LOTS of people debate and campaign against austerity, but what exactly is it? Dictionary definitions vary. Merriam-Webster defines it as: A situation in which there is not much money and it is spent only on things that are necessary Or: Enforced or extreme economy An _______ individual would be someone who lives within their budget: that is, who spends less than their annual income. Anyone who has lived through a round of cost- cutting at a company knows it usually involves absolute reductions in spending, a clampdown on expenses (taxis, overseas trips) and staff redundancies
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A profound shift is now taking place in economics as a result, of the sort that happens only once in a generation. Much as in the 1970s when clubby Keynesianism gave way to Milton Friedman’s _______ monetarism, and in the 1990s when central banks were given their independence, so the pandemic marks the start of a new era. Its overriding preoccupation will be exploiting the opportunities and containing the enormous risks that stem from a supersized level of state intervention in the economy and financial markets
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EVER since the euro crisis broke in late 2009 this newspaper has criticised the world’s most powerful woman. We disagreed with Angela Merkel’s needlessly _______ medicine: the continent’s recession has been unnecessarily long and brutal as a result. We wanted the chancellor to shrug off her cautious incrementalism and the mantle of her country’s history—and to lead Europe more forcefully
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Time is short. In France voters have given their new president, François Hollande, a mandate to alter the “ _______ ” course set by his ousted predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, and to focus on growth. Mrs Merkel says she will not change the fiscal compact, but Mr Hollande needs something to show voters in legislative polls next month
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Like most Germans, the Bundesbank has a horror of debt-monetisation and an aversion to inflation. Its _______ philosophy has come into conflict with the ECB’s efforts to hold the euro together and prop up growth. In a court case in 2013 Jens Weidmann, the Bundesbank’s boss, gave evidence against Mr Draghi’s commitment to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro through unlimited bond purchases (outright-monetary transactions, or OMTs)
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4%. A small share of national tax revenue can _______ the importance of property taxes for the local governments that tend to levy them. In Australia and Britain taxes based on property are the only source of local-government tax revenue
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He didn’t get this far by being dull. ","description":"His stories _______ his twee reputation","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
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Officially, growth is in line with the government’s target of “about 7%”. That is probably a slight embellishment, and in any case the data _______ the economy’s fragility. Were it not for an unsustainable boom in financial services, resulting from a stockmarket bubble that has now popped, growth would have been a fair bit lower
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About a tenth of big American firms, and even more smaller ones, still employ tactics like “poison pills” and staggered boards that shelter incompetent managers. Another is that today’s activists _______ the scavenging stereotype of the 1980s. They often seek to improve firms’ boards rather than strip companies of assets
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They reveal that the post-communist nationalism thriving in central European countries like Hungary and Poland has its roots not before the turn of the decade but before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most importantly, the differences _______ the simple solutions proffered by some. It is widely said that the “liberal elite” cannot possibly understand the changes through which it is living because it does not understand the hard-up strivers driving them
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8% in the year to December. Germany's latest economic figures _______ the optimism reported by businessmen. Industrial production fell by 0
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A Mexican who died in 1988, Barragán is widely regarded as one of the great architects of the 20th century. A modernist who, unusually for a big name, focused on residential projects, he is known for houses where unadorned exteriors _______ the brightness within. At his Casa Gilardi in Mexico City, a yellow corridor leads to a swimming pool surrounded by high blue walls, with a red pillar plunging into the water
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“The speed limit is second amendment stuff,” says Daniel Freund, a Green MEP. Car wars _______ Europe’s reputation for eco-friendliness. Green parties are riding high in the polls and could return to power in Germany this year
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But critics say the figures, which are published by the State Forestry Administration, which also runs the project, define dryness, and a healthy tree, rather loosely. And conditions in many areas _______ the trumpeted successes. Zhao Wenju, a farmer from Zhangjia village, which is close to Beijing, says that a well that required him to draw water up 9 metres a decade ago has sunk to 60 metres below ground level
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The film doesn’t end with the customary unalloyed triumph, either, but instead with Venus’s first professional tournament at the age of 14. Besides, Richard is a complicated, _______ hero. As determined as he is that his daughters should be world champions, he is also determined that they should have fun, study hard at school, and have at least some taste of a normal childhood
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This is unsettling for the European Union, a slow-moving club founded on reverence for the rule of law. For Europeans the shift is embodied in three presidents whose _______ impulses are shaping and constraining their foreign policy: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Take Mr Trump first
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Such shoddy policies are typical of how the government is handling a stubborn current- account deficit and resulting hard-cash crunch (see chart). Its _______ actions increase volatility in a country that toppled its autocrat in an uprising two years ago, and where the economy shrank by 5. 5% in 2020
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Engagement was already on its uppers. Donald Trump had replaced it with something more belligerent and _______ . Many hoped that Mr Biden would bring some order to the chaos and lay down rules for a return to some sort of engagement, albeit on less friendly terms than those practised by the Obama administration in which he served
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Why does America continue to execute people? Following the Supreme Court’s 1972 ruling in Furman v Georgia, capital punishment was put on hold. The penalty was applied in an arbitrary and _______ manner, violating the Eighth Amendment bar on “cruel and unusual punishments”, the justices held. If any factor explains why some criminals get death sentences while most do not, Justice Potter Stewart wrote, “it is the constitutionally impermissible basis of race”
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And the way that Mr Xi is using that power is making investors increasingly pessimistic. The government’s crackdown on tech darlings, from Ant, a fintech dynamo, to Tencent, a social-media giant, has served up a reminder of just how _______ its regulations can be. Chinese officials say they are limiting the power of big tech platforms in order to to make the economy more competitive and thus more productive
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Dr Frangi and his team are investigating stent-like devices called intracranial flow diverters. These control the passage of blood through brain arteries and are often used to treat _______ aneurysms—bulges that form in an arterial wall, in which blood then accumulates. If a
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These are three-dimensional maps of all the neurons in entire brains, and how those neurons link together. This week sees the publication of an important step on the road to a complete brain connectome: a map of about a quarter of a fruit fly’s _______ capacity. That map, of what its cartographers refer to as the fly’s hemibrain—a set of around 25,000 neurons in the centre of the organ—has been more than a decade in the making
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Many neurons, the nerve cells, had vanished. He also saw abnormal deposits inside the remaining cells, especially in the _______ cortex, the thin outer layer of grey matter. Between a third and a quarter had been invaded by dense knotty bundles, now known as “neurofibrillary tangles”, caused by a build-up of a protein called tau
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More affluent children usually perform better in school, and are less likely to end up in jail. Growing up poor risks the development of a smaller _______ cortex. But these are associations between poverty and development, not evidence that poverty causes these bad outcomes, says Kimberly Noble, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York
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The two researchers lit upon the claustrum as something that might help illuminate it. The claustra (there are two, one in each _______ hemisphere—see diagram) are thin sheets of nerve cells tucked below the
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Nico Voigtländer, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Hans-Joachim Voth, now of the University of Zurich, argue that the high incomes induced by plague led to more spending on manufactured goods produced in cities, and thus to higher rates of urbanisation. The plague effectively shoved parts of Europe from a low-wage, less urbanised equilibrium on a path more _______ to the development of a commercial, and then an industrial, economy. Something similar occurred in the aftermath of the Spanish flu, which killed between 20m and 100m people from 1918 to 1920
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This lack of financial restraint also allowed firms to indulge their “investment hunger”, an excessive appetite for resources, which squeezed out consumers and resulted in chronic shortages. The argument made his name: it was a “ _______ ” extension of a concept familiar to mainstream economists. Mr Kornai had once had larger ambitions, hoping to smash the crystal through which most economists viewed the world
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) Left itself in English comes from a root meaning "weak" and so, in some contexts, "worthless". With all this history, it's no surprise that left-handers have long found the world less than _______ . The Wikipedia article on "Bias against left-handed people" is thousands of words long
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It is a strong preference for avoiding confrontation. Anecdotes abound suggesting that the Midwest is indeed America’s most _______ region. But the hard data are more nuanced
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The situation was fictionalised, even celebrated, in “The West Wing”, a television series that first aired in 1999 and revolved around the personal and political dilemmas of a glamorous, wisecracking coterie of presidential aides. The Iraq war made such arrangements seem less _______ . The “sofa government” practised by Tony Blair was criticised by the subsequent Butler inquiry into pre-war intelligence
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But these tea-drinkers and a growing number of Somalis prefer smaller-town living. They say St Cloud is safe and, on balance, _______ . That is despite its notoriety after a 2016 incident when a Somali refugee stabbed and injured ten people in a mall (he was shot dead)
