The changing geography of drinks
Booze around the world
▻http://www.economist.com/news/business/21659754-booze-around-world?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/BoozeAroundTheWorld
The changing geography of drinks
Booze around the world
▻http://www.economist.com/news/business/21659754-booze-around-world?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/BoozeAroundTheWorld
Buckle up
▻http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21659755-will-new-law-do-anything-road-safety-buckle-up?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/BuckleUp
AS ANYONE who has ever set foot in Lebanon knows, the country’s drivers are a force to be feared. Motorists on the winding mountain roads think nothing of overtaking on a blind corner, at twice the speed limit. Keeping up-to-date with phone messages is a must, in the driver’s seat or otherwise. Seat belts? Often still covered in plastic wrapping.
Little wonder then that three months after a tough new law on driving came into force it is still the topic of conversation around Beirut, the traffic-clogged capital. As regulations go, this one is particularly stringent. Status-enhancing yet dangerous manoeuvres, such as driving a motorbike on one wheel, can entail a fine of up to 3m Lebanese pounds ($2,000) and even time behind bars. Dark-tinted windows are banned. Children under ten cannot be taken on motorcycles, thereby outlawing one of the region’s favourite modes of family transport. Learner drivers must take proper lessons rather than being taught by relatives, themselves home-schooled in the art of dodging pedestrians and potholes.
A Teutonic union
▻http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21616954-behind-scenes-germany-quietly-asserts-its-influence-brussels-teu
François Hollande [...] has accelerated the decline of French influence in Brussels, even if it began long before he took office.
Mind the gap | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21653596-anthony-atkinson-godfather-inequality-research-growing-problem-mind-gap?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/BCAndAP
CONTEMPORARY books on inequality are divided into those published “BC”, or before “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty, or “AP”, for after Piketty. The 44-year-old French economic historian’s study of rising wealth and income inequality, which first came out in French in August 2013, caused a storm when it was published in English seven months later and became an international bestseller. The book did an excellent job of focusing people’s minds on the subject. It also set the lines of empirical battle and even offered a possible remedy: a global tax on wealth. If Mr Piketty whetted the public’s appetite for discussions of inequality, he also made it far more difficult for subsequent authors to say something new and original about it.
War, then and now | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21651574-war-then-and-now?can_id=c04bd6c1866a7591ea05420e1dd77aec&source=
▻http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/20150523_MAP501.jpg
ON MAY 17th, as Israel commemorated its victory in the six-day war of 1967, an end to its conflict with the Palestinians had seldom seemed so far away. The coalition guidelines of Binyamin Netanyahu’s fourth administration, sworn in three days earlier, do not include a commitment to a two-state solution, and no strong protest is heard from the opposition. But part of Israeli society, at least, is open to hearing about the human toll of the conflict.
Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organisation founded by former soldiers, recently published one of its periodic reports, this one based on the testimony of over 60 soldiers and officers who took part in the fighting last summer in Gaza. The eyewitness anonymous statements of soldiers who were either on the ground or in command-and-control centres provide snapshots of the reality of war in an urban environment. The accounts describe permissive rules of engagement. Many of the stories revolve around whether a target was indeed civilian before a decision was taken to open fire. One tank commander who fought in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza said his unit’s assumption was that “anyone in an IDF [Israel Defence Forces] sector, that the IDF have captured, isn’t a civilian.” More than 2,000 Palestinians were killed in the 50-day long campaign, the majority of them civilians.
Afrique du Sud : pas de répit dans le massacre des rhinocéros
▻http://information.tv5monde.com/en-continu/afrique-du-sud-pas-de-repit-dans-le-massacre-des-rhinoceros-32
Le rythme du massacre des rhinocéros s’est encore accéléré en Afrique du Sud, avec 393 animaux tués par des braconniers sur les quatre premiers mois de l’année, une progression de près de 18% en un an, a indiqué dimanche la ministre de l’Environnement.
« A la fin avril 2015, le nombre de rhinocéros que nous avons perdus à cause des braconniers était de 393 pour l’ensemble du pays », contre 331 sur la période correspondante de 2014, a déploré la ministre Edna Molewa.
