Sai. Nếu khả năng nghe của bạn chưa tốt thì chắc chắn là bạn nghe các kênh đó sẽ không hiểu tý gì cả. Bạn nhủ thầm cứ cố gắng nghe tiếp rồi sẽ tiến bộ thôi. Lần 2,3,4…n và kết quả là: WOAAAA….vẫn vậy =.=. Nguyên nhân rất đơn giản, thực ra không phải bạn không nghe được gì, bạn vẫn nghe được người ta nói đấy thôi. Nhưng các âm đấy bạn chưa nghe bao giờ (bạn không biết các từ đấy phát âm thế nào hoặc biết nhưng không đúng) nên nghe bạn không hiểu . Việc luyện nghe mà không có transcript cũng giống như bạn tập giải toán mà không có đáp án vậy. Bạn không biết mình đang làm đúng hay sai thì làm sao rút kinh nghiệm để tiến bộ được (Thực ra: nghe kiểu “tắm ngôn ngữ” bạn vẫn có thể áp dụng, nhưng chỉ nên coi nó như 1 supplementary method thôi chứ không phải main technique. Phương pháp này có đem lại hiệu quả nhưng rất ít)
INSIDE: A 14-PAGE SPECIAL REPORT ON MIGRATION Who’s in charge in Iran? Opioids in a world of pain America’s tangled voting laws Big-headed babies, big-brained parents MAY 28TH– JUNE 3RD 2016 Life in the fast lane: CEOs and F1 A nuclear nightmare Kim Jong Un’s growing arsenal The Economist May 28th 2016 Contents The world this week Leaders 11 North Korea’s weapons A nuclear nightmare 12 Austria’s election Disaster averted—for now 12 Online platforms Nostrums for rostrums 13 American elections Voting wrongs 14 Opioids The ecstasy and the agony On the cover It is past time for the world to get serious about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions: leader, page 11 Kim Jong Un is on the home straight to making his country a serious nuclear power Nobody knows how to stop him, pages 19-22 The Economist online Daily analysis and opinion to supplement the print edition, plus audio and video, and a daily chart Economist.com E-mail: newsletters and mobile edition Economist.com/email Print edition: available online by 7pm London time each Thursday Economist.com/print Audio edition: available online to download each Friday Economist.com/audioedition Volume 419 Number 8991 Published since September 1843 to take part in "a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress." Editorial offices in London and also: Atlanta, Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, Cairo, Chicago, Lima, Mexico City, Moscow, Mumbai, Nairobi, New Delhi, New York, Paris, San Francisco, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Washington DC Letters 16 On genomics, migrants, China, London, cronies, country living Briefing 19 Nuclear North Korea By the rockets’ red glare Asia 23 America and Vietnam Pull the other one 24 Afghanistan’s Taliban Aiming for the head 25 India’s deep south Southern comfort China 26 Retirement China’s Florida 27 Social media The dark art of astroturfing 28 Banyan Disturbing the China dream United States 29 Voting rights The fire next time 31 The Libertarian Party Guns, weed and relevance 31 The campaigns Heard on the trail 32 Hillary Clinton’s e-mails An indictment of sorts 32 Disability lawsuits Frequent filers 33 Soccer flourishes Kick turn 34 Lexington Oh, Oklahoma The Americas 35 Mexico’s elections A test for the ruling party 36 Bello Chávez’s little blue book 37 Britain and Argentina Ending estrangement 37 Brazilian culture A history of jeitinho Middle East and Africa 39 Iranian politics Who’s in charge? 40 Fighting Islamic State Fallujah, again 41 Israeli politics He’s back! 41 Tanzania Government by gesture 42 The Torah in Abuja Who wants to be a Jew? Special report: Migration Looking for a home After page 42 Europe 43 Visa liberalisation Europe’s deal with Turkey 44 Crimea’s Tatars 1944 all over again 45 Greece gets its bail-out Temporary relief 45 Austria’s vote Extremism loses, barely 46 German nationality Name, date of birth, migration background 48 Charlemagne Le sexisme Voting rules America’s electoral laws are a recipe for chaos in November: leader, page 13 Today’s voting-rights disputes are less clear-cut than those of the civil-rights era, but they are inflammatory all the same, page 29 Compulsory voting is hardest to enact in the places where it would make most difference: Free exchange, page 66 Europe’s far right Extremist parties are no longer a fringe: leader, page 12 The far right lost in Austria, but it is a growing force in Europe, page 45 The migrant crisis in Europe last year was only one part of a worldwide problem The rich world must get better at managing refugees See our special report after page 42 Who’s in charge in Iran? The supreme leader is clipping the wings of the reformist president, page 39 Contents continues overleaf Contents The Economist May 28th 2016 49 50 50 51 Opioids Americans take too many painkillers Most other people don’t get enough: leader, page 14 The war on drugs is depriving people in poor countries of pain relief, page 52 International 52 Opioids The problem of pain 55 56 57 58 58 59 Regulating tech firms The growing power of online platforms is worrisome But regulators should tread carefully: leader, page 12 European governments are not alone in wondering how to deal with digital giants, page 55 Britain Rural Britain Countryside blues Brexit brief Yes, we have no straight bananas Teenage pregnancy Not in the family way Bagehot The continental imperative 60 Business Regulating tech firms Taming the beasts Alibaba Under scrutiny Oil-price reporting Striking it rich American media Sumner’s lease Alcohol in China Reviving the spirits The future of carmakers Upward mobility Schumpeter Life in the fast lane Finance and economics 61 Banks and Brexit Wait and hope 62 Buttonwood Ignorant investors 63 Quicken Loans A new foundation 63 Japan’s pension fund That sinking feeling 64 Payday loans Regulators take interest 65 Cyber-attacks on banks Heist finance 66 Free exchange Compulsory voting Science and technology 69 Human evolution Of bairns and brains 70 Global warming In the red 71 Drone countermeasures Hacked off 71 Product design The replicator 72 Additive manufacturing Alloy angels Books and arts 73 Dawn of the oil industry Guts, greed and gushers 74 Genetics Mix and match 74 Jacobean history Forgotten hero 75 Mali Paper trail 75 The invention of dating Love’s labour 76 Opera Fiery angel 80 Economic and financial indicators Statistics on 42 economies, plus a closer look at GDP growth in Africa Obituary 82 Fritz Stern Another German Babies and intelligence Children are born helpless, which might explain why humans are so clever, page 69 Subscription service For our full range of subscription offers, including digital only or print and digital combined visit Economist.com/offers You can subscribe or renew your subscription by mail, telephone or fax at the details below: Telephone: +65 6534 5166 Facsimile: +65 6534 5066 Web: Economist.com/offers E-mail: Asia@subscriptions.economist.com Post: The Economist Subscription Centre, Tanjong Pagar Post Office PO Box 671 Singapore 910817 Subscription for year (51 issues)Print only Australia China Hong Kong & Macau India Japan Korea Malaysia New Zealand Singapore & Brunei Taiwan Thailand Other countries A$425 CNY 2,300 HK$2,300 INR 7,500 Yen 41,000 KRW 344,000 RM 780 NZ$460 S$425 NT$8,625 US$288 Contact us as above Principal commercial offices: 25 St James’s Street, London sw1a 1hg Tel: +44 20 7830 7000 Rue de l’Athénée 32 1206 Geneva, Switzerland Tel: +41 22 566 2470 750 3rd Avenue, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10017 Tel: +1 212 541 0500 1301 Cityplaza Four, 12 Taikoo Wan Road, Taikoo Shing, Hong Kong Tel: +852 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677/11/2012(022861) The Economist May 28th 2016 The world this week Politics Alexander Van der Bellen, a former head of the Green party, won Austria’s presidential election by just 31,000 votes, defeating Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party Had he won this (largely ceremonial) post, Mr Hofer would have been the first far-right head of state in the European Union His surprisingly high support reflected voter anger over immigration As in several European countries, the far right has been making ground In Brussels Greece’s creditors agreed on a deal to secure debt relief for the country The measures, which were thrashed out in late-night talks after months of wrangling, are intended to restructure Greek debt, which is currently 180% of GDP Greece will receive €10 billion ($11 billion) in aid to help it avoid a default, starting with €7.5 billion next month After being detained in Russia for two years Nadia Savchenko, a Ukrainian pilot, was released from jail and sent home She was exchanged for two Russian prisoners captured in Ukraine On her return home Ms Savchenko ironically thanked those who had “wished me evil”, and was greeted as a national hero In Turkey Binali Yildirim was sworn in as prime minister following the ouster of his predecessor, Ahmet Davutoglu Mr Yildirim is a loyal supporter of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president, and vowed to continue with an overhaul of the constitution which is handing more powers to the presidency New government, old problems Romero Jucá, Brazil’s planning minister, stepped aside after tapes were leaked in which he appeared to suggest that the impeachment of the president, Dilma Rousseff, would blunt an investigation into the multibillion-dollar scandal centred on Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company Mr Jucá, one of the targets of the investigation, says his remarks were misinterpreted He was only recently appointed by the interim president, Michel Temer The new government proposed several reform measures, including a cap on the growth of public spending Cuba’s Communist government said it would legalise small and medium-sized enterprises That builds on earlier reforms, which allow “self-employed” Cubans to own restaurants, bed-andbreakfasts and other small businesses Coca-Cola stopped producing sugary drinks in Venezuela because it cannot obtain sugar Price controls have made growing sugar cane unprofitable and the country suffers from a shortage of foreign exchange The push back Iraq’s government announced the start of an operation to retake Fallujah, a city just a 30-minute drive from Baghdad that has been held by Islamic State for the past two years Avigdor Lieberman, who leads Israel’s nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, joined Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, and became defence minister Mr Lieberman, who lives in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, has repeatedly derided efforts to secure peace with the Palestinians A series of bombings hit two government strongholds on Syria’s coast, killing as many as 100 people this would remove a “lingering vestige of the cold war” China, however, worries that America’s efforts to improve its relationship with Vietnam is aimed at keeping it in check The government and opposition leaders in Burundi started talks to resolve a crisis in which more than 1,000 people are thought to have been killed But the government excluded key opposition