In big ways and small, China is making its presence felt across the continent IN CRISP white uniforms and standing to attention beneath a fluttering red flag with five golden stars, the sailors on board the People’s Liberation Army ships setting sail for Djibouti on July 11th represent a significant step for China. When they arrive they will open the Middle Kingdom’s first military base abroad s..
Loyalty between relatives has the power to poison both reputations and nations The hereditary principle is not just unAmerican but harms the children of great men, Bengamin Franklin declared soon after the revolutionary war, rumors flew of plots to establish a new aristocracy with George Washington at its head. To honor parents is reasonable, Franklin averred. But to reward descendants for an ac..
Privatization can increase efficiency and spur investment. It can also go wrong Donald Trump ran for office promising to spur the private sector to rebuild America's roads, bridges and airports. But it seems that Republicans want to start their modernization in the sky. On June 21st House Republicans unveiled a bill that would privatize air-traffic control, a policy the president announced earli..
While the polar regions have many similarities, they are also "polar opposites" metaphorically as well as literally in many ways. The Arctic, centered on the North Pole - Sea surrounded by landThe Antarctic centered on the South Pole - Land surrounded by sea The fundamental difference is the reason for many of the other differences between the two regions. North Pole Where? At sea - 700km to nea..
A travel ban for American citizens to North Korea may be in the offing. "How safe is it? Extremely safe!" So read the guidance for North Korea on the website of Young Pioneer Tours when Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old American student, signed up for a five day trip to North Korea in December 2015. The travel company based in China is one of a handful that offer tightly marshaled circuits around mos..
But he will still have to face down a challenge from the street FLORENCE LEHERICY is a nurse, but on Monday she is likely to start a new career as a parliamentary deputy for Calvados, in northern France. Jean-Marie Fiévet, a fireman, will join her from a constituency in Deux Sèvres in the west. Both are political novices. They belong to La République en Marche! (LRM), the movement behind Emmanue..
An online journal encourages economists to own up to past blunders A newspaper cannot publish for 174 years without some mistakes. This one has made its share. We thought Britain was safe in the European exchange-rate mechanism just weeks before it crashed out; we opined, in 1997, that Indonesia was well placed to avoid financial crisis; we noted in 1999 that oil, at $10 per barrel, might well r..
The Conservatives' botched campaign will bring chaos - and opportunities Her political career has been defined by caution. So it is cruel for Theresa May, and delicious for her enemies, that it may have been ended by one big, disastrous gamble. Eight weeks ago she called a snap election, risking her government for the chance to bank a bigger majority against an apparently shambolic Labour opposi..
Is the latest frenzy like tulipmania, a gold rush or the dotcom boom? Markets frequently froth and bubble, but the boom in bitcoin, a digital currency, is extraordinary. Although its price is down from an all-time high of $2,420 on May 24th, it has more than doubled in just two months. Anyone clever or lucky enough to have bought $1,000 of bitcoins in July 2010, when the price stood at $0.05, wo..
More governments see its sugar-laden products as a scourge Few companies are as defined by a single product as Coca-Cola. The firm has sold the sweet dark soda since 1886. At its headquarters in Atlanta, archives house the advertisements that sowed Coke in the world's consciousness: posters urging consumers to "Have a Coke and a Smile"; Norman Rockwell's 1935 painting of a boy fishing, Coke bott..
It has also managed to maintain the share of cash going to labor What does it take for an American industrial champion to succeed in an age of globalization and impatient investors? Some observers argue that it has become impossible. The world is just too nasty and unfair, they bleat. Perhaps they should take a look at Dow Chemical, a firm born in Michigan in 1897 that has hustled hard enough to..
Fresh scandals put the presidency in crisis, but not at risk of an impeachment The giant scandals that broke over Donald Trump's administration, between May 9th and 16th, carried such obvious parallels with the last time a Republican president was disgraced and chased from office that even stunned Republicans found themselves recalling it. The charges against Mr Trump were of a "Watergate size a..
The impulsiveness and shallowness of America's president threaten the economy as well as the rule of law Donald Trump rules over Washington as if he were a king and the White house his court. His displays of dominance, his need to be the center of attention and his impetuousness have a whiff of Henry VIII about them. Fortified by his belief that his extraordinary route to power is proof of the c..
By a landslide As remarkable is how well the country's conservatives did He was imprisoned for months for protesting, then as a student, against the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee in the 1970s. After millions demonstrated for the removal of Park Geun-hye, General Park's daughter, South Koreans voted on May 9th for that former student dissident, Moon Jae-in, to succeed her. Mr Moon has become Sou..
The data economy demands a new approach to antitrust rules A new commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era. These titans - Alphabet (Google's parent company),..