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In 2007-09 there was no surge in economics publications. Economists’ recommendations for policy were mostly based on judgment, theory and a _______ reading of national statistics. The gap between official data and what is happening in the real economy can still be glaring
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Their mandates typically compel them to control inflation and see off bank runs. Yet in recent years, with a _______ and often unconvincing nod to those mandates, central bankers have taken on fresh responsibilities. America’s Federal Reserve seems to believe it has both the obligation and the tools to reduce racial inequality, while many central bankers want to raise the relative cost of capital for fossil-fuel companies via interventions in the corporate-bond market
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Many expat and immigrant parents feel a sense of failure; they wring their hands and share stories on parenting forums and social media, hoping to find the secret to nurturing bilingual children successfully. Children are linguistic sponges, but this doesn’t mean that _______ exposure is enough. They must hear a language quite a bit to understand it—and use it often to be able to speak it comfortably
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Anyone can submit a manuscript to one of these servers and see it made available to the world within hours. Submissions are given a _______ check, to weed out opinion pieces and to ensure that they have the parts expected of a scientific paper—an abstract and sections describing methods and results. If the topic is controversial, the checkers may flag up outlandish claims
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Marguerite Yourcenar, a French-American writer, claimed to have understood Hadrian better than she knew her own father; “Memoirs of Hadrian” (1951), a novel she wrote in the emperor’s voice, is gripping. Nero—another Roman ruler whose name is known to anybody with even a _______ understanding of ancient history—is now the subject of a fresh artistic inquiry. In an exhibition which opens on May 27th, the British Museum encourages visitors to take a more rounded view of an emperor who is generally remembered as a vain, whimsical sadist
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4m people have licences to carry concealed weapons, has some of the laxest gun laws. To buy an AR-15 rifle, the model used by Mr Cruz, which is based on the M-16 assault rifle, requires a background check so _______ the authorities almost might as well not bother. It takes a few minutes
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Triumphs at the track were accompanied by news reports on the Bollywood lifestyles of Adar Poonawalla and his wife, Natasha, whom Elle magazine described as “India’s first lady of fabulousness”. Only _______ attention spilled over to the couple’s day job running Serum Institute of India, the press-shy vaccine-maker at the root of the family fortune. A year on it is the company, not its flamboyant owners, that is making headlines
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Blanket targets risk turning sensible priorities into failures. It is a _______ to-do list. Will governments rise to the challenge? Therein lies the last test
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1 Fights over vaccines. As the first vaccines become available in quantity, the focus will shift from the heroic effort of developing them to the equally _______ task of distributing them. Vaccine diplomacy will accompany fights within and between countries over who should get them and when
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Yet the very resilience that has protected Brazil’s institutions from the predations of a populist also makes them resistant to beneficial change. The actions required are _______ . Above all, the government needs to serve the public rather than itself
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The crisis will also hamper Mr Biden’s ability to repair the damage, by ensuring he is largely consumed by fighting fires at home. The second problem, what to do about China, is more _______ . The president and his team all subscribe to the new consensus view that it is a formidable, long-term competitor
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The episode also highlights a bigger question of whether President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on business will make it even harder to create a reformed financial system that is safer, more open and more efficient. Part of what makes China’s financial industry _______ is its size. Banking assets have ballooned to about $50trn and they sit alongside a large, Byzantine system of shadow finance
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” And he nodded towards her true authorship of “Enfranchisement,” noting: it was “hers in a particular sense, my share in it being little more than that of an editor and amanuensis”. Richard Reeves, author of “John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand,” a sweeping and sparkling book, describes Mill as having a “lifelong mission to _______ Harriet”. Yet Jo Ellen Jacobs, author of “The Voice of Harriet Taylor Mill”, argues that Mill did not give Harriet enough credit
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The only reference to the war that defined his career is a single phrase: “I hate war. ” At least the people who are trying to _______ Mr Reagan and reinvent FDR are doing so out of misguided hero worship. Far worse are the politicians who
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Well, Abraham Lincoln was known for wearing top hats and I do not believe that anyone choosing to run around sporting one of those would be considered anything other than a lunatic. William Gantt Atlanta A moment in history SIR - While many who would _______ Ronald Reagan praise his being “tough” against communism and terrorism (“The first post- Enlightenment president?”, Economist. com, June 7th), I am thinking about the 241 Marines who were killed when their barracks were bombed in 1983
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The only reference to the war that defined his career is a single phrase: “I hate war. ” At least the people who are trying to _______ Mr Reagan and reinvent FDR are doing so out of misguided hero worship. Far worse are the politicians who
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Well, Abraham Lincoln was known for wearing top hats and I do not believe that anyone choosing to run around sporting one of those would be considered anything other than a lunatic. William Gantt Atlanta A moment in history SIR - While many who would _______ Ronald Reagan praise his being “tough” against communism and terrorism (“The first post- Enlightenment president?”, Economist. com, June 7th), I am thinking about the 241 Marines who were killed when their barracks were bombed in 1983
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The practice was honed during the cold war. The Soviet Union _______ d false information to widen social and political divisions on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The Russians built a big bureaucracy to conduct these “active measures”
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These days human-curated fake accounts are preferred because they are harder for both platform moderators and the public to detect. Social-media influencers and civil-society groups are now employed to _______ propaganda. Misinformation has become more professionalised, too
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Expats are not just expensive perk-baggers (as this stand-in Bartleby, a foreign correspondent in his day job, can attest). Companies have cultures and processes which are forged at headquarters, and which envoys can _______ . They in turn will imbibe new ways of doing things that can be transferred back to other bits of the business
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” Scholars who study the era have taken note. In a recent essay in the popular academic blog “In the Middle” Sierra Lomuto argued that medievalists had “an ethical responsibility to ensure that the knowledge we create and _______ about the medieval past is not weaponised against people of colour and marginalised communities in our own contemporary world. ” Academics are placing a new emphasis on the ways in which medieval societies differed from the homogeneous world imagined by the alt-right
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In the late 19th century America’s federal government gave land to states, which they could sell to raise proceeds for “land-grant universities”. Those universities (today including many of the country’s finest) were given a practical task: to develop and _______ new techniques in agriculture and engineering. They have become centres of advanced research and, in some cases, the hub of local economic clusters
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to look at all the data and make my own decision,” explains Dr Mgbako. “And that’s where representation is important, because if more people like me are able to do that, then we can _______ [the information] and have reasonable conversations with people in our communities. ”■ Dig deeper All our stories relating to the pandemic and the vaccines can be found on our coronavirus hub
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But, argues Jennifer Pitts of the University of Chicago in her book “A Turn to Empire”, in the 19th century the most famous European liberals gravitated towards “imperial liberalism”. The shift was grounded in the growing triumphalism of France and Britain, which saw themselves as qualified by virtue of their economic and technological success to _______ universal moral and cultural values. John Stuart Mill abhorred slavery, writing during the American civil war in 1863 that “I cannot look forward with satisfaction to any settlement but complete emancipation
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The resulting frictions led large companies such as Yahoo and Best Buy, which had introduced more flexible work arrangements in the first decade of the two-thousands, to pull workers back into their cubicles by the beginning of the second. It’s also why now, after seventeen months of pandemic-induced building closures in the United States, so many large companies are looking to return their workers to the office just as soon as coronavirus infection rates make it _______. It seems that even in our current moment of disruption, the office-as-factory model [remains entrenched](https://www
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It’s also amusing, given the events of the past year and a half, how many pages he dedicates to strategies for explaining the concept of remote work to your manager. (At one point, Ferriss recommends calling in sick for two days but still working while at home, to later prove to your skeptical boss that virtual work is literally _______. “He
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Some at the company thought it might be possible to dispense with the plantations and even the cane and coax plant cells to produce sugar in vats. The idea didn’t pan out—“It never became economically _______,” Long told me when, in July, I went to visit him at his office—but it got him interested in the mechanics of photosynthesis. ..Photosynthesis takes place within a plant’s chloroplasts—tiny organelles that are the descendants of that original captured cyanobacterium
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) I vowed to leave my phone in the apartment whenever I walked my dog. It didn’t feel _______ to quit social media entirely—I am, after all, a journalist—but I wanted to stop picking up my iPhone every time I felt even a moment’s mental pause. .More than twenty years ago, the writer Michael Goldhaber observed, in *Wired*, that the Internet drowns its users in information while constantly increasing information production; this makes attention a scarce and desirable resource—the “[natural economy of cyberspace](https://www
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Life happened. ” Can Amor’s loving, self-sacrificial kenosis offer a _______ political model? Or is she a holy outlier, an eccentric lost in her saintly inefficacy? Amid this general banking down of possibility, it’s striking that, in a novel marked by the adventurous journeying of its narrator, the perspective of Salome, the very pivot of the book, is barely inhabited. Her ambitions, her thinking, her future, remain largely, and pointedly, unheard
