ON A WINTRY weekend, young couples wander through “ LOVELOVELOVE”, an exhibition at the Today Art Museum in Beijing. Some of the items on display are tenuously related to the theme, but the visitors seem not to mind, intent as they are on snapping a striking selfie amid the mirrors and neon lights.
TopWhy 15,000-year-old art might have been displayed in firelight
THE BRITISH MUSEUM has in its care more than 8m artefacts. Visitors can see a mere 80,000 of them or so on display at any one time. Partly that is a blunt matter of space and variety.
TopSpacesuits are showing their age
FIXING PANELS on the International Space Station (ISS) is a bit like doing car repairs while wearing stiff oven gloves and standing on a skateboard. That, at least, is the way Kate Rubins, an astronaut at NASA, America’s space agency, describes it.
TopThe carbon market drives land sales in Scotland
WHEN PRINCE ALBERT purchased the 20,000-hectare (50,000-acre) Balmoral estate in 1852, he did so for his family and for the views, the grouse and the deer. Owners of estates in the Scottish Highlands have conventionally had similar motives.
The NIMBY city
LAST DECEMBER York City Council considered a proposal to demolish a Mecca bingo hall and replace i...
TopOklahoma takes a tussle with Indian tribes to the Supreme Court
WITH AN AIR of efficiency Judge Amy Page moves through the day’s docket. Defendants stand sheepishly before her to face their charges: assault and battery, stalking, larceny, drunk driving.
TopEmmanuel Macron remains the strong favourite to win France’s presidency
SEVEN MONTHS ago Emmanuel Macron stood in the gardens of the Palais du Pharo in Marseille, before the sunlit backdrop of the old port, and declared: “If we can’t succeed in Marseille, we can’t make a success of France.”
TopWhy Olaf Scholz hesitates to send Ukraine heavy weapons
ON FEBRUARY 27th, three days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Olaf Scholz delivered a speech to Germany’s parliament that astonished even his close political allies.
TopFighting has intensified in the Donbas region
Now Mr Putin is throwing a large portion of his weary army at eastern Ukraine in the hope of salvaging something from his war. The coming weeks are likely to see the bloodiest battles since Russia first invaded the Donbas region in 2014.
Why the Federal Reserve has made a historic mistake on inflation
CENTRAL BANKS are supposed to inspire confidence in the economy by keeping inflation low and stable. America’s Federal Reserve has suffered a hair-raising loss of control. In March consumer prices were 8.5% higher than a year earlier, the fastest annual rise since 1981. In Washington inflation-watching is usually the preserve of wonks in shabby offices.
Macron still leads a tightening presidential race
“I WANT IT to be less like a rally,” declares Emmanuel Macron in an electoral clip, as he strolls around the empty indoor arena west of Paris in an overcoat and scarf, scouting out the venue: “I want something more like a sporting event.”
TopProtests and politics will dominate this year’s Biennale
NO NATIONAL PAVILION in the latest Venice Biennale, which opens on April 23rd, will make such a brave and unambiguous statement as Russia’s. Its airy spaces will be empty, the curator and two artists chosen to represent Russia having withdrawn on February 28th in protest at the invasion of Ukraine.
TopBritish academics are seeing their retirement benefits cut
MANY ACADEMIC fights involve hostile questions at conferences and cutting footnotes. But a dispute over pensions has sent scholars to the picket lines.
TopAround the world, people like (and dislike) the same scents
TO THE SWEDES, there are few odours more delectable than the scent of surströmming, a type of fermented herring.
TopChina says imports are causing outbreaks of covid-19
IT STARTED WITH Norwegian salmon. Chinese officials blamed the frozen fish for a surge of covid-19 cases in Beijing in 2020. Later they claimed to have found the virus on crabs from Chile and shrimp from Ecuador.
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