figures from the talks, reducing the chances of a successful outcome The monetary-policy committee of Nigeria’s central bank voted to allow the currency, the naira, to float against the dollar The country has previously maintained an overinflated peg against the dollar that is 40% higher than the black-market rate, leading to a shortage of hard currency Communications breakdown In a report to Congress Hillary Clinton was criticised by the State Department’s inspectorgeneral for using a private e-mail server when she was secretary of state Mrs Clinton should have discussed the security risks with officials, the report said, though it recognised that the department had a history of dealing inadequately with electronic messages The issue continues to dog Mrs Clinton’s campaign A bill that would help Puerto Rico manage its $70 billion debt pile was introduced in Congress The legislation would set up a financial control board and restructure some debt It has bipartisan support, but is opposed by some of the American territory’s creditors The governor of Puerto Rico welcomed parts of the bill, but worries that a financial control board would be too powerful Arms deal During a visit to Vietnam, Barack Obama announced an end to America’s embargo on the sale of weapons to the communist country He said Tsai Ing-wen was sworn in as Taiwan’s new president She is the island’s first female leader, and the second from the Democratic Progressive Party, which favours independence from China Ms Tsai called for “positive dialogue” across the Taiwan Strait, but did not mention the “one China” notion that China insists Taiwan must accept In Afghanistan the Taliban named a new leader to replace Mullah Akhtar Mansour who was killed by an American drone He is Hibatullah Akhundzada, a hardline religious scholar who served as Mullah Mansour’s deputy Protests by hundreds of parents of university applicants spread to a fourth province in China They are angry about plans to reduce the number of places reserved for local students Parents worry that this will mean greater competition for places and reduce their privileges, which is indeed the point China’s Communist Party stepped up its efforts to persuade members to write out the party’s constitution by hand Two newly weds have become famous for doing so on their wedding night The aim is to remind members of their communist ideals, but the army’s newspaper warned that some people were— believe it or not—just going through the motions when transcribing the document’s 15,000 characters The Economist May 28th 2016 Business Faced with a future where ride-hailing could reduce car ownership, Toyota and Volkswagen became the latest carmakers to invest in startups that provide such services Toyota formed a partnership with Uber, the biggest ridesharing app, to develop “mobility services” And Volkswagen invested $300m in Gett, the Israeli outfit behind the largest taxi-hailing app in Europe Unlike Uber, Gett signs up only regulated drivers in the cities in which it operates, such as London’s black-cab drivers Prompted by the market dominance of Facebook, Google and the like, the European Commission set out suggestions for regulating online platforms The proposals target specific problems such as the ability to move personal data from site to site The commission also wants to make it easier for consumers to shop online by removing “geoblocking” tools that prevent shoppers in one country getting deals offered in another Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the smaller of the two businesses to emerge from Hewlett Packard’s split last year, announced that it is spinning off its enterprise-services unit The unit grew out of HP’s takeover in 2008 of EDS, an IT outsourcing company founded by Ross Perot If it could turn back time Also picking up the pieces from a takeover that hasn’t worked out, Microsoft announced more job cuts at the mobile-phone business it The world this week acquired from Nokia two years ago and will take another write-down, of $950m Never a big player in the business, its share of the global smartphone market shrank again in the first three months of the year, to 0.7%, according to Gartner, a research firm Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce company, disclosed that it is being investigated by America’s Securities and Exchange Commission over the way it accounts for revenue, including sales from Singles’ Day, China’s version of Black Friday The drama over Sumner Redstone’s control of Viacom continued The 92-year-old mogul removed Philippe Dauman, Viacom’s chairman, from a trust that will decide what happens to Mr Redstone’s holdings when he dies Mr Dauman filed a lawsuit to thwart the move, arguing that Mr Redstone was mentally incompetent and being manipulated by his daughter, Shari Federico Ghizzoni is to step down as chief executive of UniCredit, Italy’s biggest bank Speculation had increased about his future as the bank’s problems mounted Mr Ghizzoni was heavily criticised when UniCredit agreed to underwrite Banca Popolare di Vicenza’s disastrous capitalraising, which ended with a government-orchestrated rescue from a fund backed by it and other Italian financial firms Approaching vessels The Singapore Exchange (SGX) declared an interest in taking over the Baltic Exchange in London, which would combine the two leading maritime-industry hubs The latter compiles the Baltic Dry Index, which measures the costs of shipping commodities, and has developed derivatives for shipowners to insure against fluctuations in freight prices Founded in 1744, it also provides a code of practice for the shipping market BSI, a Swiss bank, was ordered to close its business in Singapore after regulators identified serious anti-money-laundering lapses in connection with a corruption scandal at 1MDB, a Malaysian state investment fund At the same time Switzerland fined the bank SFr95m ($96m), opened a criminal probe and approved a takeover of BSI by EFG International, which is based in Zurich, that would see it “integrated and thereafter dissolved” Bayer presented its $62 billion takeover bid for Monsanto, the latest attempt at consolidation in the agricultural seeds and chemicals business The American company said the initial proposal from its German rival was “inadequate”, but believes in the “substantial benefits” of a deal Europe’s antitrust regulator approved Anheuser Busch InBev’s $108 billion merger with SABMiller, after getting the assurances it wanted that the newly combined beer giant will sell SABMiller’s European brands The deal still needs to be cleared by competition authorities in America, China and South Africa In, out, shake it all about The European Central Bank warned that the rise of populist parties in Europe could slow the pace of economic reforms Populists on the left and right ends of the political spectrum have made gains in elections by running against spending cuts Another big concern of the ECB is the potential risk posed by the vote in Britain on whether to leave the European Union, which will be held on June 23rd Other economic data and news can be found on pages 80-81 The Economist May 28th 2016 11 Leaders A nuclear nightmare It is past time for the world to get serious about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions B ARACK OBAMA began his presidency with an impassioned plea for a world without nuclear weapons This week, in his last year in office (and as we went to press), he was to become the first American president to visit Hiroshima, site of one of only two nuclear attacks Mr Obama has made progress on nuclear-arms reduction and non-proliferation He signed a strategic-arms-control treaty (New START) with Russia in 2010 A series ofnuclear-security summits helped stop fissile material getting into the wrong hands Most important, he secured a deal in July to curtail and then constrain Iran’s nuclear programme for at least the next 10-15 years But in one area, his failure is glaring On Mr Obama’s watch the nuclear-weapons and missile programme of North Korea has become steadily more alarming Its nuclear missiles already threaten South Korea and Japan Sometime during the second term ofMr Obama’s successor, they are likely also to be able to strike New York Mr Obama put North Korea on the back burner Whoever becomes America’s next president will not have that luxury The other Manhattan project The taboo against nuclear weapons rests on three pillars: policies to prevent proliferation, norms against the first use of nukes (especially against non-nuclear powers) and deterrence North Korea has taken a sledgehammer to all of them No country in history has spent such a large share of its wealth on nuclear weapons North Korea is thought to have a stockpile of around 20 devices Every six weeks or so it adds another This year the pace of ballistic missile testing has been unprecedented (see pages 19-22) An underground nuclear detonation in January, claimed by the regime to be an H-bomb (but more likely a souped-up A-bomb), has been followed by tests of the technologies behind nuclear-armed missiles Although three tests of a 4,000-kilometre (2,500-mile) missile failed in April, North Korean engineers learn from their mistakes Few would bet against them succeeding in the end North Korea is not bound by any global rules Its hereditary dictator, Kim Jong Un, imposes forced labour on hundreds of thousands of his people in the gulag, including whole families, without trial or hope ofrelease Mr Kim frequently threatens to drench Seoul, the South’s capital, in “a sea of fire” Nuclear weapons are central to his regime’s identity and survival Deterrence is based on the belief that states act rationally But Mr Kim is so opaque and so little is known about how decisions come about in the capital, Pyongyang, that deterring North Korea is fraught with difficulty Were his regime on the point of collapse, who is to say whether Mr Kim would pull down the temple by unleashing a nuclear attack? The mix of unpredictability, ruthlessness and fragility frustrates policymaking towards Mr Kim Many outsiders want to force him to behave better In March, following the recent weapons test, the UN Security Council strengthened sanc- tions China is infuriated by Mr Kim’s taunts and provocations (it did not even know about the nuclear test until after it had happened) It agreed to tougher measures, including limiting financial transactions and searching vessels for contraband But China does not want to overthrow Mr Kim It worries that the collapse of a regime on its north-eastern border would create a flood of refugees and eliminate the buffer protecting it from American troops stationed in South Korea About 90% of North Korea’s trade, worth about $6 billion a year, is with China It will continue to import North Korean coal and iron ore (and send back fuel oil, food and consumer goods) as long as the money is not spent on military activities—an unenforceable condition Protected by China, Mr Kim can pursue his