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S. government has determined, after a thorough and careful review, that the individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States; second, capture is not _______; and third, the operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles. ..It would be difficult to list all of the ways in which Holder’s arguments are disturbing
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..**Since we are less worried about asymptomatic spread among vaccinated people, should we be moving toward a testing regime that is more about testing viral loads than testing the presence of *COVID*{: . small}\\-19 in someone’s body? Is that _______, and is it possible, and is it desirable?**..Yes, yes, yes. It is
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The results were a sobering refutation of Osborn. The solo students came up with roughly twice as many solutions as the brainstorming groups, and a panel of judges deemed their solutions more “_______” and “effective. ” Brainstorming didn’t unleash the potential of the group, but rather made each individual less creative
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Worried about the “aggressive strategies” of America and China, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, issued a Europe-wide proclamation on March 4th that, among other things, proposed a new revolutionary era of government intervention in European Union businesses (see article). “We cannot suffer in silence,” he declared, while other global powers _______ the principles of “fair competition”. Mr Macron is not alone
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Certain factory-owners have been allowed to continue operating even during lockdowns (thus seeding infections among workers). Politicians _______ health rules that carry swingeing penalties for other infringers. In this context, the black flags that mostly young, educated Malaysians are also hanging outside their flats represent not a cry for help but a political statement: the bendera hitam, or black-flag movement, is a protest against the elites’ various failures of governance, of which the pandemic is just the most glaring
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The lockdowns did reduce the spread of infection in April, according to Jarbas Barbosa of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO). But economic pressures, and in Brazil and Mexico mixed messages from presidents, have led many people to _______ the lockdowns. Traffic in the region’s biggest countries is back up to almost half of normal, according to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)
flout Source
Economics, like psychology, trucks in propositions that hold other things being equal. Steady or rising demand in the face of rising prices does not _______ the law of the conservation of mass, or any such strict basic rule of the universe, but it does call for an explanation of the nature of the exception to the rule. What, exactly, is supposed not to be equal, such that in this case, applying the law of demand will mislead us about the expected effect of raising a price floor? There are conditions under which raising the minimum wage will increase demand, as well as economic efficiency
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But he will not be deterred by America’s “Khashoggi ban”, which supposedly slaps sanctions on people implicated in such acts but is unlikely to touch the prince himself. After September 11th 2001, America and its allies used the global “war on terror” to _______ international law prohibiting rendition and torture, and to deny suspected “terrorists” their rights. Regimes around the world believe that gives them the right to do similar things, and worse
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Governments ignore them. Companies _______ them. So citizen litigation is required
flout Source
Foer calls this phenomenon “drive-by traffic. ” As Facebook and Google have grown, they have pushed down advertising prices, and revenue-per-click from drive-by traffic has shrunk; even so, it continues to provide an incentive for any number of depressing modern media trends, including clickbait headlines, the proliferation of hastily written “hot takes,” and increasingly _______ coverage as everyone chases the same trending news stories, so as not to miss out on the traffic they will bring. Any content that is cheap to produce and has the potential to generate clicks on Facebook or Google is now a revenue-generating “audience opportunity
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Berkeley Into a Free-Speech CircusPublic universities have no choice but to welcome far- right speakers seeking self-promotion. Should the First Amendment be reinterpreted for the digital age?By Andrew MarantzA Reporter at LargeThe Obsessive Search for the Tasmanian TigerCould a global icon of extinction still be alive?By Brooke JarvisMore ReportingThe CriticsA Critic at LargeThe Rise of McPoliticsDemocrats and Republicans belong to increasingly _______ parties. Can we survive the loss of local politics?By Yascha MounkBooksBriefly Noted Book Reviews“Enemies in Love,” “Pretty Gentlemen,” “The Melody,” and “Welcome to Lagos
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Enter your e-mail addressSign upBy signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Read MoreA Critic at LargeThe Rise of McPoliticsDemocrats and Republicans belong to increasingly _______ parties. Can we survive the loss of local politics?By Yascha MounkNews DeskIs America Headed for a New Kind of Civil War?By Robin WrightVideoThe Tribalism of American PoliticsIn the third installment of a political discussion series with the Public Theatre, David Remnick and a panel of journalists examine the priorities of U
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“But they were both right. American society was pretty _______ where I grew up. And wonderful
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The power of the first group, the politicians, had waned relative to the power of the two others, whom he called “corporate chieftains” and “professional warlords. ” But the significant thing was that the three groups did not have rival interests: they constituted a single _______ ruling class whose members, virtually all white male Protestants, circulated from one institution to another. Dwight Eisenhower was in the military élite, then became President and filled his Cabinet with corporate heads
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org","@type":"NewsArticle","articleBody":"+++dropcap..Norway is a small country. It is also relatively _______ and egalitarian. This means that the distance from top to bottom is short, and that great disasters affect the entire populace
homogeneous Source
But he could not find any evidence to correlate specific areas of the cortex with specific faculties (perhaps because one needs very delicate and discrete ablations in order to do so, especially in the tiny pigeon cortex). The cortex, he concluded, was equipotential, as _______ and undifferentiated as the liver. “The brain,” it is said, “secretes thought as the liver secretes bile
homogeneous Source
Amid this disappointment one development offers cause for fresh hope: the emerging era of open-source intelligence (OSINT). New sensors, from _______ dashboard cameras to satellites that can see across the electromagnetic spectrum, are examining the planet and its people as never before. The information they collect is becoming cheaper
humdrum Source
Mainstream funds may find that, as well as having to cope with VC’s notorious booms and busts, long-run returns are lower than they hoped. Yet what is _______ for investors can still be good for the economy. It is better that a marginal dollar goes to fledgling companies than to bloated housing or a flooded bond market
humdrum Source
As our Briefing reports, the latest revolution is in full swing. Machines are taking control of investing—not just the _______ buying and selling of securities, but also the commanding heights of monitoring the economy and allocating capital. Funds run by computers that follow rules set by humans account for 35% of America’s stockmarket, 60% of institutional equity assets and 60% of trading activity
humdrum Source
Two recent series, “The White Lotus” and “Nine Perfect Strangers”—set in a luxury resort and a wellness retreat respectively—demonstrate the allure anew. While hotels promise freedom from your _______ life, they can also be claustrophobic. This encroaching sense that there is no world outside the hotel, and therefore no escape, creates the tension necessary for both horror and comedy
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WHEN INTERNATIONAL news organisations revealed that at least ten governments had used Pegasus, a powerful software tool created by Israel’s NSO Group, to hack into the smartphones of thousands of people around the world, including politicians, human-rights activists and journalists, the Israeli government shrugged. A _______ official statement insisted that all Israeli cyber-exports were regulated by the government in “adherence to international arrangements”. Export licences were granted “exclusively to governmental entities, for lawful use, and only for the purpose of preventing and investigating crime and counter-terrorism”
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Software can help make classrooms more personalised, so children receive instruction that closely matches their abilities. And if teachers were free from _______ tasks, including much of their marking, they would have extra time for the pupils who need the most help. The pandemic has underlined how family background affects academic success
humdrum Source
The lobster was thanked. It was all quite _______ —and that was the point. When people think of defending freedom of speech, they also turn to the dramatic: to Voltaire and defending to the death
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Selling cheap goods at luxury prices is lucrative: FIGS boasts gross operating margins of 27%, compared with 7% for Warby Parker. Other _______ products and services are ripe for “decommoditisation”, thinks Trina Spears, co-founder of FIGS. Many such niches are, as Lerer Hippeau puts it, “sleepy total addressable markets” without ruthless competitors
humdrum Source
There has been some progress. The party has taken steps to remedy a _______ but non- trivial grievance: that there are not enough public toilets for women. In 2016 it decreed that, when building them, there should be at least three places where women can relieve themselves for every two for men
humdrum Source
With such a surfeit of parking, most of it free, it is little wonder that most people get around Silicon Valley by car, or that the area has such appalling traffic jams. Parking can seem like the most _______ concern in the world. Even planners, who thrill to things like zoning and floor-area ratios, find it unglamorous
humdrum Source
But more recently, the G7 has been notable for what it has not achieved, hitting a low in 2018 when President Donald Trump stormed out of a meeting in Canada. Leaders could not even agree on an _______ press statement. The latest G7 meeting in Cornwall, hosted by Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, was an opportunity to revive the group as an engine of multilateralism in the service of global values
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It failed to do so. After two days of negotiations the final statement on climate change was _______ , doing little more than reaffirm countries’ commitments to the goals laid out in the Paris agreement in 2015 to “limit warming” to 2°C above pre-industrial efforts and “pursue efforts” to keep it to 1. 5°C
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A global chain of cafés might have been expected to hail from Italy, home of the espresso and barista. Instead Starbucks has overrun the world, despite America’s reputation for _______ coffee. A green car giant should have emerged from Europe, which has a proud engineering tradition and is at the forefront of environmental regulation
insipid Source
