Of all the weapons in Vladimir Putin’s arsenal, the most strategically crucial has proved to be not hypersonic missiles but the motley fleet of oil tankers that have allowed Russian oil to keep flowing to international markets. Oil dollars have been the lifeblood of Russia’s war economy during four years of conflict. And the West’s
The BBC reported terrible news last week about polar bears: they are thriving. This is very annoying of them as it goes against the interests of environmental activists, polar bears being the very emblem, mascot and clickbait of climate change cataclysm. But the bears’ stubborn refusal to get the memo and starve has become too
It was a weekend of mixed emotions for the European Union. There was the news from Donald Trump that he will impose a 10 percent tariff on eight European countries in retaliation for their opposition to his plans to take control of Greenland. But on a brighter note, the EU finally signed the Mercosur trade
Last year might have proved a good time to own shares in the chip-maker Nvidia, along with the booming American tech giants. Or a piece of the defense manufacturers as the world re-arms. Or to hold a position in some of the rapidly growing economies of South America or Asia, or even one of the
“Help is on the way,” promised Donald Trump to the people of Iran defying the Islamic Republic. In the same social media post, the President, characteristically light on detail, also urged Iranian protesters to take over the institutions of the Islamic Republic (presumably by force) and to keep a note of the names and numbers
Donald Trump’s dramatic intervention in Venezuela has achieved much more than to bring a brutal, corrupt dictator and drug trafficker to justice in an American court of law, something which no amount of human rights declarations, international law or indictments in the international criminal court were able to achieve. It took President Trump deciding it
In a city awash with visual propaganda, one mural in Caracas is especially striking for the western visitor. In it, Jesus Christ stands alongside Imam Mahdi, a prophesied messianic figure who many Muslims believe will appear with Christ during the End Times to restore peace and justice to the world. There is only one Venezuelan
To walk out of a public performance before the end – be it the theater, a concert or a lecture – is not the done thing. It’s considered an antisocial act that disrupts the performance and thus other people’s pleasure. To walk out provokes tuts of disapproval and scowls of indignation. And yet while it’s
In 1980, two academics made a bet. Julian Simon, professor of economics at the University of Illinois, predicted that the prices of chromium, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten would fall over the coming decade. Paul Ehrlich, professor of population studies at Stanford University, predicted that prices would rise. What Simon and Ehrlich were really betting
The foundation of science is based on the humility to learn, not the arrogance of expertise. When comet experts argued that the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS must be a familiar water-rich comet as soon as it was discovered in July, they behaved like artificial intelligence systems: only able to reflect the data sets they were trained
Peter Thiel has been described variously as “America’s leading public intellectual,” the “architect of Silicon Valley’s contemporary ethos” or as an “incoherent and alarmingly super-nationalistic” malevolent force. The PayPal and Palantir founder, a prominent early supporter of Donald Trump, is one of the world’s richest and most influential men. Throughout his career, his principal concern
Queen Camilla loves a book. Almost any book will do. “There’s something so tactile about a book,” she says. “I like the smell of the pages when you open the cover. I like turning the pages and folding down a corner ready for next time…” The Queen, 78, has loved books for as long as
It was months before the difficulty with Marnie and Addison was talked about, or even alluded to. The sight of their names in emails circulated around the department was enough to cause a pall to settle on everything, like ash from fires only just put out. Besides, the nature of the difficulty (that was the
Most of us indulge in mild fortune-telling. We think “If the light changes before I count to five, I’ll get the job” or “If the solitaire hand comes out my tests will be negative’, and so on. We understand prophecy as the ability to foretell the future. But biblically, prophecy was not prediction but castigation.
No writer has done more than Jung Chang to bring the horrors of Maoist China to the attention of western readers. In her monumental memoir Wild Swans (1991), she recounted the Chinese Communist Revolution, the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution through the stories of her grandmother, her mother and herself. Its influence was enormous:
The Amazon reviews for David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity don’t alert you to the fact that this is a book on theoretical physics. They sound more like a weepy divorcé’s YouTube comments below a Mark Knopfler guitar solo. “I didn’t so much read it,’ says one. “It read me.’ ‘I was honestly sad when
There is no better time to read a Sherlock Holmes story than a winter evening. As the rain lashes against the windows and the fog descends, we can imagine ourselves sitting companionably with the great detective and the good doctor around the Baker Street hearth, waiting for the step of a visitor upon the stair.
“Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” With this stern admonition, the Church has long been a fervent defender of marriage. But as religion has faded as a social force, so too has marriage. Does it much matter if people choose to shack up together instead of tying the knot? What
German teachers are a privileged species. Most of us enjoy the status of a Beamter, a tenured civil servant. We can be dismissed only after a serious criminal conviction, we are exempt from social-insurance contributions and even our mortgage rates are lower. Such comfort discourages dissent. Yet, after more than 25 years as a pampered
A new drinks-party-shirking method has taken hold in society. I call it “Lastminute.non.” Previously, the way of not going to someone’s party was to write a polite message of refusal at least a week in advance, giving the host or hostess ample time to absorb the sad but inevitable fact that various friends would not