nuclear programme with impunity The sanctions are unlikely to stop him If anything, they may spur him to strengthen and upgrade his arsenal before China adopts harsher ones Understandably, therefore, Mr Obama has preferred to devote his efforts to Iran Because the mullahs depend on sales of oil and gas to the outside world, embargoes on Iran’s energy exports and exclusion from the international payments system changed their strategic calculus But this logic will not work with North Korea Can anything stop Mr Kim? Perhaps he will decide to shelve his “nukes first” policy in favour of Chinese-style economic reform and rapprochement with South Korea It is a nice idea, and Mr Kim has shown some interest in economic development But nothing suggests he would barter his nuclear weapons to give his people a better life Perhaps dissent over Mr Kim’s rule among the North Korean elite will lead to a palace coup A successor might be ready for an Iran-type deal to boost his standing both at home and abroad That is a possibility, but Mr Kim has so far shown himself able to crush any challengers to his dominance The last hope is that tougher sanctions will contribute to the collapse of the regime—which, in turn, could lead to reunification with the South and denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula That would be the best outcome, but it is also the one that carries the most danger Moreover, it is precisely the situation China seeks to avoid Fat boy Without any good options, what should America’s next president do? A priority is to strengthen missile defence New THAAD anti-missile systems should be sent to South Korea and Japan, while America soothes objections that their radar could be used against China’s nuclear weapons China should also be cajoled into accepting that sanctions can be harsher, without provoking an implosion Were that to lead initially only to a freeze on testing, it would be worth having Because a sudden, unforeseen collapse of Mr Kim’s regime is possible at any time, America needs worked-out plans to seize or destroy North Korea’s nuclear missiles before they can be used For this China’s co-operation, or at least acquiescence, is vital So clear and present is the danger that even rivals who clash elsewhere in Asia must urgently find new ways to work together The Economist May 28th 2016 Science and technology 71 Drone countermeasures Hacked off Guarding against rogue drones could be a legal nightmare A BLACK package suspended in mid-air under a hovering drone is picked up by the CCTV cameras surrounding Wandsworth prison in south London one evening earlier this year As it moves closer to one of the windows, a prisoner leans out to snare the delivery with a stick and pull it inside Prison officers later recover the package and find it is stuffed with drugs and mobile phones Such events are becoming increasingly common, not just in the use of drones to deliver contraband but in all sorts of other nefarious activities, from paparazzi spying on celebrities to burglars casing properties More worrying still are reports of drones being flown near aircraft Security experts fret about ways terrorists could use drones to drop bombs or biological weapons What is needed, many reckon, are drone countermeasures These already exist for military drones—including shooting them down with lasers But that is a dangerous way to deal with small consumer drones flying in public areas So, other answers are being sought in a challenge organised by MITRE, an American non-profit organisation that runs R&D centres funded by the federal government It has drawn up a list of ten contenders to take part in a trial in August of“non-kinetic” systems capable of detecting and intercepting small drones weighing less than 5lbs (2.3kg) These systems must be good value and capable of wide deployment The challenge is offering $100,000 of prizes and a chance to catch the eye of federal agencies The hurdles posed by the challenge are not what you might expect “The technology aspects are sometimes the easy part,” says Duane Blackburn, a policy analyst at MITRE Various rules and regulations mean that interfering with a drone could be a legal nightmare For example, detecting a small hovering quadcopter drone at any reasonable distance requires a relatively powerful radar Yet such transmitters are strictly controlled in America under Federal Communication Commission (FCC) regulations, making such equipment difficult and expensive to acquire The contenders think they can get around that by detecting the radio communications between a drone and its operator Although drones can fly independently, some form of radio is used by an operator to relay commands, such as to go up or down, left or right, and to provide a video link from the drone’s camera Drone alert Mesmer, a system developed by Department 13, a technology company based near Baltimore, can detect these signals and even use them to identify the type of drone Mesmer then employs its own signals to take command of the drone itself, ordering it to divert, land or return to base The Dronebuster from Radio Hill, a company based in New Jersey, uses a “point-and-shoot” device which can be aimed at an intruding drone to jam either its communications or GPS system Com- mercial drones are preprogrammed to land or return to base when they lose either of these signals Lockheed Martin, a big American defence group, has a contender called ICARUS that employs multiple sensors to alert an operator to a drone threat and provide a selection of countermeasures, including taking command The system also works automatically Yet such systems could also open up a legal can of worms For one thing, intercepting signals used by a drone might be considered an illegal “wiretap”, according to FCC regulations Jamming signals is also against the law Alex Heshmaty of Legal Words, a British legal-services company, says that interfering with the software of a third-party drone without permission might breach anti-hacking laws Even if these rules can be circumvented, the Federal Aviation Administration makes it illegal to interfere with an aircraft in flight—and drones are considered to be aircraft Similar rules exist in many other countries, including Britain Andrew Charlton, a drone expert and head of a Swiss aviation consultancy, reckons that workable countermeasures against small drones will emerge, but in order to deploy them widely countries will have to review rules and regulations drawn up in an era of manned flight Product design The replicator LANCASTER Designing in the digital and physical worlds at the same time W HEN great designs are turned into products compromises are made The beautifully sculpted “concept” cars that regularly appear at motor shows never get built, at least not in the form they left the design studio, because they are inevitably too difficult and expensive to engineer for mass production For decades this has meant products have had to be “designed for manufacture”, which essentially means their components must incorporate features that can be readily shaped by machines in order to be glued, screwed or welded together by people or robots Now a combination of powerful computer-aided design (CAD) software and new manufacturing methods is changing the game Instead of being created with technical drawings and blueprints, most new products are today conceived in CAD systems in a three-dimensional virtual form As these systems get cleverer some of the design processes themselves are being automated: algorithms suggest the most efficient shapes to save weight, or to provide strength or flexibility according to the loads and stresses placed upon them Components and even entire products can be tested in their digital form, often using virtual reality When something physical is finally built the same software drives the equipment that produces it, whether automated lathes and milling machines that cut and drill material or, in the case of additive manufacturing, 3D printers that build up objects layer-by-layer in a way never before possible This digital dimension gives designers a greater level of freedom to create new things (see box) But not all designers are skilled in using CAD systems Even those who are might want to set aside the computer mouse for a saw, a file or a welding torch to get hands-on with their ideas The ability to both is becoming possible A machine developed at the University of Lancaster in Britain provides a glimpse of a future in which product designers will be able to work in both digital and physical forms—at the same time 72 Science and technology The ReForm is a desktop machine developed by Jason Alexander, Christian Weichel (now at Bosch, a German components group) and John Hardy (now cofounder of HE Inventions, a Manchester startup) to pick up any changes made to a physical model of a product and reflect those changes back into the digital model, or vice versa “I like to think of it as the closest implementation yet of a Star Trek replicator,” says Dr Hardy, referring to the device that could create just about anything in the science-fiction TV series Tea, Earl Grey, hot Inside ReForm is a fast-spinning milling head, which cuts shapes out of material in the traditional subtractive manner, and a 3D-printing extrusion head, which builds material in layers up additively Overseeing proceedings is a 3D scanner, which projects a pattern of light onto the object being worked upon A pair of cameras, positioned in the machine at different viewpoints, detects minute differences in the pattern of light reflected from the object to determine its shape in a digital form At present the machine works with modelling clay That might seem a bit old-fashioned, but it is still widely used: despite all their new digital tools, car designers, for one, continue to make full-sized replicas of new models in clay The machine can be used in a number of ways A digital CAD design can be sent to ReForm and it will set about milling it from a block of clay or printing it, after the machine itself determines which process will be the fastest It could be a combination of both Alternatively, an object can be placed inside ReForm to be scanned, after which a replica will be made either additively or subtractively Changes can then be made to the object, cutting a bit off here, say, adding a bit there or drilling a hole That could be done virtually on a computer screen or by removing the physical model and doing the work manually Once placed back into the machine, the scanner detects the changes and updates the digital model An image of the object is projected onto the viewing window at the front of the machine This allows a designer to view the digital version overlaid on the actual clay object inside It is used to produce a digital preview of what any changes will look like before cutting or printing begins And if a designer thinks he has really messed up, there is an “undo” button which will let him scroll back through images of previous