Farming berries uses a lot of pesticides and depends on varieties that can tolerate being shipped long distances. As a result the sweet, floral, fire-engine-red berry picked from a wild July vine is nothing like the _______ pinkish golf-balls stacked on November shelves. Through their control of light, temperature and nutrients vertical farms can have fresh-picked summer-succulent punnets on sale throughout a city all year round
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This is all too often forgotten when prestige is divvied out to those whose reputations are built on research, book-writing and media-whorery. _______ teaching is one of the biggest complaints of MBA students who have paid tens-of-thousands of dollars to sit in a business school classroom. Frankly, they deserve better
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I’m no misanthrope, yet my nearly three-year-old daughter’s intense attraction towards – and curiosity about – her fellow human beings is a source of ongoing wonder. She has always been a lively and _______ child, even by toddler standards. It wasn’t until last summer, in that long early stretch of the pandemic, that the extent of her gregariousness first became obvious
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“DEEP DOWN, we are one single government, one single country,” said Venezuela’s _______ president, Hugo Chávez, of the relationship with Cuba in 2007. Fidel Castro, Cuba’s ailing revolutionary leader, was like a father to him
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The bravura set pieces include a poetry evening with “a bunch of superannuated, sofa-bound littérateurs”. The only wrong note in Darke’s otherwise commanding voice is an occasional wordiness (“her liquacious, _______ spirit”). But his heart is laid bare in his contemplation of the woman who still haunts him
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STOUT and _______ , Khamsi Audomsi runs a roasted-banana stall in the covered market of San Kamphaeng, a small town just outside Chiang Mai, the main city of northern Thailand. In front of where she fries up, a greasy wall is festooned with posters and calendars devoted solely to the Shinawatra clan: Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister deposed in a coup in 2006 and now in self-imposed exile, and Yingluck Shinawatra, the current prime minister, who takes orders from her older brother in Dubai
loquacious Source
That is often difficult, but so is trekking the Himalaya or hunkering down motionless all day in the freezing cold. The great imaginative failure of both the spiritual and the _______ strains of nature writing is that they valorize the challenges that arise when we confront ourselves and the wilderness but not the challenges that arise when we confront one another. ..Tesson comes maddeningly close to understanding what those interpersonal challenges require of us
misanthropic Source
Charlie Brooker, the British satirist who is now a television auteur, was at a low ebb. He’d spent most of his twenties freelancing for *PC Zone,* a little-read gaming magazine, where he was able to indulge his obscene and _______ sense of humor. Among other items, he contributed a regular comic strip about video-game culture, “Cybertwats,” and a back- page column, “Sick Notes,” in which he would solicit hate mail from subscribers and respond in kind
misanthropic Source
There are many “_______ anti-natalists”:.the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, for example, has thousands of.members who believe that, for environmental reasons, human beings should.cease to exist. For
misanthropic Source
” The killings spread throughout the country; in several Western states, the vanishing corpse seems to be that of an Asian man. Is it the handiwork of a serial killer? A cadre of vigilante assassins? A swarm of vengeful ghosts?..Into this maelstrom Everett hurls three Black detectives: Ed Morgan, a gentle giant with a young family; Jim Davis, a wisecracking bachelor; and Herberta Hind, a _______ professional who joined the F. B
misanthropic Source
In “Dark,” the first of two Netflix specials that he released last year, he brags about a punch line that cleared out half of one crowd in Indiana. In “Jigsaw,” the second, he delivers a _______ riff that has since, by [his count](https://twitter. com/Daniel_Sloss), ruined more than forty-five thousand relationships, among them [a hundred and nineteen marriages](https://twitter
misanthropic Source
But there isn’t just one spectrum; at the very least, there’s a quadrant grid, with policy goals on one axis and temperament on the other. The *x*\\-axis ranges from a fully planned economy to anarcho-capitalism; the *y*\\-axis ranges from solicitous Socratic dialogue to _______ bullying. They vary independently
misanthropic Source
So these are my readers, you see? They buy my books—the defeated, the demented and the damned—and I am proud of it. ”..This mixture of boast and complaint exactly mirrors the coyness of Bukowski’s poetry, which is at once _______ and comradely, aggressively vulgar and clandestinely sensitive. The readers who love him, and believe that he would love them in return, know how to look past the bluster of poems like “splashing”:..> dumb,\\.> Jesus Christ,\\.> some people are so dumb\\.> you can hear them\\.> splashing around in their dumbness
misanthropic Source
GREENLAND’S _______ is the result of a marketing campaign by Erik the Red who wished to attract Viking settlers to its icy landscape. Little did he know that the land had been covered in lush forests many millennia before he was born
misnomer Source
Despite their similar acronyms, LED sets and OLED sets work in substantially different ways. Indeed, the term LED is a bit of a _______ for the former. The crucial parts of the screen are actually the liquid crystals
misnomer Source
An even bigger question is what drives the returns on alternative assets. In the case of property, which accounts for around a third of the total that institutions allocate to these assets, the label “alternative” is a _______ . Property has been around for centuries
misnomer Source
“AT THEIR best, they are lively classrooms of democracy,” says Richard Norton Smith, a historian who specialises in presidential libraries. They are also something of a _______ . People who wander in expecting to borrow “The Cat in the Hat” tend to find instead a museum, a replica of the Oval Office and many floors of documents
misnomer Source
This month one of his brothers was arrested in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa. In the zero-sum game of the drug trade, one gang's loss is another's gain (which is why “drug cartel” is such a _______ ). The weakening of local traffickers in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez has enabled Sinaloa to strengthen its presence along Mexico's northern border
misnomer Source
FOR decades, the word “market” has been a _______ for global trade in oil. Not only has the business been manipulated by an international cartel, OPEC, with varying degrees of success
misnomer Source
He argues that in the age of artificial intelligence, it makes sense to treat data as a form of labour. To understand why, it helps to keep in mind that “artificial intelligence” is something of a _______ . Messrs Weyl and Posner call it “collective intelligence”: most AI algorithms need to be trained using reams of human-generated examples, in a process called machine learning
misnomer Source
Peter Lindert of University of California, Davis, describes this phenomenon as the “free- lunch puzzle”. This is a _______ . Taxpayers still pay for those lunches
misnomer Source
It is hard to lead the charge, when the best evidence of progress would be not leading it in the first place. The EU can be a _______ teacher in areas where it is supposed to pay attention, too. When it comes to media freedom, Greece ranks fourth from bottom in the EU, according to an index from Reporters Without Borders
negligent Source
Even before Myanmar’s military coup in February, it was a big centre of meth production. But the putsch has distracted already _______ authorities, making the area even more enticing to drug cartels. In neighbouring countries, seizures this year are once again breaking records—six times more meth has been seized in Laos in 2021 than in 2020
negligent Source
In October, Amnesty turned its gaze from third-world despots to America and published a blistering report recounting the country's failure to live up to international human- rights standards at home. The response of the State Department was almost _______ . “We welcome their scrutiny,” said its spokesman, James Foley, noting that Amnesty “has been a leading voice on behalf of human rights around the world
obsequious Source
It was another failure by a state railway with a long history of them. For Egypt’s _______ journalists, however, darker forces were at work. Pundits falsely claimed that the conductor was from Kerdasa, a village known for its sympathies to the Muslim Brotherhood, once Egypt’s pre-eminent Islamist group
obsequious Source
" I'll bet that anonymous Israeli official a million shekels that not everyone who listens to Binyamin Netanyahu's speech to the US Congress on May 24th will be impressed by his desire to move forward in peace with Israel's neighbours. Such a unanimous verdict could conceivably be achieved, if the Israelis could find some way to limit the speech's audience to the unfailingly _______ members of Congress. But what with C-SPAN and so forth, there are sure to be at least a few people out there listening to Mr Netanyahu's speech who will be underwhelmed by his desire to move forward in peace with the governments of the West Bank and Gaza
obsequious Source
5bn annual budget, that is no mean threat. Critics such as Mr Trump are correct to observe that the WHO’s panjandrums have been _______ towards China, the geographical source of the covid-19-causing virus, SARS-CoV-2. Dr Tedros himself has praised China’s president, Xi Jinping, for his “political leadership”
obsequious Source
The state has dispensed cash handouts and other goodies, while much of the civil service works as a party-political tool, and the election commission has long brushed aside allegations of malfeasance. Add in an _______ mainstream media, and it is rather remarkable that so many Barisan Nasional campaigners still felt the need to resort to blatant vote-buying. All of this gives rise to two dangers
obsequious Source
Yet that night-time scene in the harem reflects some bleak realities of court life. The eunuch is ridiculous, and _______ to high-ranking concubines. But he is also terrifying
obsequious Source
Harry Reid, the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, regularly blames him for the gridlock that afflicts the chamber. Republicans tend to be as _______ as Democrats are hostile. The guest-lists for Mr Norquist’s weekly meetings are a Who’s Who of conservatism
obsequious Source
But as with Prohibition in every neighbourhood, word is getting out about the bars where the bartender is just too busy to cite the new regulations, regardless of how unbusy the bartender might be. At nice hotels, _______ waiters are reluctant to tell potential big tippers to douse their cigars. Some bar owners are even asking the city to waive a law that prohibits them from employing policemen directly, so they can get somebody else to scold their customers
obsequious Source
Interest rates are rock-bottom, compressing lending margins. Lenders must set aside lots of capital to _______ watchdogs, which depresses returns. Costs are sky-high; hard-hit by the financial and euro-area crises, lenders have under-invested in digitisation
placate Source
Now the attempts to sweep up the damage from Mr Macron’s hand-grenade have begun in earnest. The commission, under new management and determined to pursue a “geopolitical” strategy, will by the end of the month unveil reforms to the accession process designed to _______ the French president and his allies. A summit some time in the spring will clear up the mess and agree on new accession rules
placate Source
Mr Johnson promised “an extra layer of Parliamentary oversight”—in other words MPs, rather than the government, would have the final say on whether Britain violates international law by overriding the withdrawal bill it agreed with the European Union in January. It is not clear whether this will _______ Parliament. It will certainly not
placate Source
