And its inventor has just stepped down In December 1989 Guido van Rossum, a Dutch computer scientist, set himself a Christmas project. Irked by shortcomings in other programming languages, he wanted to build his own. His principle were simple. First, it should be easy to read. Rather than sprawling over line-endings and being broken up by a tangle of curly braces, each chunk would be surrounded ..
Nāga is the Sanskrit and Pali word for a deity or class of entity or being taking the form of a very great snake, specifically the king cobra, found in the Indian religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. Hinduism The mythological serpent race that took form as cobras often can be found in Hindu iconography. The nāgas are described as the powerful, splendid, wonderful and proud semidivine rac..
But America's online giants have not much more to fear from regulators"The making of a big tech reckoning," blared one typical headline earlier this year. "The case for breaking up Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google," touted another. Based on media coverage alone it might seem as if the tech titans are in trouble. Add in the news, on July 18th, of a record €4.3bn fine for Google by the European ..
The American-led trade order is in danger. But it may yet be saved The headquarters of the World Trade Organization (WTO), on the banks of Lake Geneva, once belonged to the League of Nations. That ill-fated body was crippled by American isolationism. The building's occupant today is also at the mercy of decisions taken in Washington. President Donald Trump has circumvented the WTO to impose tari..
How Russian prosecuted its cyber-war on American democracy If all America can be said to have been under attack when hijackers turned four airliners on it in 2001, the assault Russian agents launched on American democracy in 2016 represented a full-blown war. The 12 fresh charges against Russian intelligence officers unveiled by the deputy attorney-general, Rod Rosenstein, on July 13th, offered ..
The Irish border remains the biggest obstacle to a deal The reaction in the rest of the European Union to the Chequers proposals this week was muted, partly because of the political turmoil in Britain and partly because the EU was waiting to see the details in the government's Brexit white paper, which is due to be published on July 12th. But European negotiators are relieved that Theresa May se..
That should worry Europe, America and the world America did as much as any country to create post-war Europe. In the late 1940s and the 1950s it was midwife to the treaty that became the European Union and to NATO, the military alliance that won the cold war. The United States acted partly out of charity, but chiefly out of self-interest. Having been dragged into two world wars, it wanted to ban..
If he cannot arm-twist OPEC, he may unleash America's Special Petroleum Reserve It used to be said that America's shale producers were the new "swing factor" in global oil markets. It turns out that role is being taken by America's president. At a time when oil prices are at three-and-a-half-year highs, markets are being buffeted by three countervailing forces unleashed by President Donald Trump..
Of the 16 teams most likely to qualify, 14 have reached the knockout rounds It will go down as one of the greatest upsets in World Cup history. On June 27th Germany exited the tournament at the group stage, marking the first time that the country had failed to reach the quarter-finals since 1938. The debacle was all the more astounding for its farcical conclusion. The reigning world champions lo..
Wealth, size and interest in football explain almost half of countries' international performance. The rest can be taught On a sunny Saturday afternoon, within kicking distance of Uruguay's national football stadium, 14 seven-year-olds walk onto a bumpy pitch. They are cheered by their parents, who are also the coaches, kit-washers and caterers. The match is one of hundreds played every weekend ..
Even if the president strikes a deal with North Korea, his approach will harm America and the world Picture this: next week in Singapore President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un crown their summit with a pledge to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons. A few days later America and China step back from a trade war, promising to settle their differences. And in the summer, as sanctions bite, t..
An excerpt and interview with Andrew Ferguson, author of "The Rise of Big Data Policing" "Minority Report", a 2002 film directed by Steven Spielberg, features a squad of police officers who arrest people for murders they are predicted to commit. The film was science fiction; yet police departments around the world increasingly use predictive analytics to identify people who might become perpetra..
This will leave everyone poorer President Donald Trump is about to find out how easy trade wars are to win. In the name of America's national security, on May 31st he announced tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico and the European Union. From midnight that same day, trade flows worth $23bn in 2017 faced duties of up to 25%. Tariffs are a tax. These ones are supposed to hand market p..
Addressing hardships requires both redistribution and regulation, writes Swati Dhingra of the London School of Economics As early as 1941, Paul Samuelson, a Nobel prize-winning trade economist, argued that globalization causes economic hardship for some. He continued to write that the losers from globalization need to be compensated by the gainers to address the drastic increase in inequality we..
Their second summit in a month may have put détente with America back on track There is an old saying about buses; you wait for one for ages, then two come along at once. The same may now be said of inter-Korean summits. On May 26th Moon Jae-in, South Korea's president, and Kim Jong Un, the North's leader, added another surprise to a week already rich in them by meeting for informal talks on the..