Le célèbre parc national Kruger, à la frontière avec le Mozambique (nord-est), reste le plus touché avec 290 animaux abattus, contre 212 un an plus tôt, a-t-elle précisé lors d’une conférence de presse.
After #Tambora
Two hundred years ago the most powerful eruption in modern history made itself felt around the world. It could happen again at almost any time
▻http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21647958-two-hundred-years-ago-most-powerful-eruption-modern-history-made-itself-felt-around?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/aftertambora
#éruption #volcan #climat #visualisation #histoire #cartographie #infographie
The caliphate cracks
Though Islamic State is still spreading terror, its weaknesses are becoming apparent
Riyadh enters the fray
▻http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21647362-saudi-arabia-starts-bombing-its-southern-neighbour-riyadh-enters
in Sana’a even the Houthis’ sternest critics are dismayed by the foreign bombardment. Many Yemenis believe it will only lead to more fighting. “Saudi Arabia is fucking our country,” says a Sunni tribesman who spent the night cowering with his family in Sana’a as blasts echoed through the capital.
German demography : Ageing but supple | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21646213-responding-creatively-shrinking-populations-ageing-supple?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ageingbutsupple
@klaus ça a l’air d’être moins grave chez toi que ailleurs, mais bon, nous nous faisons du souci quand même .
THE little town of Schladen-Werla in rural Lower Saxony, right alongside the former barrier between East and West Germany, is in a demographic “devil’s spiral”, says Andreas Memmert, its mayor. The place is projected to lose about a third of its population by 2030. “The young and clever leave and the less mobile stay,” he notes. As the population thins out, bus routes, crèches, schools, banks, convenience stores and libraries close for lack of demand. This makes life even harder for remaining residents, so they leave too.
Ukraine’s media war: Battle of the memes | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21646280-russia-has-shown-its-mastery-propaganda-war-ukraine-struggling-c
Information warfare, like the shooting kind, is a new art for Ukraine, and the learning curve is steep. Faced with a finely-tuned and well-funded Russian propaganda machine, truth and openness ought to be Ukraine’s most powerful weapons. But truth-telling is slow and painful work, and Kiev often opts for misinformation of its own instead. The Ukrainian authorities gloss over military losses, so much so that domestic observers now interpret the government’s daily situation briefings as a euphemistic code: “14 [killed] means there was lots of fighting, two means it was a relatively quiet day,” says Vitaly Sych, editor of Novoe Vremya, a weekly.
Ukraine’s leaders consistently and implausibly deny any responsibility for civilian deaths, further undermining trust, especially among the population in separatist-held territory. Criticism of the government is dismissed as mudslinging by Kremlin agents. Last month authorities jailed Ruslan Kotsaba, a western Ukrainian blogger who had spoken out against mobilisation. Ukrainian authorities accused him of working in Russia’s interests; Amnesty International labeled him a prisoner of conscience. “We’re becoming just like them,” one senior Ukrainian official laments.
Tasked with bringing order to the information front is the newly-created Ministry of Information Politics, led by Yuriy Stets, a former producer at Channel 5 and a close personal friend of Mr Poroshenko. Journalists and civil-society activists derided the ministry’s creation, dubbing it the “Ministry of Truth”. Mr Stets says his critics “read Orwell but not Churchill,” and compares his information ministry to the one Britain operated during the second world war.
#Nigeria and its neighbours: Big fish (or shark) in a small pond | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21645750-nigerias-ills-spill-across-its-borders-big-fish-or-shark-small-p
Illegal fuel can be dangerous: people have been burnt alive in accidents with it.
Sabotage of Nigerian gas pipelines also upsets the country’s neighbours. (...)
#Ghana is another country in the region that has been hurt by Nigeria’s shortcomings—in the supply of gas. Nigeria has consistently failed to fulfil a contract to supply its neighbour with 120m cubic feet a day. (...)