The current Congress’s free-spending habits are bipartisan when it comes to security. Mr Biden’s proposed defence budget, released in May, entailed only a modest increase, an attempt to _______ doves on his left flank. But the rest of the legislature was not pleased
placate Source
These successes were achieved in part by pressing ahead despite the predictable misgivings of hidebound bureaucrats and techno-nervous pensioners. Japan has tended in the past to _______ such people by building parallel digital systems and making use of them voluntary. It will have to get tougher with its citizens and civil servants as well as its IT contractors if take-up of digital services is to increase
placate Source
An earlier Socialist prime minister, Felipe González, was capable of such statesmanship. But Mr Zapatero has offered only tactical fixes to _______ the unions, the regional barons—and now the bond market. He has only a few months to show that he can take the radical decisions needed to prevent years of stagnation, which could unleash the social disorder he fears
placate Source
Some productive members of society—such as this correspondent—work in them, and others date in them. And none seem to complain too much about the price, despite Korean coffeeshops' _______ for selling macchiatos at 6,000-won ($5. 35) a pop
proclivity Source
But few pharmaceutical executives went to jail, and this immense sum seems small, given that the crisis has lasted a quarter of a century and costs America $80bn a year, according to the CDC. In addition to the cash from the settlement, Democrats in Congress, with the backing of the White House, now propose to spend an extra $250bn over the next ten years to tackle the problem (President Kamala Harris shares her predecessor’s _______ for eye-popping sums). It is something that a few Republican senators could even agree to—curtailing addiction being one of the only remaining bipartisan issues
proclivity Source
(How long a domestic focus is tenable as global competition among business schools increases, and MBA graduates look further afield for potential employers, is unclear; indeed Yale School of Management has just made its MBA more globally focused. ) Underlying European schools’ apparent _______ for spreading their alumni-network tentacles more widely, a Belgian school, Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, comes second in our sub- ranking. That said, when the students themselves are asked to rank the effectiveness of alumni networks, familiar names come out best
proclivity Source
The question may be: which one of the great powers, or ones, will weaken at a faster pace than the others? Mastering change may decide the great-power struggle. Which of them has flexibility built into their political structures? American democracy, as unruly and problematic as it is, has demonstrated an historical _______ to adapt and reinvent itself more than other big systems. America’s large and well-endowed landmass certainly helps in a drawbridge-up environment of protectionism
proclivity Source
IT WAS not the sort of do-it-yourself activity that Castorama, a French home-improvement chain, usually promoted. The search engine on the firm’s website started offering customers _______ responses to their inquiries. Its auto-complete text function suggested such intriguing products as a “bollock hammer” or “cock sander”
puerile Source
Did you see them in "Doubt"? Ms Dowd's involvement is fitting, as this may be the sorriest spectacle of content-free public hyperventilation since Al Gore's earth tones. The difference is that in this case the issue is deadly serious; it's the public discourse that is _______ . There is plenty of room for substantive critique of the flaws in governance and policy uncovered by the Deepwater Horizon blowout
puerile Source
At their oath-taking two members of a new party, Youngspiration, pledged allegiance to “the Hong Kong nation”, used the imperial Japanese pronunciation of “China”, and displayed a banner declaring that “Hong Kong is not China”. The theatrics by Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching at times seemed _______ . On November 7th the central government made clear that it was in no mood for farce
puerile Source
Its grandiose "Onion Book of Known Knowledge", an encyclopaedia containing facts we already know that bear a satirical re-telling, is short on accuracy but long on laughs. Some entries skew facts with _______ sexual jokes or describe obscure but true events. The biographical sketch of Theodore Roosevelt is obsessed with the president delivering a 60-minute speech after having been shot and before the bullet was removed
puerile Source
China's presentational problems with the old one speak of an abiding lack of sophistication, and an attachment to a ritualistic diplomacy ill-suited to fast-moving negotiations, such as in Copenhagen, where the outcome is not pre-cooked. Over the case of Mr Shaikh, the official press indulged in the predictable and _______ ritual of railing about the historical indignity of the Opium War. Yet even many Chinese recognise that the world—and even drug-pushing British gunboat-diplomacy—has changed, and that it may be time to move on
puerile Source
Almost two years on, “Cabu S’Est Echappé!” (“Cabu Has Escaped!”), a collection of 1,000 of his cartoons, many of them unpublished, has reminded France of his genius. Crude, _______ , sometimes funny though often tasteless, the caricatures earned Islamist ire for depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Yet the great virtue of this collection is to reveal the breadth of Cabu’s satirical gaze, over almost half a century of work: communists, Gaullists, the clergy and Jesus – as well as Islam – are each as much the subject of his merciless pen
puerile Source
If that is not as far-fetched as his actual death, then Mishima has made sure, as he knew he would, that he would always have the last word. ","description":"To add to the spectacle, he first staged a _______ “coup”","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
quixotic Source
economist. com/prospero/2018/06/06/was-the-man-who-killed-don-quixote-really-worth- it","name":"Was “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” really worth it?"}}]} Books, arts and cultureProsperoA _______ filmWas “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” really worth it?Terry Gilliam’s passion project was nearly 30 years in the making. That turns out to be more interesting than the film itselfJun 6th 2018by N
quixotic Source
Their dreams of reaching the riches of southern China by river were dashed. _______ plans for rail networks followed, first from British and French imperialists, and then from the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which in 1995 outlined its ambition to connect Singapore with Kunming, in China’s Yunnan province. On December 3rd, at long last, a portion of those aspirations was realised
quixotic Source
Under a deal agreed in 2008 under Lula, Naval Group signed a contract with Odebrecht, a conglomerate now synonymous with corruption, to sell advanced diesel-electric submarines to Brazil. Many see Brazil’s quest for nuclear subs as a _______ frippery. It is “a mad indulgence of Lula’s boom era”, says one foreign diplomat
quixotic Source
The recession that followed the crisis temporarily reduced these imbalances. _______ consumers in deficit countries suddenly found themselves squeezed by joblessness and the evaporation of easy credit: that led to a collapse in imports. But a sustained era of balanced growth failed to emerge
spendthrift Source
That is both an indicator of the incomplete nature of Europe’s recovery and a dangerous vulnerability. Europe’s economic crisis was a stew with many ingredients, from _______ governments to inadequate safeguards in the banking system. The stock in which it all simmered, however, consisted of big imbalances in trade and capital flows
spendthrift Source
For decades Mr Biden was a deficit hawk. Like Mr Clinton, he was part of a rising generation of “New Democrats” seeking to escape the image of _______ liberals that Republicans had successfully attached to their party. As far back as 1984 (federal debt: 37% of GDP) he supported a freeze on all federal spending to deal with what he called the “runaway deficits” of Ronald Reagan’s administration
spendthrift Source
Studies find that most cultures observe a conversational rule of “no gap, no overlap”. Despite the various stereotypes that exist about _______ or interrupting ethnicities, turn-taking is well-organised and almost instantaneous from Mexico to Denmark to Japan. All that is disrupted in online meetings
taciturn Source
This explosion in mobility, involving the creation of a vast highway network and a high- tech logistics industry in less than a generation, has brought Chinese truckers neither fame nor respect. When America and western Europe experienced similar transport booms in the 20th century, popular culture made folk heroes of long-distance drivers—brawny, _______ types who prefer to brave blizzards than obey a foreman on a factory floor. Hollywood made films about wisecracking, heartbreaking truckers outsmarting policemen and other authority figures
taciturn Source
During the girl’s prolonged adjustment, she is both a fish out of water and a cuckoo in the nest. No longer an only child with ample urban comforts, she must get used to a hardscrabble life in the Abruzzo countryside, with _______ parents who beat their offspring and cruel brothers who torment her. After some time in “the family that was mine against my will”, she finds allies in her younger sister Adriana and older brother Vincenzo—who each crave her company for reasons of their own
taciturn Source
The motto for the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) should be: “If you know what we did, we must have done it wrong”. This _______ tendency has long bemused people trying to understand the direction of China’s monetary policy (see article). But recently it has reached new and dangerous extremes
taciturn Source
JOE KAESER cuts an unusual figure among the _______ bosses of Deutschland AG. The wiry 62-year-old is bursting with energy
taciturn Source
But their leaders insisted that the two-month coalition negotiations—which proceeded relatively smoothly, on time and mostly without leaks—built a bedrock of trust. Olaf Scholz, the SPD’s _______ chancellor-to-be, says he hopes the parties will campaign jointly at the next election. People were sceptical of traffic lights when they were introduced in Berlin in the 1920s, he noted, but they are are indispensable today
taciturn Source
” But before Mr Prince gets anywhere near glory he must lose 70 pounds, find a trainer, a racehorse and a race. The Berkshire stables of Charles “Edgy” Egerton beckon and the author is put under the charge of Trigger, a tough, _______ Irishman renowned for his legendary explosions. After proving his “stickability” on a polo pony, the author is soon ecstatically galloping half a mile in 45 seconds on Côte Soleil, his first thoroughbred ride
taciturn Source
Startups also continue to rely on investment bankers to take on legal liability, underwrite the share issue (as “stabilisation agents” that vow to support the share price should it tank) and act as a marketing department for the listing. Bosses are still advised to talk to the more _______ members of the sales team pitching a bank’s offer (they do more work than the garrulous types) and forge close relations with brokers that will track their firms’ public fate (as the saying goes, “You date the banker but marry the analyst”). And firms in Silicon Valley still have only three real choices for the two “lead” banks: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley
taciturn Source
Until this week, Yukos—the country's second-largest oil producer—was no exception. The _______ tycoon who heads it, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, recently sued one of Russia's top brokerages, Brunswick Warburg, for saying that the company had abused its minority shareholders (a Moscow court threw out the lawsuit on December 1st). Mr Khodorkovsky is used to Russian business combat
taciturn Source
That suited locals, a laid-back, heavy-drinking bunch—until recently. China’s rise has made many _______ . “Look at what’s happening in Hong Kong,” frets Itokazu Kenichi, the island’s mayor
wary Source
