Новости за 17.06.2021

AT FIRST THE government focused support—surge vaccination, wastewater testing and the like—where the covid-19 Delta variant (then known as B.1.617.2) had taken hold. Now, it is everywhere, accounting for 90% of cases, and so the support has spread, too; from Bolton and south London to Birmingham, Blackpool, Cheshire, Chester, Liverpool and Warrington. The battle to defeat the variant has been lost. The aim now is to stop cases spiralling.

IN THE YEAR and a half since Annette and Mike Thompson sold their house in Texas and upped sticks for Mexico, they have had few regrets. Now they live in Ajijic, a pretty town by Lake Chapala in the western state of Jalisco. Their large house has a spectacular view over the water, where birds glide in the late afternoon breeze. “The only thing we miss is Tex-Mex food,” says Mrs Thompson.

FOR THE first time in more than a year, this month small groups of children with their backpacks and chatter have trooped into some schools in Mexico City. It is a cautious re-opening. It is up to schools whether or not they open, and only a minority have chosen to do so. Only part of the class attends each day. The same goes for 18 of Mexico’s 31 other states; in the others all schools remain shut. With the pandemic far from over, caution may be understandable. But among the living, children continue to be among its principal victims... Читать дальше...

FOR YEARS Juan and Marta ran a successful transport company in El Salvador that attracted the attention of gangs. Thugs held them at gunpoint and extorted money from them. In 2019 Juan left to claim asylum in Mexico. He was given permission to stay and found work. In April Marta and their three children were allowed to join him. They are thrilled by the prospect of a quieter life in the northern Mexican city of Saltillo. Nothing is as good as at last feeling secure, says Marta. “It gives you back life.”

Latin American migrants... Читать дальше...

ONE YEAR AGO, America’s governors were having a moment. Covid-19 cases were rising, federal leadership was absent and much of the responsibility for fighting the pandemic fell on their shoulders. Before Andrew Cuomo was mired in personal and professional scandals, his daily press briefings were must-see TV. Gretchen Whitmer’s star rose in the Democratic Party after she sparred with Donald Trump, who referred to her as “the woman from Michigan”—a phrase her supporters soon had emblazoned on T-shirts. Читать дальше...

THE ONLY man to serve two terms as governor of the Old Dominion since the civil war was a courtly “Virginia gentleman” and segregationist called Mills Godwin. Hailing from the rural south of the state, whose large black population and racism recalled the Deep South, Godwin claimed that letting black children attend Virginia’s better schools “would be a cancer eating at the very lifeblood of our public education system”. It is interesting to wonder what he would have made of Terry McAuliffe, who... Читать дальше...

ANNUAL MEETINGS of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), America’s largest Protestant denomination, are usually dull. Church representatives, known as “messengers,” debate resolutions about ecclesiological minutiae and hold referendums about referendums. There is a committee on committees that selects officers for a committee on nominations that nominates members of other committees.

THE WEBSITE of 350.org, an environmental group, screams, “We want to end the fossil-fuel industry within the next decade.” The group’s cause célèbre has been halting the completion of Keystone XL, an $8bn pipeline that was intended to transport oil mined from mucky “tar sands” in Canada’s Alberta province over a thousand miles into the American heartland.

RECENTLY CALIFORNIA has been running a lottery to encourage vaccinations against covid-19. Those who have received their jabs can enter to win prizes, including holidays, gift cards and ten grand-prize cheques of $1.5m each. California has also recently won a windfall of its own. Instead of an expected $54bn budget deficit because of the covid-19-induced recession, a roaring stockmarket combined with a federal stimulus has produced a surplus of more than $100bn.

A FAVOURED PASTIME for city dwellers on holiday to quainter towns and villages is to peruse the windows of local property firms and dream of swapping their cramped two-bedroom flat for an entire house and garden. Your correspondent is not immune to the appeal: she gazed wistfully at a pretty house near the Deschutes river in Bend, Oregon, situated among the lakes and peaks of the Cascade mountains (pictured). She dutifully checked the listing price on Zillow, a real-estate platform, only to face grim reality... Читать дальше...

INVESTORS IN COMPANIES issuing high-yield or “junk” debt have had a relatively benign pandemic. Usually such highly leveraged borrowers are stung by economic hardship. During the global financial crisis over a decade ago around a seventh of such firms in America defaulted on their debt in one year. Yet according to Moody’s, a rating agency, less than 9% of them went into default in the year to August 2020, and the rate has continued to drop since. By the end of 2021, a booming recovery should... Читать дальше...

TWENTY YEARS ago Leonard Lauder, the heir to the Estée Lauder beauty empire, observed that during economic downturns consumers liked to sweeten belt-tightening with small indulgences. He called it the “lipstick effect”, after one common pick-me-up. Disappointingly for Italy’s “lipstick valley”, a part of Lombardy that, according to Cosmetica Italia, an industry group, produces 55% of the world’s eye shadows, mascaras, face powder and lipsticks, consumers mostly shunned these little luxuries amid the pandemic recession. Читать дальше...