iterations, choose one and leave it to the machine to return the object to that original state Machines like ReForm will allow people with no technical knowledge to engage in product design, says Dr Alexander With further development, he believes it will be possible to integrate other manufacturing The Economist May 28th 2016 Additive manufacturing Alloy angels 3D printing produces a curious lightweight motorcycle O NE of the great advantages of 3D printing is being able to escape the constraints of traditional production processes, and to make things with unique shapes The powerful computeraided design programs that are used to run 3D printers help engineers achieve this Algorithms calculate the most efficient structure required to achieve the lightest weight and yet still handle all the loads and stresses that will be placed upon the object Often the result is rather like something that nature might come up with—which is hardly surprising as nature has had millions of years of practice in creating highly efficient structures The latest example of this bionic design trend is the Light Rider, which is claimed to be the world’s first 3D-printed motorcycle The substantial part of its structure was printed by APWorks, a company based near Munich, using a proprietary material called Scalmalloy, an aluminium-magnesium-scandium alloy that was specially developed for 3D printing by Airbus, a European aerospace group that owns APWorks The motorcycle is driven by a 6kW electric motor and battery It reaches a top speed of 80kph and hits 45kph in three seconds That will not exactly excite serious bikers, but its 3D-printed frame could get their attention It weighs just 6kg, which makes the Light Rider some 30% lighter than conventionally manufactured electric motorcycles Then there is the frame’s shape, which looks like an organic exoskeleton This complex and hollow structure could not have been made with anything other than a 3D printer, says Joachim Zettler, APWorks’ boss The process involved using a laser to melt together thousands of individual layers of the powdered alloy, each layer only some 60 microns (millionths of a metre) thick The company is offering a limited production run of just 50 Light Riders At some €50,000 ($56,000) each, it is not just the bike that is exotic but also the price One printed for the road techniques into ReForm, such as making things in plastic or metal or at much larger scale, with milling and extrusion heads mounted on robotic arms One intriguing possibility the team is thinking about is 3D printing electrical circuits, a process that is just beginning to be used in some factories 3D-printed electronics would give ReForm the ability to make prototypes and even one-off pro- ducts that are more functional And it could also be used to follow up the software updates that many devices now demand with hardware updates, too This would be done by putting a mobile phone, say, into the machine, cutting out a previous version of any circuitry and printing new electronics in its place With a machine like ReForm it might no longer be necessary to throw any device away The Economist May 28th 2016 73 Books and arts Also in this section 74 The gene: a history 74 Sir Kenelm Digby, charmer 75 The librarians of Timbuktu 75 The invention of dating 76 Ermonela Jaho, serious soprano For daily analysis and debate on books, arts and culture, visit Economist.com/culture Dawn of the oil industry Guts, greed and gushers ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell dominate world oil A century ago, they were born fighting each other J UST over 100 years ago Standard Oil, from which both Exxon and Mobil sprang, was the undisputed leader of the global oil industry American trustbusters were soon hot on the heels of its competition-killing owner, John D Rockefeller So too was a scrappy Anglo-Dutch company, the product of a merger of Shell Oil with Royal Dutch in 1907, which had defied fearsome odds to muscle onto Standard’s home turf in America That amalgamation had been the work of two men: Marcus Samuel, a brilliant Jewish merchant who built the Shell Transportation and Trading Company from his father’s business selling seashells in Houndsditch, East London, and Henri Deterding, a Dutch wheeler-dealer who built Royal Dutch from unpromising beginnings in the swamps of Sumatra into an Asian powerhouse These two egos, for years bitter rivals, eventually joined forces to confront a “hammerlock on the planet’s oil market” Their story, though not new, is grippingly retold in “Breaking Rockefeller” Rockefeller’s life is vivid enough, though he is more of a presence snaking menacingly through the book than a central character From his grand Manhattan office on 26 Broadway, the fastidiously punctual former book-keeper, with an eye permanently on the ledger, launched a “cut-to-kill” strategy whenever competition threatened his stranglehold on the Breaking Rockefeller: The Incredible Story of the Ambitious Rivals Who Toppled an Oil Empire By Peter Doran Viking; 352 pages; $28 kerosene industry He would slash prices in one district to snuff out rivals, and raise them elsewhere to recoup his profits Such was his dominance of global petroleum that he could this with impunity throughout America, Europe and Asia The guts, greed and gusto of this cast of characters are what gives the book its vigour The colourful backwaters where they waged their counter-offensives, from London’s East End, to Baku in the Caspian, to Spindletop, Texas, add historical flavour Peter Doran, a Washington-based scholar on European affairs, admits he has borrowed heavily from such books as “The Prize” by Daniel Yergin to tell his story Samuel ordered almost all of his papers to be burned when he died, so some of the lively personality traits found here may be more the result of imaginative storytelling than documentary rigour But the book is timely in an era when America’s shale revolution has upset the OPEC cartel’s efforts to control the world’s oil markets, and eastern Europe struggles to free its gas markets from dependence on Russia’s Gazprom It is a vivid reminder of the dangers ofmonopolies, and ofthe mer- its of no-holds barred competition and technological upheaval Samuel’s great coup was to commission the first modern oil tanker, which enabled him to ship hydrocarbons through the Suez Canal Thus he could undercut Rockefeller in the Far East with cheap Russian fuel Royal Dutch’s triumph came from applying new geological methods to find gushers of crude in the Dutch colonies of the East Indies, enabling it to fight Shell in Asia Their tie-up, arranged by another intriguing Londoner, Fred “Shady” Lane, followed the Russian revolution of 1905, which knocked out Shell’s Caspian production and almost broke the company But the timing proved superb Instead of fighting each other, jointly they became a match for Standard Its empire was under attack from Ida Tarbell, an American investigative journalist whose father had been ruined by Rockefeller Her 19-part series starting in 1902 revealed Standard’s secret contracts, kickback schemes, Rockefeller’s “unholy alliance” between oil refiners and producers, and the extent of its monopoly Within a decade, the Supreme Court had ordered Standard Oil to be dismantled, though the bits into which it was broken were so valuable that “in the span of a few months at the end of 1911, Rockefeller went from being a very rich man to a fabulously wealthy one,” Mr Doran writes His end, as a cheeky old man playing golf and seducing girls in the back seat of his car in Florida, is described with humour So is the retirement of Samuel, or Viscount Bearsted as he became, who helped persuade Winston Churchill to commission oil-burning dreadnoughts just before the first world war Having climbed the social ladder as a Jew in Victorian England was a source of lifelong pride: “You can’t 74 Books and arts think what pleasure it gives me to put ‘The Honourable’ on my children’s envelopes,” he said after being made a peer The book acknowledges that Royal Dutch Shell could not have toppled Standard Oil alone “The trustbusters weakened Rockefeller’s monopoly Free marketeers like Deterding [and Samuel] provided a competitive alternative to it.” Thanks to the competition that they engendered, the oil industry has become more vigorous ever since The author does not dwell on the challenges to oil’s supremacy that have arisen lately as a result of climate change But if Royal Dutch Shell’s challenge to Standard Oil is any lesson, companies that develop alternative forms of energy will only become true challengers to Big Oil with guts, greed and better technology They are not quite there yet Genetics Mix and match The Gene: An Intimate History By Siddhartha Mukherjee Scribner; 592 pages; $32 Bodley Head; £25 T HE first human with a genome that has been permanently modified in a lab could be born by the end of this decade However innocuous the changes made, the baby’s birth will markthe first time that humanity has selectively interceded to change the genetic inheritance of future generations That is an eventuality, Siddhartha Mukherjee argues in his new book, “The Gene”, for which the world is almost wholly unprepared The book begins in the tranquil gardens of St Thomas’s Abbey in Brno in the mid-19th century It was here that Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian friar, began experiments with pea plants to see how biological traits are passed on from parents to offspring As he bred peas with different characteristics—with purple or white flowers, or tall or dwarf plants—Mendel noticed that no purple-white flowers emerged, nor any plants of medium height Instead, the original traits reappeared in different ratios after each cross Mendel realised that these traits were being determined by independent particles of information, which every plant inherited from its parents He had identified one of the fundamental characteristics of a gene, a discovery which would become a pillar of modern genetics “The Gene” ranges across 150 years, taking in every major advance in the field It traces Charles Darwin’s thinking as he began to formulate his theory ofevolution on his voyage to the Galápagos islands, and follows the thread all the way to contem- The Economist May 28th 2016 porary China, where scientists are carrying out cutting-edge, but ethically troubling, genetic experiments with human embryos Dr Mukherjee does not neglect the catastrophic missteps that science has taken, including the global rise of the eugenics movement, from the campaign by Francis Galton, Darwin’s half-cousin, to make it the “national religion” of Britain, to the atrocities committed by Nazi doctors in the second world war, which largely brought eugenics programmes to a halt Its grand scope means “The Gene” cannot explore the science to the same depth as other books such as Steven Rose’s classic, “The Chemistry ofLife” Nor is its narrative driven by a single powerful idea, as is Richard Dawkins’s “The Selfish Gene”, published 40 years ago Nonetheless, Dr Mukherjee uses personal experience to particularly good effect In “The Emperor of All Maladies”, his earlier Pulitzer-winning history ofcancer, it was his work as an oncologist that illuminated the science of the disease In “The Gene” his family comes to the fore He writes tenderly, for example, of his two mentally ill uncles: Rajesh, once “the most promising” of the brothers, and Jagu, who “resembled a Bengali Jim Morrison” It is a poignant way to examine the genetics of schizophrenia: his own family’s history of mental illness leads him to studies of other families “achingly similar” to his own Returning to his uncles in the final chapter, Dr Mukherjee notes that mental illness can be accompanied by exceptional talents He concludes his history with a 13point manifesto for the post-genomic world “Normalcy”, he writes, “is the antithesis of evolution.” This, then, is perhaps the most powerful lesson of Dr Mukherjee’s book: genetics is starting to reveal how much the human race has to gain from tinkering with its genome, but still has precious little to say about how much we might lose Jacobean history Forgotten hero A Stain in the Blood: The Remarkable Voyage of Sir Kenelm Digby By Joe Moshenska William Heinemann; 553 pages; £20 W HATEVER became of Sir Kenelm Digby? A cook, alchemist and philosopher and the inventor of the modern wine bottle, his life seems to have sunk without a trace His recipes, set out in “The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt Opened”, were published and republished His life was first told by John Aubrey, the great biographer of Digby’s age, but only one biography has appeared since the 1950s, written by a distant descendant of Digby’s He was the son of Everard Digby, a Gunpowder Plotter condemned to death for conspiring to blow up King James I Yet Kenelm charmed his way into becoming a courtier to James’s son Charles I He had a bookish, sheltered upbringing Despite that, he went on to marry Venetia Stanley, a famous 17th-century beauty painted by Van Dyck and elegised by Ben Jonson Such was his fame for the occult that it was later rumoured that he had murdered her with wine laced with viper venom In a bid to remove the “stain in his blood” as the son of a Gunpowder Plotter, he decided to reinvent himself as a pirate It is an extraordinary story Joe Moshenska, a specialist in the Renaissance period at Cambridge University, digs up the first half of that life story, focusing on the voyage to reclaim his honour Charles I commissioned Digby to be a privateer, free to sink enemy ships or seize their loot Charles was keen for extra cash raised through non-parliamentary means, like his predecessors Digby acted as shipsinker, but partly as diplomat as well He returned with looted wool bales, wine crates, currants (highly sought-after commodities at the time), ancient Greek marbles and Arabic manuscripts In Algiers he persuaded the city governors to free 50 English slaves and open the port to all English vessels The romance between Digby and Stanley is just as fascinating It was said that he faked his death in order to escape the affections of the Queen Regent of France When Stanley heard he had died, she collapsed in grief and was persuaded to get engaged to a devious suitor She later forgave Digby, and married him. Mr Moshenska’s biography gives a wider picture of England’s place in the world It is not hard to see Digby as an early product of the idea of empire He brought back treasure but he also brought back ancient The Economist May 28th 2016 Books and arts 75 learning, as well as foreign fauna and flora That an intellectual would become an ocean-faring buccaneer may seem incongruous, but it would lay the foundations of an English imperialism Colonialists would go hand-in-hand with botanists and astronomers in their conquest of the globe The book also connects the English national story with a European one Digby returned from his travels with continental recipes, philosophy and science Around the same time Inigo Jones returned with ideas for classical architecture Charles I, inspired partly by the opulence of the Spanish Habsburg court where he first met Digby, had Van Dyck and Rubens paint his and his father’s image Mr Moshenska depicts an age that sits between superstition and a scientific revolution Digby indulged in horoscopes and alchemy, and discussed Galileo’s new ideas with Florentine academics He advanced a theory that wounds would heal if a powder was applied to the weapon that caused the injury (Unsurprisingly it worked better than spreading mustard on the open wound, a common alternative.) His book on the weapon-salve, though much mocked, went through 29 English editions Digby went on to write the first paper which the new Royal Society formally asked to publish, and he came up with a crude theory of photosynthesis In his short biography Mr Moshenska successfully brings back to life a forgotten self-made man who was at the same time braggadocio and philosopher, and who seemed to live so many lives Readers curious to learn more can only await the second half of the story Mali Paper trail The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu By Joshua Hammer Simon & Schuster; 278 pages; $26 J OSHUA HAMMER’S new book, “The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu”, traces the story of hundreds of thousands of medieval texts as they are rescued in 2012 from near-destruction by jihadists linked to al-Qaeda in Mali It is at once a history, caper and thriller, featuring a superherolibrarian, Abdel Kader Haidara, as the saviour of an entire culture’s heritage Some of the book’s most compelling passages are lists, sometimes as much as a paragraph in length The spices, minerals, animals, fabrics and books carried into Timbuktu in the Middle Ages give a heady taste of what the city once was The print- Displaced but not destroyed ing process swirls to life in red, gold and black inks, on paper from Fez or distant Venice Three craftsmen were needed to create a manuscript: one for the words, another for the proofreading and a third to dash in the delicate intonation markings Yet the tension, whether to share the texts or hide them, is ever-present These millions of pages become the endangered species of the story, threatened by wave after wave of invaders Mr Hammer’s book is not strictly about the manuscripts, for their escape does not really start until halfway through the book It is mostly a history of jihad in Mali, which for centuries lay on the trade route across the Sahara One day, a short sandy drive from his hero librarian’s home, a “butterscotch-and-peach painted concrete mosque” appeared to Mr Hammer: an outpost ofthe puritan, Saudi-funded Wahhabi ideologues taking root across the Sahel He first sees the new mosque on a visit to Timbuktu before the war, when he also spots American special forces drinking beer in the heat Trouble was brewing The story picks up speed as it begins to chart the opening salvos of Mali’s own Arab spring France and America watch a weak region, infested with criminals, moulder Military officials want to strike extremist groups as they form, they tell the author, whereas diplomats prefer development Hostages are taken from Mali and neighbours, and traded for huge ransoms The Tuaregs who supported the Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi, come home armed and ready for revolution Just as the fight is brewing, a world-renowned music festival in Timbuktu welcomes Bono to the stage Four days later, after the tourists leave, the shooting begins Life becomes awful in Timbuktu, with brutal sharia punishments meted out by young soldiers Many Malians refuse to be cowed Here the caper begins at last Mr Haidara, the dogged manuscript collector who has spent a lifetime gathering north Africa’s most important works into central libraries, faces a difficult, at times insane, task: how to smuggle nearly half a million ancient texts from under the jihadi occupiers’ noses down a 1,000km route to Bamako He develops an ulcer as a result of the stress The reader last encounters the troves of manuscripts as they arrive at safe houses in Bamako; “not one had been lost”, according to Mr Haidara Here the author leaves them, as fragile, tantalising and inaccessible as they were in the desert What of their future? For the ancient books themselves, this chapter is one among many The invention of dating Love’s labour Labour of Love: The Invention of Dating By Moira Weigel Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 292 pages; $26 U NTIL the start of the 20th century, the rules of courtship were fairly straightforward Male suitors called on eligible women under the watchful eyes of concerned adults Keen chaps visited regularly and with the intent to marry It was a dance to which everyone knew the steps Modern pursuers are not so lucky Who pays? When can one text? Just how aloof should one be? Whether you are hoping for a relationship or just casual sex, dating “often feels like the worst, most precarious form of contemporary labour: an unpaid internship,” writes Moira Weigel in “Labour of Love”, an occasionally amusing and often provocative look at the work of wooing The rules of love, Ms Weigel argues, are shaped by economics The concept of “dating” only came about at the dawn of the industrial age, when new opportunities 76 Books and arts lured young people to cities in droves Working women were soon exposed to an array of potential mates, but many lived in tenements or boarding houses that were unfit for hosting callers So men offered to escort romantic prospects to restaurants or dance halls, luring poorly paid women with the prospect of a “free treat” Policing vice squads initially found these transactions suspect, and often arrested ladies who partook in them But as these practices spread among the working classes, saloons and amusement parks sprang up to earn their business By the mid-1910s even the middle classes considered “dating” a legitimate way to woo Shifting demographics also played a role Falling birth-rates allowed parents to dote on fewer children, who were increasingly likely to go to school Young people began mixing in new ways, particularly once American colleges went co-ed in the 1920s Cars granted young lovers unprecedented privacy, leading one University of Michigan professor to sniff in 1928: “What is vulgarly known as ‘petting’ is the rule rather than the exception.” Perhaps it is the destiny of parents to be horrified by the habits of their children In the 1950s many were appalled that young people were “going steady” when they should have been dutifully shopping around Yet a shortage of American men after the second world war made it wiser for women to get cosy with one instead of playing the field. The mating marketplace has spurred countless businesses In the 1920s even respectable ladies began painting their faces, and the cosmetics industry exploded As late as the 1960s most