And that rivalry will intensify in 2021. On the one hand, many in the region are _______ of President Xi Jinping’s mission to reclaim for China the centrality it enjoyed in East Asia before the imperial depredations by the West and Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is not just that China is aggressively challenging the maritime and territorial claims of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea, through which the majority of China’s seaborne trade passes
wary Source
Only 1% of Slovakia’s GDP came from Chinese FDI, compared with nearly 7% of Germany’s. And these countries are _______ of running up too much debt from Chinese investments. Taiwan sees an opportunity
wary Source
For another, lots of Western democracies are fractious and mistrustful, especially after four years of Trumpian bridge-burning. European and Asian democracies alike are _______ of joining America in anything resembling a cold-war effort to check China’s aggression—especially if it jeopardises profitable trade relationships. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said this year that it would be counter-productive for Western powers “to join all together against China”
wary Source
But they cannot always be sure of what they are buying. Unscrupulous growers can _______ high-quality hops with cheaper varieties, which can affect a beer’s taste. Detecting doctored shipments can be difficult
adulterate Source
But beyond that, price controls have “little to commend them. ” If sellers cannot fetch a good price, they will limit the supply of what they offer, or _______ the quality. Whenever the government stops petrol prices from rising in line with oil prices, queues at the pump merely lengthen
adulterate Source
They gave addicts phone numbers so that they could have heroin home-delivered, as if it were pizza. The deliveries were made by Mexican migrants who were paid handsome salaries and did not take drugs, and so had no incentive to _______ the product (the invariable practice in most heroin dealing). Quality remained high
adulterate Source
But the clerics prefer to keep non-Shias separate, cloistered and subservient. Religious diversity, they fear, could _______ the Shia identity of the state. Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, there has never been a non-Shia minister
adulterate Source
The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, a state with lots of poor and ill-fed children, recently banned eggs in school lunches because many people consider them non-vegetarian. This is a big mistake: eggs brim with protein and are hard to _______ , unlike milk, which in India may be illicitly mixed with glucose, cooking oil or even detergent. Political pride is stopping the publication of data that would help India’s states learn from each other
adulterate Source
IT IS worth remembering that past episodes of currency debasement, while seen by some as the accidental result of bad government policy, were actually a deliberate strategy. When coins were made of gold and silver, then monarchs could simply recall all coins and issue them at a different value, shave off metal to reduce their weight, or _______ their precious metal content. This gave them extra money to finance expenditure on armies, luxuries etc
adulterate Source
Headlines along the lines of “What is the Role of X [music, dance, poetry, hip-hop] in the Age of Trump?” have proliferated. (Is it necessary to _______ the man by giving him an Age?) Competing tactics of response present themselves. Do you carry on as before, nobly defying the ruination of public discourse? Or do you seize on a new mission, abandoning the illusion of aesthetic autonomy? Many artists report feelings of paralysis
aggrandize Source
” His theory is that when people make these objections to the nature of prizes they are helping to sustain a collective belief that true art has nothing to do with things like politics, money, in-group tastes, and beating out the other guy. As long as we want to believe that creative achievement is special, that a work of art is not just one more commodity seeking to _______ itself in the marketplace at the expense of other works of art, we need prizes so that we can complain about how stupid they are. In this respect, it is at least as important that the prize go to the wrong person as that it go to the right one
aggrandize Source
my husband among them—felt that the absence of Feather’s name from the books he had helped pioneer almost forty years earlier was certainly inaccurate, arguably dishonest, probably an attempt to keep Feather away from the profits, and perhaps a reflection of Artie Conn’s intention to _______ his own role in the story of Nova’s success. Conn was viewed as hogging the glory, stealing the credit, or, according to the charitable construction my husband put on the situation, as a fairly talented but deeply insecure man envious of the indisputable genius of his erstwhile friend
aggrandize Source
“Across our day-to-day and ordinary distances / we speak plainly. We hear each other clearly,” she writes, yet:..> I see you as a hero in a text—\\.> the image blazing and the edges gilded—\\.> and I long to cry out the epic question,\\.> my dear companion:\\.> Will we ever live so intensely again?..Boland employs the tropes of mythology not to glorify, _______, or even redeem the common struggles of regular people—but, rather, to show how those tropes and struggles are inherently intertwined, even and especially where the former seem to excise or romanticize the latter.
aggrandize Source
In some villages life is now relatively unconstrained; there are reports that in others every visitor has to be cleared by a local party boss. The top-down set-up lends itself to excessive _______ among the lower echelons. Missing a target is more dangerous than overstepping the mark
alacrity Source
This was to break the stranglehold of enzymes and transition metals on the field of catalysis. Some chemical reactions proceed with _______ . Most, though—including many that are industrially important—need a helping hand in the form of a catalyst
alacrity Source
Disaster has been averted elsewhere, too. Senegal responded with _______ to its Ebola outbreak (as indeed did Nigeria). Afghanistan remains one of the world’s bleakest places, but it looks a little less bleak after a peaceful handover of power: the Taliban are still slaughtering people, but politically they are a busted flush
alacrity Source
This was to break the stranglehold of enzymes and transition metals on the field of catalysis. Some chemical reactions proceed with _______ . Most, though—including many that are industrially important—need a helping hand in the form of a catalyst
alacrity Source
Instead, as our special report this week shows, they are getting to grips with the failings Congress is ignoring. America the beautiful One reason for optimism is that America’s inventors are as busy as they have ever been, and its entrepreneurs are seizing on their ideas with the same _______ as always. Investment in research and development as a share of output recently matched the previous record, 2
alacrity Source
This newspaper warned readers to prepare for “the next recession” in 2015 and 2018, pausing in 2017 to hail “the world economy’s surprising rise”. Lately, the periods of alarm and _______ seem to have shortened. Markets began 2019 on the rebound and then took fright—only to surge in recent weeks
alacrity Source
It hasn't turned out that way. The coalition addressed its toughest task—repairing the public finances—with an _______ and decisiveness that impressed governments elsewhere. Fragile economic growth means that George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, might yet have to tweak his fiscal plan; but the outlines of the consolidation, and its mix of public-spending cuts and tax rises, remains broadly right
alacrity Source
” The killings spread throughout the country; in several Western states, the vanishing corpse seems to be that of an Asian man. Is it the handiwork of a serial killer? A cadre of vigilante assassins? A swarm of vengeful ghosts?..Into this maelstrom Everett hurls three Black detectives: Ed Morgan, a gentle giant with a young family; Jim Davis, a wisecracking bachelor; and Herberta Hind, a _______ professional who joined the F. B
ambivalent Source
We recently spoke by phone about how American health inequities are playing out during the pandemic. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why the field of social epidemiology is crucial to understanding inequality, the causes of racial disparity in health outcomes, and what can be done to _______ the suffering of the most vulnerable Americans during this crisis. ..**Is the spread of the coronavirus, and especially its disproportionate impact on the African-American community, teaching us new things about racial disparities in health care and health outcomes or confirming things we have long known.
ameliorate Source
“But then you just go to a protest march, don’t you? And that’s all you can do. ” When something bad happens, Cameron’s brain immediately searches for a way to _______ the situation, but it does not dwell on unhappiness. She inadvertently follows the creed of the Stoics (and of every twelve-step recovery program): Accept the things you cannot change
ameliorate Source
She doesn’t see easy tweaks to _______ the damage; the fundamental approach of steering content to users to maximize engagement, she thinks, is inherently destructive. “We’ve adapted this hook, line, and sinker: ‘personalization is better,’ ” Ressa points out
ameliorate Source
“Expanding energy-efficiency investment,” he pointed out, “supports rising living standards because, by definition, it saves money for energy consumers. ”..To _______ the effects of slower G. D
ameliorate Source
“The other day I put mine on at the farmers’ market, just to feel like I didn’t have to be on social guard. ” Wearing a mask can also _______ the pressure of looking presentable, or conventionally done up—another reason that I hadn’t been to Sephora in so long. “I miss my mask so much,” a woman told me, going on to describe how wearing one amounted to something of a glow-up
ameliorate Source
All this will take grit. Mr Kishida, a compromise candidate _______ to the LDP’s varied factions, has done little to suggest that he has it. Given the pace of demographic and social change, Japan cannot afford a government that simply muddles through
amenable Source
Risks that are merely catastrophic, not existential, do not tend to be the subject of such philosophical rumination. They are more _______ to the sort of calculations found in the practice of politics and power. Take the risk of a nuclear attack
amenable Source
He says the pandemic has helped change the mood in two ways. First, the use of data- crunching to speed up the fight against covid-19 has made health authorities, hospitals and doctors more _______ to the idea of sharing medical records—provided the information is anonymised. This is, after all, biotech, not big tech
amenable Source
A broad range of tools is available to help mainstream companies build anything from search and recommendation engines to speech-recognition and translation systems, customer- service bots and more. Jeff Dean, director of Google Brain, the search giant’s AI- research arm, reckons there are 10m organisations in the world that “have a problem that would be _______ to a machine-learning solution. They have the data but don’t have the experts on staff
amenable Source
Such unpredictable capital flows worried German monetary policymakers in the age of the Deutschmark; their scepticism carried over to the ECB. It has historically sought to “neither hinder nor foster” an international euro, but is now seen as more _______ to the idea. The second change came, unexpectedly, as a result of the pandemic
amenable Source
The carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel emissions and industrial processes accounted for 37bn tonnes. In order to see how much of this might be _______ to investor-led action The Economist analysed emissions disclosures from over 5,000 publicly listed companies which between them account for about 90% of the value of the world’s stockmarkets. The number of companies making such disclosures has been rising steadily in America (from 53% of the companies in the S&P 500 five years ago to 67% today); over the same time it has shot up in Europe and Japan, from 40% to 79% of companies in the Euro Stoxx 600 and from 13% to 46% on the Nikkei 225
amenable Source
