Новости за 09.02.2017

DONALD TRUMP called the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada the “worst trade deal ever approved in this country”. Soon it will become clearer what he intends to do about it. He has three choices: tear it up, bully the United States’ partners into making concessions that merely damage the agreement or go for a renegotiation that benefits all three. 

ABOUT 120,000 types of protein molecule have yielded up their structures to science. That sounds a lot, but it isn’t. The techniques, such as X-ray crystallography and nuclear-magnetic resonance (NMR), which are used to elucidate such structures do not work on all proteins. Some types are hard to produce or purify in the volumes required. Others do not seem to crystallise at all—a prerequisite for probing them with X-rays. As a consequence, those structures that have been determined include representatives... Читать дальше...

IT IS, in one way, the ultimate drone. In another, though, it is the antithesis of what a drone should be. Drones are supposed to laze around in the hive while their sisters collect nectar and pollinate flowers. But pollination is this drone’s very reason for existing.

IT was not an ideal way to mark a silver jubilee. The 25th anniversary of the signing of the Maastricht treaty, which gave life to the idea of a single European currency, fell on February 7th, the same day that the IMF published its annual health-check on the Greek economy. It said most (but not all) of its board favoured more debt relief to get Greece’s public finances in order—an idea quickly trashed by euro-zone officials.

AT FIRST blush, there is little to be excited about. The eighth executive order of Donald Trump’s infant presidency, signed on February 3rd, lists seven “core principles” for regulating America’s financial system. These include the prevention of bail-outs by taxpayers; advancing the American interest in international negotiations; and tidying the unruly thatch of federal regulation. The treasury secretary and regulators must report by early June on how well existing laws fit the bill. “There is... Читать дальше...

DONALD TRUMP’s health-insurance premiums could soon go up, and not just because of his love of burritos. Data-crunchers have found a link between the negativity of someone’s tweets and his risk of dying of heart disease. The education levels of your Facebook friends or the activity on your phone can help reveal how likely you are to repay a loan. Money-managers are rummaging ever more curiously through customers’ digital lives.

TRUMPISM is in part an expression of American exhaustion at bearing burdens it first took up 70 years ago. Donald Trump has moaned less about the dollar than about shirking NATO allies or cheating trade partners. Yet the dollar standard is one of the most vulnerable pillars of global stability. And the world is far from ready for America to ditch its global financial role.

An area of darkness

FACTS about the North Korean economy are not so much alternative as non-existent. The country has never published a statistical yearbook. If it did, no one would believe it. Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, calls analysis of its economy “essentially pre-quantitative”.

The most-cited estimate of the size of the economy comes from South Korea’s central bank. Its methodology is opaque but is based, at least in part, on the... Читать дальше...

DEMOCRACY is in decline around the world, according to Freedom House, a think-tank. Only 45% of countries are considered free today, and their number is slipping. Liberty is in retreat in the world of business, too. The idea that firms should be controlled by diverse shareholders who exercise one vote per share is increasingly viewed as redundant or even dangerous.

SOMETIMES Hekmatullah, a 32-year-old Afghan, has to choose between food and connectivity. “I need to stay in touch with my wife back home,” he says, sitting in a grubby tent in the Oinofyta migrant camp, near Athens. Because Wi-Fi rarely works there, he has to buy mobile-phone credit. And that means he and his fellow travellers—his sister, her friend and five children—sometimes go hungry.

Side by side, again

AMONG the books said to be by the bedside of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, is “The Art of the Deal”, Donald Trump’s autobiographical ode to sharp-elbowed capitalism. Mr Abe appeared to borrow from the book’s brash credo last November: while the rest of the world was still gasping at Mr Trump’s election, Mr Abe jumped on a plane and went to meet the president-elect. It was Mr Trump’s first meeting with a foreign leader after his election. As a gift, Mr Abe brought a gold-plated golf club. Читать дальше...

IT HAD already been looking grim: communist insurgents were saying they would abandon a six-month-old ceasefire on February 10th because the government was refusing to free some 400 captured comrades. Then, on February 1st, communist guerrillas waylaid and murdered three unarmed soldiers in civilian clothes, said the army. The police found 76 bullet wounds in the corpses. The killings enraged Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines’ president, who vented: “What, is a soldier a dog?” In the end it was... Читать дальше...

IN A speech to London’s Constitutional Club in 1931, Winston Churchill poured scorn on the idea of India. “India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the equator,” he spat, a slur that invites such uniform disagreement from Indians as to disprove itself. Less well known, but more worthy of debate, is the previous line of Churchill’s speech: “India is no more a political personality than Europe,” he contended.