drinking establishments barred unaccompanied women, leading one enterprising New Yorker to open a place called T.G.I Friday’s, and the “singles bar” was born (the place became so popular it needed velvet ropes) The videotape dating services used by time-poor yuppies in the 1980s set the stage for the boom in high-tech mate-shopping by the turn of the 21st century And the desire to keep dating well into one’s 40s before settling on a partner has boosted demand for fertility treatments In this lively tour of changing romantic mores, Ms Weigel occasionally rambles off-course She tends to bury thinly argued points beneath grand statements, and she reserves most of her sympathy for women But she is right to note that modern courtship is full of mixed messages Women who are pushed to “lean in” at work are often told to pull back to appeal to men Men who may answer to women at the office are encouraged to seem invincible after hours, and pay for the pleasure, too. Ms Weigel argues that this arrangement sustains the fiction that men are still in control of courtship—and may also explain why, in these uncertain economic times, the labour of love is so terribly confusing The Economist May 28th 2016 Opera Fiery angel How Ermonela Jaho became the world’s most acclaimed soprano W HENEVER dictators stifle dissent, the art which most often survives is music So it is no surprise that the soprano who earlier this month carried off the annual prize for the singer most esteemed by the readers of Opera Magazine, the industry’s bible, should have been born and bred in Enver Hoxha’s Albania Ermonela Jaho recalls with affectionate amusement the paranoid, isolationist atmosphere in which she grew up: with one television channel and one state-approved comedian (Norman Wisdom, a Londoner); with baby boys being named Adriatik after the sea they had to cross to make their fortune; with hundreds of thousands of pill-box bomb-shelters studding the landscape; but also with a heady form of polyphony which has been sung at village weddings since antiquity Ms Jaho has great magnetism on stage, her singing complemented by a particular physical presence When she sang the title role in Giacomo Puccini’s “Suor Angelica” at Covent Garden in 2011 she drew an ecstatic audience response every night; reviewing her reprise of the role in March, the critics ran out of superlatives Angelica has been committed to a convent as punishment for an illicit affair In this cruel drama she learns that her illegitimate son has died; she takes poison and dies praying for salvation Ms Jaho’s performance took The Traviata of Tirana on a compelling momentum as shock reduced her to a seemingly lifeless corpse, before she gave way first to volcanic grief and then to wounded-animal rage “But that anger is also my anger,” she said afterwards “When I sing, I draw on everything I have seen and heard in my life.” Her father taught philosophy and flew Russian fighters; her mother was a teacher, but her family was poor and her mother could never pursue the singing career she yearned for A sense of failure pervaded her life Born in 1974, Ms Jaho always wanted to be a singer Her first ambition was to take up pop, until at 14 she went to a performance of “La Traviata” “In that moment I saw a new horizon, a big door opening, and I wanted to go through it.” She has now sung “La Traviata” 232 times In person Ms Jaho is forceful and humorous, her ideas tumbling out seemingly unstoppably She possesses an earthy beauty, with no hint of divadom, though she frequently refers to herself in the third person, as though watching her own progress with an objective eye In later life she wants to spend more time as a voice teacher—something she already does whenever she travels back to Tirana—inculcating in younger singers the discipline which has allowed her to reach the heights without straining (and ruining) her voice Along the way, she has had a series of lucky breaks The first was when Katia Ricciarelli, an Italian soprano, spotted her in a master-class at the Tirana conservatoire, and invited her to study in Italy, where she began her career She married a childhood friend who was living in New York, and still lives there during the two months each year when she is not travelling Her breaks in London have followed a time-honoured pattern, stepping in for Anna Netrebko as Violetta in “La Traviata” at Covent Garden in 2008, and for Anja Harteros as Suor Angelica in 2011 When that invitation came through, at exceptionally short notice, she hesitated: she wanted to make the role her own, but her parents had both recently died, and she was too traumatised even to cry, she says Singing the part was cathartic In the coming two years in London, New York, Washington and Paris she will again sing the title roles in “La Traviata” and “Madam Butterfly”, but she knows her vocal limits—she will never Wagner Next month Opera Rara will release its recording of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Zazà”, which depends on the charisma of its star Only when the record company discovered Ms Jaho did it feel confident enough to go ahead with the recording It will be her recording debut, and she finds the work full ofechoes ofher mother’s plight: “Some of Zazà’s lines I heard like a refrain from my mother, when I was a child Singing this part was like having a knife go through my soul.” Courses The Economist May 28th 2016 77 78 Courses Business & Personal To advertise within the classified section, contact: UK/Europe Martin Cheng Tel: (44-20) 7576 8408 martincheng@economist.com United States Richard Dexter Tel: (212) 554-0662 richarddexter@economist.com Asia ShanShan Teo Tel: (+65) 6428 2673 shanshanteo@economist.com Middle East & Africa Philip Wrigley Tel: (44-20) 7576 8091 philipwrigley@economist.com The Economist May 28th 2016 79 Tenders Capital Investments & Brokerage / Jordan Ltd Co No Prot Tirana, on / / 2016 NOTIFICATION OF THE CONTRACT Name and address of the contracting authority: Ministry of Energy and Industry, address: Boulevard “Deshmoret e Kombit” 1001 Tirana, tel + 355 42 222 245 Name and address of the Responsible Person: Etleva Kondi, Ministry of Energy and Industry (email: etleva.kondi@energjia.gov.al); Type of Contracting Authority: Central Institution The scope and type of contract: Granting through concessions the “Katundi i Ri” Hydropower Plant, and type of contract is “Work” Duration of Contract: 35 years The location of the object of the contract: In the upstream low of Drin i Zi River, from the quota of 400 m.m.n.d (the possible place for the dam construction), up to the quota of 445 m.m.n.d on the state border with the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia Legal, economic, inancial and technical information: In accordance with Appendix of CSD Criteria for selection of winner: In accordance with Annex 10 of CSD Deadline for submission of bids: Within and not later than: Date 11/07/2016, at 12.00 o’clock Location: On the oficial website of the Public Procurement Agency www.app.gov.al Deadline for bid opening: Within and not later than: Date 11/07/2016, at 12.00 o’clock Location: On the oficial website of the Public Procurement Agency www.app.gov.al The period of validity of tenders: 150 days HEAD OF THE CONTRACTING AUTHORITY DAMIAN GJIKNURI INVITATION TO BID FOR THE ACQUISITION/PURCHASE OF SHARES OF JORDAN MAGNESIA COMPANY LTD Capital Investments & Brokerage / Jordan Ltd Co (“CapInvest”) is pleased to invite all interested parties to participate in the bid process in connection with the sale of 100% of the share capital of Jordan Magnesia Company Ltd (“JorMag”) CapInvest is acting as the financial advisor to JorMag in connection with the sale transaction Company Background § JorMag is a Jordan-based mining company founded in 1997 to extract, produce, and market a variety of specialty magnesia products including caustic calcined magnesia and dead-burned magnesia § JorMag is currently the only company in Jordan with duly granted rights to extract, produce and market magnesia from the resource-rich Dead Sea JorMag also has rights to high purity limestone deposits that are abundant at a nearby quarry located in Al-Qatraneh area in Jordan § JorMag owns a magnesia plant located at the southern end of the Dead Sea in Jordan with an annual production capacity of 60,000 tons of magnesia products § JorMag benefits from a preferential tax-regime (designated a free economic zone), fully operational ancillary infrastructure, and contractual arrangements with the surrounding mining companies in the Dead Sea concession area to provide the necessary operational support, critical infrastructure, and key raw materials The Bidding Process After executing a confidentiality agreement, qualified prospective buyers will be provided with access to a virtual data room to undertake their due diligence review of JorMag Site visits and a Q&A process will also be conducted during the due diligence process At the conclusion, prospective buyers will be expected to submit a final, binding proposal to acquire 100% of JorMag’s share capital Key upcoming dates and events are summarized below* Date May 16 – Jun 24 Jun - Jun 16 Jun 27, 2016 Event Data room access and due diligence review Site visits and Q&A Final proposals due For further information, please contact Omar B Khader (Vice President) at: Office: +962 5200330 ext 2475 Mobile: +962 79 630 3113 E-mail: omar.khader@capitalinv.com * The bidding process is subject to the terms and conditions outlined in the bid procedure letter which will be provided to interested parties ESTABLISHMENT OF A NATONAL AIRLINE FOR THE REPUBLIC OF GHANA REQUEST FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST The Government of Ghana (GoG) has the objective to make Kotoka International Airport (KIA) the aviation hub of West Africa GoG is therefore looking to establish a national airline to facilitate the achievement of its objective GoG, acting through the Ministry of Transport (MoT), has appointed a team of consultants led by PricewaterhouseCoopers (Ghana) Limited (PwC) to provide advisory services with regards to the establishment of the proposed new national airline Feasibility studies conducted by PwC has shown that a market exists to profitably support the operation of a new national airline without recourse to GoG funding The feasibility study identified the following advantages currently available in the Ghanaian airline industry: Yields in Ghana and the rest of West Africa are still high compared to the rest of the world Passenger growth rate over the last five years was more than double the global average The Ghanaian economy has experienced significant growth over the last ten years and is still projected to outpace the rest of the global economy The feasibility studies also demonstrated that the new national airline would require partnership with an experienced strategic airline partner with a global distribution network to adequately take advantage of the opportunities in the market