Fuel-smuggling and gas hold-ups are not the only way in which Nigeria affects its region. Since its population, of 170m or so, and its economy are both by far the biggest in Africa, it has a huge influence in almost all spheres. Some of it is beneficial. (...) In the past decade or so Nigeria’s armed forces and its diplomatic muscle have helped end wars in Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone. Yet Nigeria is also an exporter of insecurity
Several studies suggest that when immigrants arrive, crime goes down, schools improve and shops open up
▻http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21642226-two-cities-hope-embracing-immigrants-can-reverse-their-decline-rolling-out-welcome?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/rollingoutthewelcomemat
Climate change in Australia: Of droughts and flooding rains | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21642247-predictions-wide-brown-lands-future-get-ever-more-dire-droughts-
Australia must make its pollution-reduction targets more ambitious after 2020, the report says, and push for more action at the upcoming UN climate conference in Paris.
That will be tough. #Tony_Abbott, the prime minister, is an unapologetic climate-change sceptic who has been quoted saying coal—on which the country depends disproportionately—is “good for humanity”.
Exports of hydrocarbons from America are already booming. Lifting the ban on crude-oil exports should be next
▻http://www.economist.com/news/business/21642179-exports-hydrocarbons-america-are-already-booming-lifting-ban-cru
America is already an exporter of crude, too, though that is a well-kept secret. This is chiefly thanks to “swaps”, exports of oil that are balanced by imports of it. The law permits such exchanges on grounds of “convenience or efficiency”. A lot of American crude is already swapped for Canadian. And now Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Pemex, has asked the US Commerce Department for permission to import 100,000 barrels a day of light crude in exchange for the much heavier grades of crude it sends in the opposite direction (in far larger volumes).
Urbanisation : The great sprawl of China | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/china/21640396-how-fix-chinese-cities-great-sprawl-china?fsrc=scn/ln_ec/the_great_sprawl_of_china
IN ANCIENT times, Beijing built towering city walls that helped to prevent undefendable sprawl. These days it builds ring roads, stretching built-up areas ever outwards. Near Langfang, a city halfway between the capital and its giant neighbour Tianjin, diggers dip their heads and cement mixers churn, paving the next circular expressway. When complete, the 900km (560-mile) Seventh Ring Road will surround Beijing at such a distance that most of it will run through the neighbouring province of Hebei, to which Langfang belongs, rather than the capital itself. Parts of it are 175km from Beijing’s centre (see map).
Beijing’s 7th ring road opens to traffic this month - Chinadaily.com.cn
▻http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201808/17/WS5b763c7fa310add14f386576.html
2018-08-17 - The Capital Region Ring Expressway, a 1,000-kilometer-long highway linking Beijing and its neighboring cities, will open to traffic this month, Hebnews.com reported on Friday.
Dubbed as the “seventh ring road” of Beijing, the ring-shaped highway is to further the integration of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and will help improve the capital’s air quality.
The road passing through Beijng’s Daxing, Tongzhou, Pinggu districts links 13 major cities around the capital, including Zhangjiakou, Zhuozhou, Langfang, Chengde.
With the finish of the final piece - an expressway named G95 - linking capital’s Tongzhou District and Daxing District, the ring has been completely connected.
The expressway also directly connects the new airport of Beijing, which is under construction with the capital’s sub-center Tongzhou District.
It will help ease the traffic congestion of the capital’s sixth ring road, which is burdened by large vehicles, as well as boost the tourism and economic growth in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area.
Devenu statisticien par pure coïncidence...
cc @simplicissimus
▻http://flowingdata.com/2012/04/06/the-accidental-statistician
George E.P. Box, a statistician known for his body of work in time series analysis and Bayesian inference (and his quotes), recounts how he became a statistician while trying to solve actual problems. He was a 19-year-old college student studying chemistry. Instead of finishing, he joined the army, fed up with what the British government was doing to stop Hitler.
Before I could actually do any of that I was moved to a highly secret experimental station in the south of England. At the time they were bombing London every night and our job was to help to find out what to do if, one night, they used poisonous gas.
Some of England’s best scientists were there. There were a lot of experiments with small animals, I was a lab assistant making biochemical determinations, my boss was a professor of physiology dressed up as a colonel, and I was dressed up as a staff sergeant.
The results I was getting were very variable and I told my colonel that what we really needed was a statistician.
He said “we can’t get one, what do you know about it?” I said “Nothing, I once tried to read a book about it by someone called R. A. Fisher but I didn’t understand it”. He said “You’ve read the book so you better do it”, so I said, “Yes sir”.
