut costs airlines have grounded planes and put staff on unpaid leave.

MODERN EXECUTIVES are often told they should worry about a lot more than their balance-sheets. They should be aware of their company’s environmental impact, of how well they treat their employees and suppliers, and whether their workforce is sufficiently diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity.

UNMANNED VEHICLES, airborne or earthbound, have been pressed into anti-pandemic service the world over. In Mexican slums they spray disinfectant from the sky. “Shout drones” with loudspeakers scold socially undistanced Americans, Chinese and Europeans. Most consequential, the popularity of contactless provision of food and medical supplies is boosting the drone-delivery business.

YOU WOULD have thought that lockdowns were a bonanza for courier services like FedEx. Not so much, it turns out. On June 30th the American pioneer of express delivery reported that operating profits fell by 64%, year on year, in the three months to May. Although demand from locked-down consumers has ballooned, so have coronavirus-related costs, from extra staff to deeper cleaning of facilities and vehicles. At the same time, a collapse in bulk air cargo pummelled FedEx’s more lucrative line of business. Читать дальше...

Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub

Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub

HISTORY WILL record the Mexican-American summit to take place on July 8th-9th as one of the odder ones. It will be a rare face-to-face meeting in the covid-19 era, bringing together leaders who are notably reluctant to promote social distancing. (Their countries have bigger caseloads as a result.) President Donald Trump has often bullied Mexico since he announced his candidacy in 2015. Nonetheless, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is often called AMLO, has chosen to make the White House his first... Читать дальше...

Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub

“THE UNTAMED”, a costume martial-arts drama, is one of the most-watched television series in China. Since its online release last year it has been viewed 8bn times. Its heart-throb star, Xiao Zhan (pictured), has gained a legion of fans. In October so many of them crowded an airport in Beijing to see him that they delayed a flight.

Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub

WHEN XI JINPING launched his Belt and Road scheme of global development aid with Chinese characteristics, he needed a country to showcase it. Pakistan seemed the obvious choice. It was China’s only real ally, a security partner on a vulnerable flank. Meanwhile a new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, and his business-friendly Pakistan Muslim League had just come to power pledging big infrastructure projects and an end to the country’s notorious brownouts. In 2015 the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was announced... Читать дальше...

“NOW THE Chinese will know that, when we want to act, we shall act as we wish, without warning,” thundered Arnab Goswami, jabbing a finger towards the camera. “We shall move in stealth, and attack when necessary!” Judging from the triumphalism of this host on Republic TV, a jingoistic private channel, one might have guessed that the Indian army was at the gates of the Forbidden City. But the daring blow he trumpeted was in fact a limp ministerial decree, announcing a ban on TikTok, a popular video-sharing platform... Читать дальше...

IN INDIA, AS elsewhere, TikTok looks like a cornucopia of bright and busy nonsense: an endless, blooming, buzzing confusion of shaky videos and cheap special effects, dispensed free of charge in 15-second doses. But time spent on the app—or on its Chinese-owned peers, all of them abruptly blocked by the government on June 29th—had a way of leading curious users far from the big cities and celebrities that typically define Indian pop culture. Not just TikTok, but also Helo, Likee and Bigo Live... Читать дальше...

FOR SARIYA AL-BITAR, an architect in Syria’s war-torn city of Idlib, the message was devastating. “Your account has been permanently disabled for not following our Facebook Community Standards,” read the note from the social-media giant. “Unfortunately, we won’t be able to reactivate it for any reason.” Fourteen years of family photos, reminiscences and his diary of Syria’s civil war—along with his list of 30,000 followers—were erased. Mr Bitar had tried to be careful. He had not called dead rebels shahids (martyrs) or posted gore. Читать дальше...

“I’M A WOMAN in a land of dicks,” raps Khtek, a Moroccan student, whose first single, “KickOff”, went viral in February. Her lyrics criticise the country’s gaping inequality and stifling political, social and sexual hierarchies. Her tattoos and blue hair defy the kingdom’s traditions. “My rap is a voice for those who don’t have one,” says Khtek, a stage-name which in darija, Morocco’s vernacular, means “your sister”.

IN THE FIRST months of the coronavirus pandemic, Greg Abbott seemed happy to let Texas’s 254 county and 1,214 city authorities take the lead. The state’s vastness—with its widening contrast between rural reaches and exploding metropolises—argued for local decision-making. And the conservative governor had little to gain by organising an economic lockdown that a minority of Republicans considered tantamount to treason. By late March, however, with Texas still relatively unscathed by the virus, Mr Abbott’s calculation changed. Читать дальше...

THE CEASEFIRE is over. A couple of months ago the government suspended its war on the establishment “blob” to focus on covid-19 but, although the epidemic continues to rage, it has taken up arms again. Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, has declared that “a hard rain” is going to fall on the civil service and Mr Johnson has blasted his biggest target to date. In effect he sacked Sir Mark Sedwill, who combined the job of the head of the civil service with that of national security adviser... Читать дальше...

1. Some partygoers tied to coronavirus cluster won't talk to health officials. They'll get subpoenas.  NBC News
2. Coronavirus outbreak linked to NY house party  Eyewitness News ABC7NY
3. Some partygoers tied to coronavirus cluster will get subpoenas  MSN Money
4. Rockland County Issues Subpoenas to Halt Coronavirus Spread After Party  The New York Times
5. Rockland County, Probing New Cluster, Uses Subpoenas as People Resist Contact Tracing  NBC New York
6. View Full... Читать дальше...

DRILLING FOR oil and gas is a contest of man and machine against nature. In America’s shale formations, nature takes the form of rocks, rich in hydrocarbons, buried about a mile (1.6 kilometres) below ground. It is a geologist’s job to find those rocks. It is an engineer’s job to develop the right mix of water, chemicals and drilling technology to “hydraulically fracture” them. One of the core beliefs of America’s shale-fracking revolution, which took off in the late 2000s, is that if you blast enough pressure at the rocks for long enough... Читать дальше...

FACEBOOK WAS first to open its wallet. In April the social network said it would spend $5.7bn on a 9.9% stake in Jio Platforms, the digital arm of Reliance Industries, India’s biggest firm. The investment was followed in short order by nine other entities, including global private-equity (PE) giants such as KKR, as well as Saudi and Emirati sovereign-wealth funds. Collectively, this year foreigners have poured or pledged to pour $15.2bn into Jio. That would give them a combined stake of 25%. Microsoft is rumoured to be next in line. Читать дальше...

LIKE MANY clubs, it is selective. Only the right sort of person may join. It has a spokesman, a financial secretary and an interim chairman. But in other ways the Black Street Boys is rather different from, say, a club in Pall Mall or Augusta, Georgia. Members sport matching tattoos of the harp symbol used on bottles of Guinness. And instead of spending their days playing bridge or golf, the Black Street Boys talk about breaking into cars, picking pockets or robbing people at knifepoint.

Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub

IN A PRISON outside Istanbul, Osman, an inmate held in solitary confinement, finds two snails nestled in his lunch. Longing for company, he decides to look after the gastropods, feeding them lettuce and rice. The snails reward him—with a song. “In some kitchens, we’d end up in a pot with garlic butter and seasoning,” they chant. “Our luck to be here with Osman, a man of such honour and reason.” But even a snail is bound to find prison life dreary. “It’s all very slow,” one sings, “even for me.”