place GoG is therefore inviting prospective airline strategic partners to submit an Expression of Interest (“EoI”) to work with GoG to establish a new national airline for Ghana The expression of interest should demonstrate the following, among others: • • • • The financial strength of the prospective partner The prospective partner’s technical strength in areas of IT systems, flight operations, maintenance, yield and capacity management The reach and value of the prospective partner’s distribution network The prospective partner’s membership of a global alliance Setting up Regional Industrial Clusters in Ethiopia: Preparation of Master Plan The Ministry of Industry of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, in collaboration with its partners, would like to develop a Cluster Master Plan to facilitate the growth and development of a large number of SMEs in textiles, agro-processing, metals fabrication, furniture, construction materials, electric and electronic goods The Contractor in coordination with relevant government departments and stakeholders will be expected to conduct an in-country assessment and examine various factors such as geography, infrastructure, access to raw materials, environmental and social implications in order to develop a Cluster Master Plan The assignment, which requires international and national expertise, will commence on 25th July 2016 and be completed by 14th October 2016 The deadline for the submission of the EoI is Friday, 24 June 2016 at 4pm GMT Expressions of Interest should be marked CONFIDENTIAL – NATIONAL AIRLINE PROJECT and addressed to: THE CHIEF DIRECTOR ROOM #6, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT PRIVATE MAIL BAG MINISTRIES, ACCRA, GHANA For enquiries, please contact Thomas Kyei-Boateng (email: thomas.kyeiboateng@gh.pwc.com or Winfred King (email: winfred.king@gh.pwc.com) at the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Ghana Ltd office at No 12 Airport City, Una Home, 3rd Floor, Airport City, Accra or PMB CT 42, Cantonments, Accra T: +233 (0) 302 761 500 F: +233 (0) 302 761 544 The Economist May 28th 2016 The Ministry of Industry invites eligible organisations to submit proposals to carry out this work to the Private Enterprise Programme Ethiopia (PEPE) Interested organisations may obtain the detailed terms of reference for this work by contacting smeclusters@enterprisepartners.org Deadline for applications: 30th June 2016 80 The Economist May 28th 2016 Economic and financial indicators Economic data % change on year ago Economic data product Gross domestic latest qtr* 2016† Industrial production latest Statistics on 42 economies, -1.1 Apr GDP+6.0 Apr United States +2.0 Q1 +0.5 +1.8 plus +6.7 a closer look at China Q1 +4.5 +6.5 Japan growthnilin Q1 Africa +1.7 +0.5 Britain +2.1 Q1 +1.6 +1.9 Canada +0.5 Q4 +0.8 +1.6 Euro area +1.5 Q1 +2.1 +1.5 Austria +1.1 Q4 +1.2 +1.1 Belgium +1.4 Q1 +0.8 +1.3 France +1.3 Q1 +2.2 +1.3 Germany +1.6 Q1 +2.7 +1.5 Greece -1.2 Q1 -1.5 +1.4 Italy +1.0 Q1 +1.2 +1.0 Netherlands +1.4 Q1 +1.9 +1.5 Spain +3.4 Q1 +3.2 +2.8 Czech Republic +4.3 Q4 +2.0 +2.8 Denmark +0.4 Q4 +0.3 +1.3 Norway +0.7 Q1 +4.0 +1.5 Poland +4.3 Q4 -0.4 +3.5 Russia -1.2 Q1 na -1.3 Sweden +4.5 Q4 +5.3 +3.4 Switzerland +0.4 Q4 +1.7 +1.1 Turkey +5.7 Q4 na +3.3 Australia +3.0 Q4 +2.6 +2.5 Hong Kong +0.8 Q1 -1.8 +2.1 India +7.3 Q4 +4.4 +7.5 Indonesia +4.9 Q1 na +5.1 Malaysia +4.2 Q1 na +5.5 Pakistan +5.5 2015** na +4.8 Philippines +6.9 Q1 +4.5 +6.3 Singapore +1.8 Q1 +0.2 +2.8 South Korea +2.7 Q1 +1.5 +2.5 Taiwan -0.8 Q1 +0.8 +2.3 +3.8 +3.7 Thailand +3.2 Q1 Argentina +2.3 Q2 +2.0 -0.4 Brazil -5.9 Q4 -5.7 -3.7 Chile +2.0 Q1 +5.3 +3.4 Colombia +3.3 Q4 +2.4 +3.7 Mexico +2.6 Q1 +3.3 +2.4 Venezuela -8.8 Q4~ -8.4 -7.0 Egypt +4.0 Q4 na +4.0 Israel +1.7 Q1 +0.8 +3.7 Saudi Arabia +3.4 2015 na +2.8 South Africa +0.5 Q4 +0.4 +0.8 +0.2 Mar -0.3 Mar +0.8 Feb +0.2 Mar +2.5 Mar +1.2 Mar -0.8 Mar +0.2 Mar -4.0 Mar +0.5 Mar +0.3 Mar -1.7 Mar +0.7 Mar -2.6 Mar -5.7 Mar +6.0 Apr +0.6 Apr +5.5 Mar -4.5 Q4 +4.7 Mar +1.9 Q4 -1.3 Q4 +0.1 Mar +3.4 Mar +2.8 Mar +6.7 Mar +7.8 Mar -0.5 Mar -1.5 Mar -4.1 Apr +1.8 Mar -2.5 Oct -11.3 Mar +3.9 Mar +1.3 Mar -2.0 Mar na -10.9 Mar -0.5 Mar na -1.5 Mar Current-account balance Consumer prices Unemployment latest 12 % of GDP latest 2016† rate, % months, $bn 2016† +1.1 Apr +2.3 Apr nil Mar +0.3 Apr +1.7 Apr -0.2 Apr +0.5 Apr +2.0 Apr -0.2 Apr -0.1 Apr -1.3 Apr -0.5 Apr nil Apr -1.1 Apr +0.6 Apr nil Apr +3.2 Apr -1.1 Apr +7.2 Apr +0.8 Apr -0.4 Apr +6.6 Apr +1.3 Q1 +2.7 Apr +5.4 Apr +3.6 Apr +2.1 Apr +4.2 Apr +1.1 Apr -0.5 Apr +1.0 Apr +1.9 Apr +0.1 Apr — *** +9.3 Apr +4.2 Apr +7.9 Apr +2.5 Apr na +10.3 Apr -0.9 Apr +4.2 Apr +6.2 Apr +1.2 +1.8 +0.2 +0.6 +1.5 +0.2 +1.1 +1.1 +0.2 +0.3 +0.7 +0.2 +0.5 -0.5 +1.5 +0.7 +2.1 +1.7 +8.2 +0.8 -0.7 +8.2 +1.7 +2.6 +5.2 +4.3 +2.9 +5.4 +2.9 +1.3 +1.3 +1.0 +2.7 — +8.3 +3.6 +3.7 +3.1 +181 +8.8 +1.7 +3.8 +6.4 5.0 Apr 4.0 Q1§ 3.2 Mar 5.1 Feb†† 7.1 Apr 10.2 Mar 5.8 Mar 8.5 Mar 10.0 Mar 6.2 Apr 24.4 Jan 11.4 Mar 7.8 Apr 20.4 Mar 5.7 Apr§ 4.2 Mar 4.6 Feb‡‡ 9.5 Apr§ 5.9 Apr§ 7.3 Apr§ 3.5 Apr 10.9 Feb§ 5.7 Apr 3.4 Apr‡‡ 4.9 2013 5.5 Q1§ 3.5 Mar§ 5.9 2015 5.8 Q1§ 1.9 Q1 3.9 Apr§ 4.0 Apr 1.0 Mar§ 5.9 Q3§ 10.9 Mar§ 6.3 Mar§‡‡ 10.1 Mar§ 4.2 Mar 6.0 Dec§ 12.7 Q1§ 4.9 Apr 5.7 2014 26.7 Q1§ -484.1 Q4 +293.5 Q1 +151.1 Mar -146.9 Q4 -51.6 Q4 +357.1 Mar +9.6 Q4 -0.1 Dec -20.6 Mar‡ +292.3 Mar +1.1 Mar +41.4 Mar +68.8 Q4 +17.1 Feb +1.5 Q4 +18.8 Mar +35.3 Q4 -2.0 Mar +51.3 Q1 +29.2 Q4 +75.9 Q4 -29.5 Mar -56.0 Q4 +9.6 Q4 -22.6 Q4 -18.2 Q1 +7.0 Q1 -2.4 Q1 +8.4 Dec +54.8 Q1 +107.5 Mar +74.8 Q1 +31.6 Q4 -15.9 Q4 -34.1 Apr -4.7 Q1 -18.9 Q4 -30.5 Q1 -17.8 Q3~ -16.8 Q4 +13.8 Q4 -53.5 Q4 -13.6 Q4 -2.7 +2.8 +3.8 -4.7 -2.8 +2.8 +2.5 +0.8 -0.3 +7.6 +2.1 +1.9 +9.9 +1.0 -0.1 +6.4 +11.6 -2.1 +3.7 +6.0 +9.5 -4.5 -4.1 +2.6 -1.0 -2.4 +2.7 -0.9 +3.6 +20.4 +7.3 +12.3 +2.3 -2.3 -1.6 -1.4 -5.1 -2.8 -1.4 -2.0 +4.3 +0.1 -4.1 Budget Interest balance rates, % % of GDP 10-year gov't 2016† bonds, latest -2.5 -3.0 -6.2 -3.6 -1.4 -1.9 -2.0 -2.3 -3.5 +0.4 -3.9 -2.5 -1.6 -3.4 -1.6 -2.8 +7.2 -1.9 -2.2 -0.6 +0.3 -1.8 -2.0 -0.4 -3.7 -1.9 -3.7 -4.6 -2.1 +0.9 +0.5 -0.9 -2.1 -2.7 -5.4 -1.6 -1.9 -3.0 -14.4 -9.6 -2.5 -8.0 -3.3 1.88 2.76§§ -0.10 1.57 1.39 0.16 0.55 0.52 0.50 0.16 7.13 1.36 0.39 1.54 0.52 0.45 1.42 3.07 8.97 0.79 -0.26 10.10 2.31 1.31 7.46 7.58 3.86 8.03††† 4.46 2.17 1.78 0.85 2.26 na 12.93 4.58 8.13 6.17 11.17 na 1.84 na 9.43 Currency units, per $ May 25th year ago 6.56 110 0.68 1.31 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 24.3 6.67 8.33 3.96 65.6 8.30 0.99 2.94 1.39 7.77 67.4 13,655 4.10 105 46.8 1.38 1,183 32.6 35.7 14.0 3.59 693 3,065 18.5 9.99 8.88 3.85 3.75 15.7 6.20 121 0.65 1.23 0.91 0.91 0.91 0.91 0.91 0.91 0.91 0.91 0.91 24.9 6.76 7.62 3.72 49.9 8.38 0.94 2.60 1.28 7.75 63.5 13,155 3.59 102 44.5 1.34 1,090 30.4 33.4 8.97 3.06 608 2,501 15.3 6.30 7.61 3.89 3.75 11.9 Source: Haver Analytics *% change on previous quarter, annual rate †The Economist poll or Economist Intelligence Unit estimate/forecast §Not seasonally adjusted ‡New series ~2014 **Year ending June ††Latest months ‡‡3-month moving average §§5-year yield ***Official number not yet proved to be reliable; The State Street PriceStats Inflation Index, March 34.88%; year ago 27.1% †††Dollar-denominated bonds The Economist May 28th 2016 African growth TUNISIA O CC Africa’s economy is projected to expand RO by 3.7% in 2016, according to a report by ALGERIA L I B YA E G*Y P T -0.8 the OECD, a rich-country club East Africa is predicted to be the continent’s CAPE MAURITANIA MALI VERDE NIGER ETHIOPIA* fastest-growing region: Ethiopia, in S U D A N ERITREA CHAD THE SENEGAL DJIBOUTI BURKINA GAMBIA FASO particular, has averaged double-digit GUINEA NIGERIA BENIN SOUTH growth since 2005 and its economy is GUINEABISSAU C A R SUDAN SIERRA TOGO LEONE expected to swell further in 2016, bolCÔTE UGANDA †SOMALIA* LIBERIA D’IVOIRE CONGO-BRAZZAVILLE KENYA EQUATORIAL GABON stered by public-sector investment West RWANDA GUINEA -8.0 C O N G O BURUNDI km Africa will be helped by the end of the TANZANIA 750 Ebola outbreak Oil exporters have been ANGOLA MALAWI hit by the falling price of crude: the OECD ZAMBIA GDP, 2016 expects growth to remain subdued in ZIMBABWE MADAGASCAR NAMIBIA % change on a year earlier‡ Angola and Nigeria while Equatorial BOTSWANA 2.0-3.9 8.0+ SWAZILAND Guinea is forecast to remain in recession 0-1.9 6.0-7.9 SOUTH South Africa is another gloomy spot: AFRICA LESOTHO 4.0-5.9 Decrease drought and power shortages mean its ‡Forecast Source: OECD *Years ending June †No data low-growth trajectory is set to continue MO Z AM BI QU E CA ME RO ON GHANA % change on Dec 31st 2015 Index one in local in $ Markets May 25th week currency terms United States (DJIA) 17,851.5 +1.9 +2.4 +2.4 China (SSEA) 2,946.5 +0.3 -20.5 -21.3 Japan (Nikkei 225) 16,757.4 +0.7 -12.0 -4.0 Britain (FTSE 100) 6,262.9 +1.6 +0.3 +0.2 Canada (S&P TSX) 14,053.7 +1.6 +8.0 +14.7 Euro area (FTSE Euro 100) 1,032.4 +3.2 -5.7 -3.2 Euro area (EURO STOXX 50) 3,061.6 +3.6 -6.3 -3.9 Austria (ATX) 2,272.7 +2.8 -5.2 -2.7 Belgium (Bel 20) 3,492.0 +4.1 -5.6 -3.2 France (CAC 40) 4,481.6 +3.8 -3.4 -0.8 Germany (DAX)* 10,205.2 +2.6 -5.0 -2.5 Greece (Athex Comp) 641.8 +2.2 +1.7 +4.3 Italy (FTSE/MIB) 18,201.4 +2.8 -15.0 -12.8 Netherlands (AEX) 447.2 +2.9 +1.2 +3.8 Spain (Madrid SE) 920.9 +4.1 -4.6 -2.1 Czech Republic (PX) 890.3 +1.9 -6.9 -4.5 Denmark (OMXCB) 894.2 +4.0 -1.4 +1.5 Hungary (BUX) 26,704.5 +2.6 +11.6 +15.2 Norway (OSEAX) 673.7 +2.0 +3.8 +10.3 Poland (WIG) 46,695.4 +0.2 +0.5 +0.2 Russia (RTS, $ terms) 908.0 -2.0 +7.7 +19.9 Sweden (OMXS30) 1,367.1 +1.9 -5.5 -4.0 Switzerland (SMI) 8,167.6 +2.4 -7.4 -6.5 Turkey (BIST) 78,609.0 +1.8 +9.6 +9.0 Australia (All Ord.) 5,436.8 +0.3 +1.7 +0.4 Hong Kong (Hang Seng) 20,368.1 +2.7 -7.1 -7.2 India (BSE) 25,881.2 +0.7 -0.9 -2.7 Indonesia (JSX) 4,773.0 +0.8 +3.9 +4.9 Malaysia (KLSE) 1,631.0 -0.3 -3.6 +0.8 Pakistan (KSE) 36,499.4 +0.5 +11.2 +11.2 Singapore (STI) 2,766.7 -0.4 -4.0 -1.3 South Korea (KOSPI) 1,960.5 +0.2 nil -0.9 Taiwan (TWI) 8,396.2 +2.9 +0.7 +1.3 Thailand (SET) 1,397.6 -0.2 +8.5 +9.3 Argentina (MERV) 12,381.5 -3.5 +6.0 -2.2 Brazil (BVSP) 49,482.9 -2.1 +14.1 +25.7 Chile (IGPA) 19,525.7 +0.1 +7.6 +10.0 Colombia (IGBC) 9,708.5 -1.6 +13.6 +17.6 Mexico (IPC) 45,710.9 +0.4 +6.4 -0.5 Venezuela (IBC) 15,314.2 +2.0 +5.0 na Egypt (Case 30) 7,543.4 -1.2 +7.7 -5.1 Israel (TA-100) 1,249.8 +2.3 -5.0 -3.9 Saudi Arabia (Tadawul) 6,516.5 -3.3 -5.7 -5.6 South Africa (JSE AS) 53,721.9 +1.8 +6.0 +4.6 MO Markets Economic and financial indicators 81 Other markets Other markets Index May 25th United States (S&P 500) 2,090.5 United States (NAScomp) 4,894.9 China (SSEB, $ terms) 336.7 Japan (Topix) 1,342.9 Europe (FTSEurofirst 300) 1,366.8 World, dev'd (MSCI) 1,654.4 Emerging markets (MSCI) 788.0 World, all (MSCI) 397.2 World bonds (Citigroup) 929.5 EMBI+ (JPMorgan) 754.0 Hedge funds (HFRX) 1,152.6§ Volatility, US (VIX) 13.9 CDSs, Eur (iTRAXX)† 75.1 CDSs, N Am (CDX)† 89.7 Carbon trading (EU ETS) € 5.8 The Economist commodity-price index % change on Dec 31st 2015 one in local in $ week currency terms +2.1 +2.3 +2.3 +3.3 -2.2 -2.2 -1.8 -20.2 -21.0 +0.3 -13.2 -5.3 +3.1 -4.9 -2.5 +0.8 -0.5 -0.5 -0.8 -0.8 -0.8 +0.6 -0.5 -0.5 -0.4 +6.8 +6.8 -0.6 +7.0 +7.0 nil -1.8 -1.8 +16.0 +18.2 (levels) -3.7 -2.6 -0.1 +7.2 +1.6 +1.6 -4.4 -30.0 -28.2 Sources: Markit; Thomson Reuters *Total return index †Credit-default-swap spreads, basis points §May 24th Indicators for more countries and additional series, go to: Economist.com/indicators 2005=100 % change on The Economist commodity-price indexone one May 17th Dollar Index All Items Food 137.5 164.5 Industrials All Nfa† 109.4 120.2 Metals 104.7 Sterling Index All items 172.8 Euro Index All items 150.8 Gold $ per oz 1,279.5 West Texas Intermediate $ per barrel 48.6 May 24th* month 135.5 162.3 year -1.2 +2.1 -3.9 +4.7 107.6 -5.9 -14.9 115.8 -6.6 -7.2 104.1 -5.6 -18.2 168.7 -1.3 +1.2 150.9 +0.1 -6.2 1,234.6 -0.6 +3.8 48.3 +9.7 -16.8 Sources: Bloomberg; CME Group; Cotlook; Darmenn & Curl; FT; ICCO; ICO; ISO; Live Rice Index; LME; NZ Wool Services; Thompson Lloyd & Ewart; Thomson Reuters; Urner Barry; WSJ *Provisional †Non-food agriculturals 82 The Economist May 28th 2016 Obituary Fritz Stern ians of its cultural and moral standards Another big book looked at money and power in imperial Germany, focusing on the previously unexplored relationship between Bismarck and his banker, a Prussian Jew called Gerson von Bleichröder The picture painted was unflattering to both: the Iron Chancellor’s brutal opportunism matched by the financier’s fawning subservience But the moral dilemmas of the Hitler era were the most fascinating He wrote an insightful study of two anti-Nazi notables: the Protestant pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his friend, the intelligence officer Hans von Dohnanyi Another German Fritz Stern, a German-born American historian, died on May18th, aged 90 W HAT made Germany go mad? Having fled the Nazis as a boy, Fritz Stern spent the rest of his life trying to understand and explain the murderous frenzy which beset his homeland His life spanned five states of Germany: the Weimar Republic, Hitler’s Nazi Reich, the prosperous, guilt-ridden Federal Republic, the harshly run communist East, and finally the reunified country, which bestowed on him its highest honours His impeccable credentials—American, Jewish, a refugee from Hitler—meant he could praise something that modern Germans could not He termed it anderes Deutschland (“another Germany”): not a state, but a place of noble ideas and brave behaviour, a cultural powerhouse and a force for European unity After the Stern family’s flight from Breslau, now Polish Wroclaw, Germany could no longer be his fatherland, but German, precise and expressive, was still his mother-tongue—and there was nowhere else, he said fondly, where he could use it in the same way Fritz was seven when Hitler came to power: bad news, the boy could tell, from his father’s reaction when he brought up the morning newspaper But it was nothing that affected the family personally In the early Nazi years left-wingers, not Jews, bore the brunt of persecution The prosper- ous, professional Sterns were surely neither; the family had long ago converted to Lutheranism Only when rebuked for making an anti-Semitic remark to his (piously Christian) sister did he even become aware of his family’s roots The Sterns were spared any personal humiliation: they emigrated unhurriedly and reluctantly, with their furniture and other possessions, in 1938, a fortunate six weeks before the furies of Kristallnacht The young man initially wanted to follow his father into medicine, but found the humanities beguiling Albert Einstein, a family friend, advised him to stick with medicine: it was a science; history wasn’t He ignored that, and a career in American academia, chiefly at Columbia University, quickly blossomed He made his name with a book on cultural despair, published in 1961, which traced the Nazis’ roots to a 19th-century German revulsion against modernity and liberalism The trauma of defeat in the first world war turned fashionable cultural malcontents into a political force that ultimately became a murderous ideology Hitler’s rise, he argued, owed less to the Austrian corporal’s personality, his thuggish supporters and brutish ideas, than to his opponents’ cowardice and the weakness of Germany’s “gatekeepers”—the guard- Stern fans Distinguished in the English-speaking world, the silver-tongued professor was revered in Germany Die Welt called him the country’s “Guardian Angel”: combining an insider’s knowledge with an outsider’s clout Though originally lukewarm about reunification, in 1990, at a—literally—historic seminar, he helped persuade Margaret Thatcher, then the British prime minister, that it posed no threat to Europe The Stern professorial wrath descended on Daniel Goldhagen, an American author whose book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” sweepingly blamed the Holocaust on Germans’ “eliminationist mindset” His blistering review in Foreign Affairs called it “astoundingly repetitive”, “simplistic” and a “potpourri of half-truths and assertions” (and full of “vaporous, dreary jargon”, to boot) Anti-Semitism was inexcusable, but—historically—Germany was far from unique Its misdeeds must be criticised, but always with scrupulous facts and logic Some judgments would have been hard for a non-Jewish, non-refugee to make: for example that Hitler would today be hailed as a German national hero had he died in 1936 His expertise was mostly from on high, and from afar, with little time actually living in Germany (a five-month stint in 1992 as the American ambassador’s adviser was the longest stay of his adult life) Some thought his delight in prizes and lectures excessive Yet a self-questioning German soul permits no complacency: after receiving a particularly grand prize, he was asked by his wife “are you happy?” He replied sombrely: “if not now, when?” He ended his life worrying that democracy was disintegrating, just as it had in his youth Authoritarian tendencies in Poland were distressing So too were developments closer to home When the Sterns arrived in America FDR was president Now Donald Trump—a “nobody” but for his wealth and ambition—exemplified “stultification” and an ominously “dysfunctional, destructive” politics A life spent studying how quickly and terribly things can go wrong, and the cost of righting them, sharpens the senses for such things # W H ATD R I V E S YO U DRIVE DE CARTIER MANUFACTURE MOVEMENT 1904 MC THE DRIVE DE CARTIER COLLECTION IS ELEGANCE REDEFINED THE SLEEK LINES OF THIS CUSHION-SHAPED WATCH CREATE A TRULY STYLISH PIECE, BROUGHT TO LIFE BY THE MAISON MANUFACTURE MOVEMENT 1904 MC ESTABLISHED IN 1847, CARTIER CREATES EXCEPTIONAL WATCHES THAT COMBINE DARING DESIGN AND WATCHMAKING SAVOIR-FAIRE Shop the collection on cartier.com [...]... governed by the first 2,000 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than by 2,000 members of Harvard’s faculty Republican lawmakers must decide whether they still believe in the good sense of those they aspire to govern, or whether they lost that faith somewhere on the way to the statehouse The new voting laws suggest the Supreme Court underestimated the grip the past still has on the present... hardship, but the confiscation of all the books, art works and other culturally related items they possessed They managed to hide some, but many more were destroyed This is the real reason behind the atrocity Purging his rivals at the same time was just convenient for Mao LOUISA VAN DIJK The Hague On the right track There is a way for the new mayor of London to realise his objective of connecting the development... devices that can be fitted onto either its existing medium-range Nodong missile (developed from the Sovietera Scud C) or its two missiles under development, the Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) and the KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) Mr Schilling thinks that they would not have carried out four nuclear tests on something they did not think they could deliver On March 9th,... 14 Leaders 2 The Economist May 28th 2016 The authors of these laws protest that they have nothing to do with race or political advantage and claim that they are necessary to guard against voter fraud Yet there is scant evidence of fraud To claim otherwise is cynical and corrosive In the 12 years before Alabama passed its new voter-ID law there was one documented case of impersonation The second argument... morphine and other derivatives of the opium poppy, can dramatically ease the agony ofbroken bones, third-degree burns or terminal cancer But the mismanagement of these drugs has caused a pain crisis (see page 5 2) It has two faces: one in America and a few other rich countries; the other in the developing world In America for decades doctors prescribed too many opioids for chronic pain in the mistaken... With the spring fighting season under way, and a profitable opium harvest gathered, the Taliban are well placed to tighten their pincer around Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in the south, and to expand their offensive in the north They may even attempt to retake Kunduz, the northern provincial capital that was briefly captured last year Peace will have to wait 7 India’s deep south Southern... Thanks to the migration of workers, however, 260m people, about one-fifth of the population, now live somewhere other than their birthplace In the past five years, the pattern of retirement has also begun to change Increasing numbers spend some or all of their pensionable years away from where they used to work Neither filial tradition nor the hukou system have proved strong enough to prevent this In the 1950s... against the new laws is the ropey rationale for passing them The main reason cited for the ID requirements is the need to combat fraud That sounds reasonable, except that the kind of impersonation they prevent is vanishingly rare In Alabama, argues the NAACP’s Legal Defence Fund, there was one documented case of voter-impersonation in the 12 years before the ID law was passed The laws’ supporters, such... two other swing states, are also involved The history, like the geography, is fishy As Richard Hasen of the University of California recounts, the tinkering began after the debacle in Florida in 2000, which showed that “in close elections, the rules matter” Mr Obama’s election gave it another impetus; the Republicans’ statehouse victories in 2010, and then the Supreme Court’s ruling, facilitated further... was the one senior figure in Pyongyang with whom the Chinese had close ties The Chinese are changing their tactics, if not their strategy, in response to what they see as continuing provocations, looking for a sanctions “sweet-spot”—harsh enough to The Economist May 28th 2016 change Mr Kim’s mind but not so punitive as to risk the collapse of the regime However, if Mr Kim believes he is now on the “home