THE COURSE OF true love never did run smooth. That is particularly true when your lover weighs half a tonne and is wearing steel shoes. At the National Stud in Newmarket, a town in Suffolk widely regarded as the home of thoroughbred racing, it is breeding season. A mare stands in the shade of a stable. Her hooves have been covered with leather boots, to dampen kicks; her head is held by grooms. Tim Lane, director of the stud, calms her. The horses, brushed till they are as shiny as conkers—“they’ve... Читать дальше...

PEOPLE BELIEVE many things, some sensible, some less so. English law regards it as a right to hold and express those beliefs—within reason. In recent years courts have ruled that beliefs in catastrophic climate change, ethical veganism and “the ability to communicate with spirits via mediums” are all “worthy of respect in a democratic society”. In 2019 a tribunal considered yet another, namely “that there are only two sexes…male and female”.

TIMES WERE tough for offline retail before covid-19. Rising costs and tepid sales growth had squeezed margins; online shopping was filching market share. According to the Centre for Retail Research, an analytics firm, by early 2020 high streets had around 50,000 fewer shops than a decade before, a drop of 13%.

DEPENDING ON WHERE you live, June 21st is either the summer or the winter solstice. For some, this is a moment of celebration, accompanied by strange rituals. And among the celebrants are members of the International Metagenomics and Metadesign of Subways and Urban Biomes Consortium (MetaSUB). If, in Bogotá, Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London, Minneapolis or any other of some 60 cities around the world, you see on that day someone furtively swabbing a ticket counter, handrail, turnstile or seat in your local underground-railway station... Читать дальше...

ON DECEMBER 23rd 1938 Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a curator at the East London Museum, in South Africa, dropped by her local fish market. While there, she spotted the most beautiful fish she had ever seen. It was pale mauve, nearly two metres long, and had silvery markings. Though she had no inkling at the time, it turned out to be part of a group called the coelacanths, hitherto believed to have died out with the dinosaurs.

AS ECONOMIES REOPEN, labour shortages are still worsening. In America the number of unfilled vacancies, at 9.3m, has never been so high. Job postings in Canada are 20% above pre-pandemic levels. Even in Europe, slower out of the post-lockdown gates, a growing number of employers complain of how hard it is to find staff. Debates over labour shortages have focused on welfare policy and economic disruption. But the phenomenon has a deeper lesson. It tells us something about the myths of automation.

FROM CUISINE to carmaking, the Japanese way is meticulous. Yet with just over a month to go, the Tokyo Olympics remain anything but. Thanks to covid-19, and Japan’s sluggish vaccinations, it is unclear whether the games, originally due to be held last summer, will let spectators in—if, that is, the event takes place at all. Organisers insist it will. This is nerve-jangling for those hoping to peak at the right moment: the athletes, of course, but also the games’ financial muscle, its corporate sponsors. Читать дальше...

WINNIE MUHONJA has faced many difficulties in her life. Covid-19 is just the latest. Having grown up in Kibera, a huge slum with 300,000 residents in the middle of Nairobi, she is used to the presence of disease and the absence of money. Ms Muhonja, who is 25, has lived with her sister since she left school eight years ago. She has two jobs but cannot afford 1,000 shillings ($9.30) a month to rent a mud house for herself and her one-year-old son. “I just hope one day I'll get a chance to get out of Kibera,” Ms Muhonja says. Читать дальше...

IT IS MORE than a year since Mohammad Sharif Uddin leafed through a book at the National Library or wandered beneath Singapore’s skyscrapers, two of his favourite pastimes. Since early 2020 migrant workers such as Mr Sharif, a Bangladeshi who oversees safety on construction sites, have endured lockdowns far stricter and longer than those imposed on the rest of Singapore’s population. His employer ferries him to and from work. But otherwise he must remain in his dormitory, where he shares a room with eight others. Читать дальше...

UNLIKE THE shenanigans that came before it, the result was remarkably clear. Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh romped to victory in Mongolia’s presidential elections, held on June 9th. He became the first candidate in recent history to snaffle more than two-thirds of the vote. His Mongolian People’s Party (MPP) already holds a supermajority in parliament. After Mr Khurelsukh takes office on June 25th it will have an even stronger hold on power.

SINCE ARRIVING two days late at its usual landing point at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala near India’s southern tip, South Asia’s annual summer monsoon has made up for lost time. Tearing north, the south-westerly, rain-bearing winds covered four-fifths of the country in the first two weeks of June, reaching even India’s north-easternmost states. The monsoon’s western arm has yet to reach the states of Gujarat, Haryana and Rajasthan. But Yogesh Patil, head of Skymet, a private weather-forecasting service... Читать дальше...

WAS IT MERELY an innocent sausage? Last month a poster promoting camping kit sold by GS25, a chain of shops in South Korea, included an illustration of two fingers reaching out to grasp a steaming banger. Angry young men complained. They said the detail, which resembled an emoji that depicts a hand making a pinching gesture, was a hidden insult planted by feminists. As everyone knows, the symbol is commonly used when mocking the size of a man’s penis. One critic was especially outspoken. “Why... Читать дальше...

THE STORY of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has been a fable of extraordinary good fortune. From running a railway tea-stall in provincial Gujarat he rose to lead his state and then his country, the world’s biggest democracy. Yet no one’s luck lasts forever. And for Mr Modi the current monsoon season is not the only thing proving that when it rains, it pours.