If you went to a factory in the 1970s, you would have seen assembly lines of people. Such workers were much more _______ to the idea of "class consciousness". Go to a factory today and you might you get a few people monitoring robots and other whizzy bits of machinery
amenable Source
The hardest task will be to reform SWIFT’s governance. Its board is packed with European banks, which was justifiable in the 1970s when they dominated cross-border finance, but now looks _______ . The board’s 25 seats include just two American firms and a single Chinese one
anachronistic Source
Maps of Europe still show its various countries separated by borders, some of them not much moved in centuries. Commercially, they are meant to be _______ . In theory, at least viewed from Brussels, the EU’s 500m citizens live in a single economic zone much like America, with nothing to impede the free movement of goods, services, people and capital
anachronistic Source
A fly-past by a Lancaster bomber and two Spitfires revived one particularly gratifying memory. So perhaps the lesson is that, rather than wanting their monarchy to emulate its modernised Scandinavian counterparts, the British public cherishes it most when it is most _______ . The Queen Mother herself practised a brand of majesty in which glimpses of personality never went further than that—yet she remained more popular than her ostentatiously human descendants
anachronistic Source
Kennedy also secretly ordered his terrorist war against Cuba to culminate in an insurrection to be followed by an American invasion—planned for October 1962, the month of the missile crisis, which brought the world close to ultimate disaster when Russian missiles were sent in part to defend the island. One of his most consequential decisions in 1962 was to shift the mission of the military in Latin America from _______ “hemispheric defence” to “internal security. ” That unleashed a horrific plague of repression throughout the hemisphere, culminating in Ronald Reagan’s murderous wars throughout Central America, still resonating in the tortured countries and in the continued flight of refugees from the wreckage
anachronistic Source
Yet even after the data improved, it found it difficult to raise the rate. Britain’s property tax in the 1980s was based on increasingly _______ rental values. But the government was so reluctant to update them that it introduced a disastrous “poll” tax instead
anachronistic Source
Cultural representations of gum grew less prominent too: the trashy, uncynical pop culture of the 1990s, embodied by rebellious chewers, gave way to a trend for healthy eating and organic foods. In an age when veganism was on the rise and sustainability became a selling point, gum seemed _______ and retro. Chewing on plastic, or popping it all over your face, simply doesn’t appeal to youngsters who scrutinise product labels for artificial ingredients
anachronistic Source
Pretty much everyone agrees that the Security Council's permanent, veto-wielding membership reflects a bygone age, when what mattered was who won the second world war. An increasingly unrepresentative, _______ Security Council speaks with diminishing authority. It is less able to debate the issues that matter, because important actors may be missing
anachronistic Source
The wall, in turn, moves towards the character; he passes through it, as if being X-rayed, and into the world of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s final novel, “The Brothers Karamazov”. The monk is Alyosha, youngest of the three legitimate sons of Fyodor Karamazov, an _______ “buffoon” who wallows in sin and is murdered by one—or more—or all—of his offspring. Karamazov has a fourth, illegitimate son, Smerdyakov, an epileptic servant whose mother, a homeless halfwit, he raped
avaricious Source
The Greeks and Irish place great emphasis on being wealthy, though it is not clear whether this is a factor in their current financial predicament, or a consequence of recent severe austerity measures. The French are cultural hold-outs, identifying the least with such an _______ , déclassé person. Almost three-quarters said that such a person was "not like me"
avaricious Source
IT WAS the dismissal and flight abroad of Robert Mugabe’s oldest and trustiest lieutenant that finally led to his downfall. Grace Mugabe, the 93-year-old president’s _______ wife, was thought to be behind the sacking. Younger than her husband by 41 years, she plainly sought to inherit the throne
avaricious Source
But last week an amendment that would have guaranteed such people exemption from prosecution, subject to safeguards, was defeated in the House of Lords. The current law, said its defenders, showed a “stern face and a kind heart”, deterring the _______ from shuffling elderly relatives off to die before they wasted their assets on nursing-home fees, while refraining from vengeance on the broken-hearted bereaved. Legal fudge is never desirable, and in this case it is unnecessary
avaricious Source
Corporate criminals like WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers and Tyco's Denis Kozlowski were imprisoned for their crimes. _______ bosses like Angelo Mozilo, who pocketed more than $550m during his inglorious reign at Countrywide, are exceptions. The average American boss is actually paid less today than he was in 2000
avaricious Source
As Ms Karashima says, “It’s too late if you start acting after the disaster happens. ” That this sounds _______ in much of the world makes its absence more striking. Of $137bn provided in global disaster-related development assistance from 2005 to 2017, 96% was spent on emergency response and reconstruction, less than 4% on disaster preparedness
banal Source
Its ambition is best explained by different forms of rising confidence, some more alarming than others. Start with a _______ , cautious optimism among those sometimes called reformers. That camp once promoted economic liberalisation
benign Source
The pair called it a breach of the UN Charter for any power to interfere in other countries’ affairs in the name of fighting corruption or protecting human rights. It is not new for autocrats to co-opt _______ -sounding labels. During the cold war a quick route to a labour camp was to express dissent in a country with “democratic” in its official name, from North Korea to East Germany
benign Source
Some employees at a state-run media group have taken to substituting the word “Trump” for Mr Xi in chat groups. At small social gatherings, people frequently stop short of uttering the name, even in the most _______ contexts. They use instead phrases such as “you-know-who”, “big number one”, “the eldest brother” or “our big uncle”
benign Source
If he manages to win re-election (by fair means or foul) he could nominate two more. His attacks on democracy would then become more _______ . His more radical fans shun institutions and see him as their saviour
brazen Source
IT IS ONCE again time for that most bizarre of economic spectacles, a debt-ceiling showdown in America. In the name of fiscal responsibility, the world’s biggest economy is flirting with an act of _______ irresponsibility: a sovereign default. The government has just about exhausted its current statutory debt limit of $28
brazen Source
In America there is a bipartisan perception of China as a rival that steals intellectual property, takes advantage of America’s openness and is intent on chipping away at America’s lead. For its part, China is increasingly _______ in pushing back against America (or any country that resists it). Any retreat by America from global leadership is an opportunity for China The covid-19 crisis is proving a telling case study of this rivalry, as America blames China for causing the pandemic and China positions itself as the country most capable of dealing with it
brazen Source
If a tenth of that could be recovered, it would pay the salaries of 20,000 teachers. Such _______ looting has hastened an exodus of Moldovans that has been swift even by eastern European standards. In 1989 Moldova had 4
brazen Source
From Britain, this theory went, phylloxera reached the European mainland via the south of France, the first place where it devastated vineyards. That, though, turns out to be a _______ against les Anglais. Bugs in the system By comparing the genetic sequence of European phylloxera with those of populations from wild vines in the United States, Claude Rispe and Fabrice Legeai of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE) and their colleagues have narrowed the search to the once- French territory of the Mississippi Valley (the upper Mississippi, to be precise—though one of the paper’s authors, Paul Nabity of the University of California, Riverside, plans to keep following the river south, sampling phylloxera as he goes, so the matter is not closed)
calumny Source
SHORT-SELLERS perform a valuable function in financial markets, exposing managerial incompetence, corporate fraud or plain overvaluation. Their reward, all too often, is _______ . Witness regulators' rush to ban shorting in 2008 in response to sustained political attacks on the practice
calumny Source
economist. com/europe/2010/07/15/_______-lies-and-more- questions","datePublished":"2010-07-15T00:00:00Z","headline":"","image":"https://www. economist
calumny Source
They have done so with high zest. From the Daily Telegraph to the shadow cabinet, the hitherto demoralised forces of Conservatism seem strangely energised by Mr Blair's _______ . Urged on by Lady Thatcher, Mr Hague's strategy at his own conference in Blackpool was, in effect, to say to the electorate: “Aha! Mr Blair stole your vote by masquerading as a conservative
calumny Source
Now, I am loth to deploy the S-word here; nothing sets my teeth on edge faster than hearing American liberals, or even European Social Democrats, described as "socialists". But what else is one to say, when so many of the attacks on the pharmaceutical industry sound like they are lifted from socialist tracts on excess profits and the harms of wasteful competition? Think about the _______ you are used to hearing on the editorial pages whenever the topic comes up. The lead exhibit is usually "me-too" drugs
calumny Source
A report on Vice News observed that a number of prominent conservatives and right-wing figures in America—such as the chair of the Republican National Committee—seemed to be demoted on Twitter: typing in the person’s name in the search box didn’t reveal their accounts. President Donald Trump took to Twitter to _______ the company, promising to “look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once!” Twitter firmly denied charges it shadowbans the users: “We do not,” the company said in a statement. It is unlikely Twitter’s response will mollify those who believe that social networks express a liberal bias
castigate Source
CAPITALISM lacks defenders these days, while protests against it have fresh vigour. A vocal coalition of critics, from Occupy Wall Street to Pope Francis, _______ global trade as being exploitative and people’s fixation on money as the “dung of the devil”. Worries about the impact of economic inequality on social cohesion lend new urgency to moral questions about markets
castigate Source
In this case, the unions helped encourage them. Young Chinese often seize any opportunity to _______ the Japanese, whom they see as insufficiently contrite for the atrocities of the second world war. But at the Honda plant, employees fume more about the factory's trade union than about Japanese managers
castigate Source
Second, it passes more of the risk involved in drug development to consumers and taxpayers. Politicians in America routinely _______ the pharmaceutical industry for charging too much for its products. And now Sarepta’s post-hoc testing programme will, in effect, be paid for by the American government and by insurers
castigate Source
Only the churlish would begrudge the Soviet Union the lion’s share of the credit for defeating the Nazis. He was right also to _______ the West’s poltroonery in the years preceding the war, culminating in the Munich agreement. It is this shameful memory that makes the West so anxious to avoid repeating these mistakes, and which informs the West’s response to Russia’s illegal occupations of South Ossetia and Crimea
castigate Source
SIR — In your review of Paddy Ashdown's book, you _______ the "tiresome spelling errors" that undermine the author's "authoritative tone". For example: "The ex-Nazi who became president of Germany was Kurt Kiesinger, not Keisinger
castigate Source
