Новости за 09.02.2017

ON FEBRUARY 6th Israel aimed a nasty blow at what remains of its peace process with the nearly 5m Palestinians who live in the territories it seized 50 years ago. Its coalition government, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, voted a bill through the Knesset which allows, in certain circumstances, for the legalisation of Jewish construction on privately owned Palestinian land. One effect could be that around 50 “outposts”, scattered around the West Bank and illegal under Israeli law, will now be safe from the threat of demolition. Читать дальше...

THESE are exhilarating times for the 52% of British voters who last summer opted to leave the European Union. After months of rumours that an anti-Brexit counter-revolution was being plotted by the Europhile establishment (who even won a Supreme Court case forbidding the government from triggering Brexit without Parliament’s permission), it at last looks as if independence beckons. This week the House of Commons voted to approve the process of withdrawal. The prime minister, Theresa May, will invoke Article 50 of the EU treaty next month... Читать дальше...

THE prospect of deregulation helps explain why, since Donald Trump’s election, no bit of the American stockmarket has done better than financial firms. On February 3rd their shares climbed again as Mr Trump signed an executive order asking the Treasury to conduct a 120-day review of America’s financial regulations, including the Dodd-Frank act put in place after the financial crisis of 2007-08, to assess whether these rules meet a set of “core principles”.

Print section Print Rubric:  In its integration, India is somewhere between the United States and the European Union Print Headline:  Country or continent? Print Fly Title:  Banyan UK Only Article:  ... Читать дальше...

Print section Print Rubric:  Technology has made migrating to Europe easier. Over time, it will also make migration easier to manage Print Headline:  Migrants with mobiles Print Fly Title:  Refugees and technology UK Only Article: ... Читать дальше...

Print section Print Rubric:  How to break up and stay friends Print Headline:  The art of leaving Print Fly Title:  Brexit and the lessons of empire UK Only Article:  standard article ... Читать дальше...

Print section Print Rubric:  Britain is about to be hit with a colossal bill that could blow up the Brexit negotiations Print Headline:  Time to pick up the tab Print Fly Title:  The European Union’s exit charge UK Only Article: ... Читать дальше...

ON FEBRUARY 6th Israel aimed a nasty blow at what remains of its peace process with the nearly 5m Palestinians who live in the territories it seized 50 years ago. Its coalition government, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, voted a bill through the Knesset which allows, in certain circumstances, for the legalisation of Jewish construction on privately owned Palestinian land. One effect could be that around 50 “outposts”, scattered around the West Bank and illegal under Israeli law, will now be safe from the threat of demolition. 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.

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...

Assailed by aliens, and reviewers

CHINESE cinema-goers are used to the government’s tight grip on the film industry. In deference to the Communist Party’s qualms, filmmakers eschew happy endings for teenage lovers or homosexuals, let alone anything critical of the party itself. To boost audiences for home-grown productions, the authorities have recently tried a new form of control: clamping down on unflattering reviews. Long-suffering film fans see this as a step too far.

Their anger... Читать дальше...

GOING by the numbers, China’s notoriously hazardous coal mines have become distinctly less perilous in recent years. In January the government said that 538 people had died in mining accidents in 2016, a mere 11% of the death toll a decade earlier. The number of deaths per million tonnes of coal extracted was the lowest ever. For Chinese industry generally, safety data are improving. In 2002 140,000 people died in work-related accidents. Last year the toll was less than one-third of that. On roads there has been similar progress... Читать дальше...

CHINA’S favourite chat-show host has had an extraordinary career. Jin Xing was the country’s most successful dancer before becoming a colonel in an army entertainment troupe. He won fame in America, where the New York Times called him “a Chinese genius”. He trained dancers in Brussels and Rome, before returning to China for a sex-change operation. As a woman, she resumed her career as a ballerina, set up the country’s first private ballet company, ran a bar in Beijing and married a German businessman. Читать дальше...

AS HE patrolled the aisles of his shops in Leeds, Boroughbridge or wherever he might be, in his yellow and black Morrisons tie and his short-sleeved “get cracking” shirt, Ken Morrison’s eyes would gleam with happiness. He was a grocer, the best job in the world. Better still, he was the best grocer in Yorkshire, God’s own county, where folk didn’t part with their money without a good excuse. The fact that his food-supermarket chain had also grown into Britain’s fourth-biggest, up from his father’s egg-and-butter stall in Bradford market... Читать дальше...

The End of Eddy. By Edouard Louis. Translated by Michael Lucey. Harvill Secker; 192 pages; £12.99. To be published in America by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in May; $25.

The pocket gopher’s pocket plaza

The Evolution Underground: Burrows, Bunkers, and the Marvellous Subterranean World Beneath Our Feet. By Anthony Martin. Pegasus; 405 pages; $28.95. To be published in Britain by W.W. Norton in March; £22.99.

IN THE card game of survival, the pocket gopher has been dealt a royal flush. When Mount St Helens erupted in 1980 and vaporised 600 square kilometres (230 square miles) of the Cascade mountains in Washington state, the small mammal hunkered down in its burrow... Читать дальше...

Civil Wars: A History in Ideas. By David Armitage. Knopf, 349 pages; $27.95. Yale University Press; £18.99.

Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe. By Kapka Kassabova. Granta; 379 pages; £14.99. To be published in America by Graywolf in September; $16.

THE photograph of two skinny, half-naked 20-somethings defined a generation. “Lutz and Alex Sitting in the Trees” was a near perfect evocation of the counterculturalism of rave in the early 1990s. The image was so iconic that even people who have never heard of Wolfgang Tillmans, the German artist who shot it, would recognise it right away. The photograph was published ina cool British magazine in 1992, but Mr Tillmans is a hard worker with a prodigious output and he has done a great deal since then. Читать дальше...

Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation. By Alan Burdick. Simon & Schuster; 320 pages; $28.

STATISTICS has not, traditionally, been an exciting word. Its most common prefix is the word “dry”. Ask people what they think of statistics, or try to use some in an argument, and you will often get the quote attributed to Benjamin Disraeli that lists them alongside lies and damned lies. That is a shame: tables of figures may look dull, but they are a better guide to what is happening in the world than anything on television or in the press.

Investing in social goods

Schumpeter perpetuated the myth that there is an inherent conflict for investors between doing well and doing good (January 21st). Asking whether it is shareholders or “the people” who matter most is a false dichotomy. Another view sees financial returns to shareholders deriving from broader contributions to society. In Canada consumers trust and support brands that are consistent with their broader values around society’s well-being, environmental responsibility and community contribution. Читать дальше...

AS HE patrolled the aisles of his shops in Leeds, Boroughbridge or wherever he might be, in his yellow and black Morrisons tie and his short-sleeved “get cracking” shirt, Ken Morrison’s eyes would gleam with happiness. He was a grocer, the best job in the world. Better still, he was the best grocer in Yorkshire, God’s own county, where folk didn’t part with their money without a good excuse. The fact that his food-supermarket chain had also grown into Britain’s fourth-biggest, up from his father’s egg-and-butter stall in Bradford market... Читать дальше...

By Leroy Street Studio Architecture via LPC

It's champagne and caviar tonight for billionaire hedge funder Steven A. Cohen, who received the official go-ahead to build a massive, six-story, single-family mansion at 145 Perry Street Wednesday. The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) voted almost unanimously in favor of the plan despite outcry from local residents and, most notably, Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) who had denounced the... Читать дальше...

Fund maintains Greece’s borrowings could eventually climb to 275% of GDP