THE ritual chants of “Death to America” had grown fainter in recent years. The feverish crowds had thinned. Some demonstrators seemed to wave Uncle Sam banners less to jeer America than to cheer it. Yet thanks to Donald Trump this year’s annual rally to commemorate Islamic Revolution Day on February 10th in Tehran looks set to be one of Iran’s biggest. Mr Trump’s tweets have upset even the secular middle class (for example: “Iran is playing with fire—they don’t appreciate how ‘kind’ President Obama was to them. Читать дальше...

Powerful enemies

WHEN a middle-aged Kenyan called Feisal Mohamed Ali was found guilty in July 2016 of possessing more than two tonnes of ivory and sentenced to 20 years in jail, conservationists welcomed the verdict as a victory for elephant protection. An “ivory kingpin” had received his comeuppance, dealing a powerful blow to those behind a scourge that threatens the survival of Africa’s elephants.

Yet wildlife and drugs investigators in Kenya and America believe that Ali may... Читать дальше...

THE settlement of Beit El (pictured) sits on a lonely hilltop deep inside the West Bank, between the river Jordan and the Green Line that divided Israel from its Arab foes after a ceasefire in 1949. Built on private land seized by the Israeli army in the name of security in 1970 but soon made available for settlement by Israeli civilians, it has grown into a community of 6,500 people, including 350 students at its yeshiva (Jewish religious academy). What is left of an old perimeter fence stands rusting; a new one... Читать дальше...

IT WAS a moment to make French nationalists spill their pastis. Marine Le Pen, a populist seeking the presidency of France, launched her campaign this month by praising American voters, saying they had “shown the way” by electing Donald Trump. After all, Mr Trump is a star of American reality television who subsists on Diet Coke, Big Macs and exceedingly well-done steaks. France uses legal quotas to keep Hollywood films and American TV hits at bay, and made a national hero of a sheep farmer (now... Читать дальше...

MOST of the debate about immigration in America concerns the illegal sort. But legal immigration can be controversial too, even when the migrants in question have either an unusual talent for writing computer code or improbably long legs. The H-1B visa programme is aimed at skilled workers in “speciality occupations”, mostly medicine and information technology (though fashion models can also qualify). Currently the programme is limited to 85,000 visas a year, with 20,000 carved out for those who... Читать дальше...

BARACK OBAMA was bad for satirists, even if few seemed to mind. Moderate, upstanding and cool, the first black president gave close observers of human ridiculousness little to work with. Most gave up and welcomed him admiringly onto their shows. “I can’t believe you’re leaving before me,” Mr Obama, appearing on “The Daily Show” for the seventh time, told its outgoing host, Jon Stewart. It was not the relationship to power the acerbic Mr Stewart would have liked. Thankfully, Donald Trump is making satire great again. Читать дальше...

AMERICA, along with its new president, is getting a crash course in the role of the federal judiciary. On February 3rd, one week after Donald Trump issued an executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries and suspending America’s refugee programme, a federal district court in Seattle temporarily halted Mr Trump’s plan. Judge James Robart said there is “no support” for the government’s argument that the ban made America safer. Four days later, at least two members of a three-judge... Читать дальше...

“THERE’S something wrong with our country,” began an open letter to the Dutch people published last month. It went on to moan about those who “abuse our country’s freedom to cause havoc, when they came to our country precisely for that freedom”, and warned them to “act normal or leave”. The author was not Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-Muslim Freedom Party (PVV), but Mark Rutte, leader of the free-thinking Liberals (VVD) and prime minister of a country that presents itself as one of the most tolerant in the world. Читать дальше...

IF ANYTHING deserves the label “wasteland”, this place does. Pylons and tangles of bramble high as houses tower over a lonely oil drum and a collapsed metal fence. In the distance planes approaching Stansted airport whine; refrigerator units at a nearby food-processing factory hum. Set in the frozen mud is a mosaic of industrial detritus, bits of brick and pipe, beer cans and a discarded condom wrapper. A jaunty yellow arrow informs passers-by that this scraggy parcel of Harlow, in Essex, is a public right-of-way. Читать дальше...

India had Gandhi, Britain has Farage

IF THE current crop of Whitehall mandarins think they have their hands full negotiating an exit from the European Union, they should spare a thought for their predecessors. Britain’s withdrawal from its empire in the 1940s-60s required its civil service to negotiate exits from dozens of different territories, often in months. The arch-imperialist Winston Churchill called it a “scuttle”.

Yet the winding up of empire for the most part achieved what many considered impossible... Читать дальше...

FOR couch potatoes and bookworms, filmgoers and music-lovers, this is a golden age. The internet provides an almost endlessly long menu of options to meet the almost infinitely quirky tastes of humanity. Smartphones have put all kinds of entertainment—from classic rock to prestige television to silly YouTube clips—at the fingertips of billions across the planet.