–— ---
Statisticians in World War II: They also served | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636589-how-statisticians-changed-war-and-war-changed-statistics-they-al
“I BECAME a statistician because I was put in prison,” says Claus Moser. Aged 92, he can look back on a distinguished career in academia and civil service: he was head of the British government statistical service in 1967-78 and made a life peer in 2001. But statistics had never been his plan. He had dreamed of being a pianist and when he realised that was unrealistic, accepted his father’s advice that he should study commerce and manage hotels. (“He thought I would like the music in the lobby.”)
War threw these plans into disarray. In 1936, aged 13, he fled Germany with his family; four years later the prime minister, Winston Churchill, decided that because some of the refugees might be spies, he would “collar the lot”. Lord Moser was interned in Huyton, near Liverpool (pictured above). “If you lock up 5,000 Jews we will find something to do,” he says now. Someone set up a café; there were lectures and concerts—and a statistical office run by a mathematician named Landau. One day Lord Moser sat with him at lunch. By the meal’s end he had agreed to be the mathematician’s assistant—and found his vocation.
Targeting social spending: Casting a wide net | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/international/21638127-developing-countries-are-cutting-fraud-and-waste-anti-poverty-schemes-deciding-who?fsrc=fb/wl/vi/castingawidenet
MOHAMMAD ALAM lives with his wife and five children in a mud-brick house in Rafi Nagar, a slum in Mumbai that sits on a vast landfill. He makes 200 rupees ($3.15) a day as a ragpicker and wishes he could bribe his way to a card showing he is below the poverty line. It would entitle him to a panoply of benefits, including a grain ration priced at a tenth of what he now pays. But a decade trying to get one through official channels has left him fatalistic about his chance of ever joining the queues at one of the country’s 500,000 ration shops. “If I’m destined to get a card, I will get one,” he says.
Crime and punishment in Saudi Arabia: The other beheaders | The Economist, 20/09/2014
▻http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21618918-possible-reasons-mysterious-surge-executions-other-beheaders
The condemned may request a painkiller. Their end is not televised, and comes with a swift sword stroke from a skilled executioner rather than from hacking with a kitchen knife by an untutored brute. Otherwise there is not much difference between a death sentence in the jihadists’ “Islamic State” and in Saudi Arabia, a country seen as a crucial Western ally in the fight against IS.
Both follow Hanbali jurisprudence, the strictest of four schools of traditional Sunni Islamic law: when Egyptians chide someone for nitpicking, the expression is “Don’t be Hanbali”. Dissidents in Raqqa, the Syrian town that is IS’s proto-capital, say all 12 of the judges who now run its court system, adjudicating everything from property disputes to capital crimes, are Saudis. The group has also created a Saudi-style religious police, charged with rooting out vice and shooing the faithful to prayers. And as in IS-ruled zones, where churches and non-Sunni mosques have been blown up or converted to other uses, Saudi Arabia forbids non-Muslim religious practice. For instance, on September 5th Saudi police raided a house in Khafji, near the Kuwaiti border, and charged 27 Asian Christians with holding a church ceremony.
The ongoing French support of Syrian jihadists, including French and NATO facilitation, if not encouragement, of French Muslims to join the battles in Syria, belie the official horror of French Catholics at the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its decapitation practices. *Perhaps French Muslim members of ISIS assimilated French Catholic culture far too well, especially as relates to intolerance and decapitation — for the French state’s “laïc” practice of executing criminals through decapitation by the guillotine continued until 1977, with the last person decapitated being coincidentally a French Muslim criminal.
►http://electronicintifada.net/content/assimilating-french-muslims/14205
King Abdullah dead: We can’t afford not to hold Saudi Arabia’s royals to account - Voices - The Independent
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/king-abdullah-dead-we-cant-afford-not-to-hold-saudi-arabias-royals-to
What do you call the unelected leader of a state that beheads people in public, permits only one faith and exports an extreme form of Islam to other countries? If he happens to be Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, self-appointed caliph of Islamic State (Isis), the answer is one of the world’s most wanted terrorists. If he is King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the proper form of address is “Your Majesty”. Are we all clear about that? Me neither.