THE JEEPNEYS of the Philippines are at once a national treasure and a dirty menace. When American troops went home in 1946, they left behind hundreds of military jeeps. Filipinos fitted them with benches, daubed them with gaudy illustrations and began charging commuters for lifts around town.
TopElon Musk wants to re-engineer the “public square”
SWEEPING STATEMENTS about the future of humanity do not usually feature in discussions about leveraged buy-outs.But Elon Musk has never felt bound by convention. Asked about his plans to buy Twitter, a social network, and take it private—which were approved by the firm's board on April 25th—he went straight for the big idea.
TopThe push for shareholder democracy should be accelerated
KEEPING SHAREHOLDERS satisfied used to be straightforward. If a firm could announce juicy profits, healthy cashflow and a perky dividend at the annual general meeting (AGM), applause was assured and few hard questions would be asked.
TopA Cambridge college reflects on the controversy over Ronald Fisher
STEP INSIDE the dining hall of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, and within its cool, wood-panelled walls are memorials to great scholars of Caius and their work.
TopBritons don’t want new prisons. They also don’t want old ones to close
Violent crime in England and Wales peaked in 1995 according to the British Crime Survey, the best guide to the true level of offending. But the adult prison population has risen.
TopShipping asylum-seekers to Rwanda could wreck the Refugee Convention
BRITAIN WAS one of the first countries to ratify the Refugee Convention of 1951, which spelled out countries’ obligations to protect fugitives from persecution who had arrived in their territories and not return them to danger.
TopA guide to Britain’s cost-of-living crunch
THE SIGNS are there. Richard Walker, the boss of Iceland, a discount supermarket, reports that his customers are switching towards frozen food, as a way to reduce waste, and buying fewer items as they try to manage their cash.
TopMexican migration has changed America for the better
PEDRO MORALES, a 73-year-old retired farmer, sits at the table of his sparsely furnished house in Santa Rosa and flicks through faded pictures of José, one of his sons. In 1990 José, then just 19, left this small village two hours outside of Guadalajara, in the central Mexican state of Jalisco, where chickens still roam the streets.
TopHotChinese political interference has Western spooks worried
CHRISTINE LEE once mingled easily with members of Britain’s elite. The Hong Kong-born British solicitor frequently visited Parliament, where legislators supported her work helping ethnic Chinese get more involved in politics. She even received an award for her efforts from Theresa May, who was then prime minister.
TopWhy Boris bashes the archbishop
ARGUMENTS BETWEEN the government of the day and the Archbishop of Canterbury have a long, bloody pedigree.
TopSocial media are changing the way art is seen and presented
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...
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