Mr Gurumurthy was making the case that globalisation, brought in by well-connected financiers, was destroying India. Mr Bhagwati came to a _______ conclusion. If RSS ideologues like Mr Gurumurthy were economists, then Mr Bhagwati was a “Bharatnatyam dancer”, he said (referring to a traditional dance from Tamil Nadu performed by women)
caustic Source
But in ideological terms, this is not what the political divide looks like. Republicans _______ the Democratic positions on these questions as socialism and international decline. Democrats
construe Source
IT IS not surprising that Westminster wags _______ the Tory leader's initials as an acronym for “in deep shit”. The party's performance in the polls 15 months after the last election is worse than for any opposition party for half a century bar one
construe Source
The Cambodian opposition leader did meet politely with foreign bigwigs who were at last free to call on him, but declined to address waiting reporters. He was still barred from participating in politics, he explained, and did not know what the courts might _______ as a political act. He still awaits trial on trumped-up treason charges
construe Source
As I write, the voting is going Dr Kozma's way. I judge that it could yet go Sir John's way, depending on how closely we choose to _______ the motion. Nobody (I think) in this debate disputes that technology could transform education, if intelligently applied—and, probably, used a supplement to traditional teaching methods, rather than as a substitute for them
construe Source
Tencent, which owns WeChat, makes some popular war-based video games through subsidiary companies. It is easy to _______ all this as a threat. The pandemic has inflated the share of American economic activity carried out digitally
construe Source
Why should only holders of agrarian bonds be fully compensated? This is a political question, for Peruvians to decide. But no reasonable person could _______ Gramercy’s speculative punt on archaic local IOUs as a foreign investment of the kind that the FTA is designed to protect. By invoking the FTA Gramercy is doing its bit to discredit free trade and globalisation
construe Source
Welcome news came on June 26th when a judge in London awarded the firm a licence for 15 months. In court Uber had taken a _______ and muted stance, promising to do more to provide support for riders and drivers, including launching a telephone hotline for passengers. The chief magistrate for the case, Emma Arbuthnot, decided that Uber had not acted in a sufficiently “fit and proper” manner previously, but that its new approach and leadership suggests it is ready to do so now
contrite Source
They felt thrown under the bus. Under the wheels they were joined by Mr Paterson himself, who had just given a far-from- _______ television interview saying of his alleged offence that he “would not hesitate to do it again tomorrow”. But he too found himself jettisoned as expendable after all
contrite Source
A public figure’s stupid tweets are more likely than most to be screen-captured by others, so that even deletion won’t help (and may suggest a guilty conscience). In the days after Ms McCammond’s _______ withdrawal, several of her critics at Teen Vogue made their Twitter accounts private. One turned out to have used a racial epithet to jovially address a (white) friend in 2009
contrite Source
After two weekends of rioting and four weeks of protests, a pale and chastened Mr Macron addressed the nation from the Elysée palace on the eve of the attack. His brow creased, his tone _______ , the French president acknowledged his mistakes—“I know I have hurt some of you with my words”—and promised a range of fiscal measures to boost pay packets and pensions. Mr Macron’s address to the nation, watched by a staggering 23m people (more than watched France win the football World Cup in July), was the first time he had spoken publicly since violence engulfed central Paris on December 1st, as part of the country- wide gilets jaunes (“yellow jackets”) movement
contrite Source
In Silicon Valley venture capitalists are livid—even though they are as much to blame for mispricing the unicorns as Wall Street. But investment banks like Goldman and Morgan Stanley are _______ and asking themselves whether the traditional IPO, however lucrative for them, remains the best means to bring tech firms to market. This is healthy
contrite Source
He resolved the lawsuit from Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car unit, which alleged that Uber stole intellectual property. His _______ style, which stands in contrast to that of Travis Kalanick, his sharp-clawed predecessor (Uber’s co-founder), has gone down well with regulators. The firm won a temporary licence in June to operate in London, the firm’s most lucrative European market, after it had been blocked in September 2017 because of concerns about public safety
contrite Source
WHEN SET against the grave threat posed by climate change, the green policies favoured by economists can seem _______ . Carbon prices, beloved of wonks, require governments to estimate the social cost of carbon emissions, a nebulous concept
convoluted Source
His defenders claim that he has never been convicted, but this is untrue. Several cases have seen convictions, only for them to be set aside because the _______ proceedings led to trials being timed out by a statute of limitations—at least twice because Mr Berlusconi himself changed the law. That was why this newspaper argued in April 2001 that he was unfit to lead Italy
convoluted Source
In a similar vein, many governments will give their citizens more autonomy about socialising. _______ and prescriptive rules about who can see whom, and where and how, will be out. Instead, there will be simple principles for people to follow in whichever ways they choose
convoluted Source
But those powers are few. What makes the choice of a president so important just now is that those who are thought to _______ the job include the current prime minister, Mario Draghi, the guarantor to Brussels and the markets that Italy will spend productively the €200bn ($225bn) it stands to get from the EU’s pandemic recovery fund. Whichever way the presidency goes could create a problem
covet Source
The maximum amount of money a landlord can get from the government is based on the average rent for an entire metropolitan area. Some landlords in poor neighbourhoods _______ voucher-holders because they can charge much more for a unit than it would otherwise fetch. Ms Rosen argues that switching to a system where maximum rent varies by zip code will shut down such predatory tactics
covet Source
Unhappily, the political appeal of protectionism grows during slumps. When economies lack demand, governments _______ spending that leaks overseas on imports. This is what led to a devastating round of protectionism in the 1930s
covet Source
On one end of the spectrum are those who, like the folks in Jessica Bruder’s book “Nomadland” have little alternative. On the other end are van lifers or “digital nomads” who _______ a bohemian, go-anywhere lifestyle. Type #VanLife into Instagram and more than 10m posts appear
covet Source
It tells the story of Earth’s first contact with an alien civilisation, the Trisolarans, whose planet is stuck in climatic chaos as it oscillates wildly between the three stars in its stellar system. The Trisolarans _______ the environmental stability that comes with the relative dullness of Earth’s solar system and, armed with technological superiority, plan to take over. Barack Obama name-checked the book while he was president
covet Source
5 times the comparable figure in 2019. Look closer, though, and plenty of Chinese startups continue to _______ American listings. In August KE Holdings, an online property firm backed by Japan’s SoftBank Group, raised $2
covet Source
This humiliation is the latest in a long series of foreigners’ setbacks on Wall Street. That they would _______ its spoils is understandable. Much of American economic activity is funded through capital markets, in contrast to Asia and Europe, where bank lending reigns supreme
covet Source
In November the International Olympic Committee held a video call with Ms Peng and gave a sunny assessment of her well-being. It was widely viewed as a _______ effort to help China stifle controversy in the buildup to the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February. America’s National Basketball Association (NBA) has tried to keep on China’s good side since a team executive’s tweet in 2019, expressing support for protests in Hong Kong, prompted a temporary ban in China on NBA broadcasts
craven Source
During his recovery, he met Sassoon, who encouraged his writing. One of his poems took as its title the first part of a line from Horace: “Dulce et _______ est, pro patria mori. ” (“It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country
decorum Source
I was a shy little boy and, up to that point, insanely well behaved. The story that exemplifies that level of _______—the only story of my grade-school years in Kansas City that my daughters have ever enjoyed hearing—goes like this: In about third grade, our teacher announced on a Monday morning that there would be an extra recess period on Friday for anyone who had gone the entire week without a check mark for any sort of misbehavior or disturbance. When Friday arrived, I was the only one in the class with no check marks, so my reward was to spend an extra period on the playground all by myself—lonely, bored, and insanely well behaved
decorum Source
” For M. Sartre, who is at once the foremost French dramatist of the war years and the father of a new and frequently discussed way of looking at the world, known as Existentialism, the _______ of intellectual life here is one of the charms of New York. In Paris his public appearances, even unofficial ones in literary cafés, often precipitate free-for-alls
decorum Source
And here an odd point arises: although the subject of his satire, American vulgarity, is evergreen, the objects of his satire may seem to have been transient, and now long passed. The manners of the art-house movie theatre, the prose style of Diana Vreeland in *Harper’s Bazaar*, the _______ of Hathaway shirt ads, the behavior of Midtown dry cleaners or the imagined behavior of the father of Indian Prime Minister Pandit Nehru—all of these things seem long faded as targets. And yet the pieces have not faded at all
decorum Source
Gabby Lewis, a designer in Los Angeles who works with Shein, reports that as soon as the Chinese firm began featuring videos of her promoting her products on social media, rival fashion groups got in touch to see if she would do the same for them. The third ingredient in Mr Xu’s winning formula is _______ avoidance of geopolitical controversy. Shein wears its Chineseness lightly
deft Source
Federal agencies have generally respected states’ cannabis rules, but Donald Trump’s enforcers may be more aggressive. Even if they _______ , the federal ban makes business difficult. Few banks are willing to lend to cannabis companies that handle the plant directly
demur Source
As Mr Bauman’s experience shows, other factors are at play. One is that when asked to pay a new tax, people by and large _______ ; when told that they will, as a result, pay less in old taxes, they tend to scoff. Another is that companies which depend on their, or their customers’, greenhouse-gas emissions for their livelihood do not want to see those emissions discouraged—especially if companies elsewhere do not have to play by the same rules
demur Source
) But on January 25th, the justices quietly turned down two opportunities to revisit long- standing precedents on abortion and the death penalty. The _______ rals are notable because several members of the court have explicitly or implicitly invited these challenges in previous dissenting opinions. It seems that the nine may have, for one reason or another, drawn themselves a line they’re not willing to cross
demur Source
It asks users of the latest version of iOS, its mobile operating system, if they want named apps such as Facebook to track their digital activity across other companies’ apps and websites. Huge numbers are expected to _______ . That is likely to damage Facebook, possibly Google and a wide range of other ad-tech businesses
demur Source
They openly despise everyone from Trump-voting “Deplorables” and Brexit-voting ”Gammons” (those “others” who dare to vote the wrong way and won’t espouse their “tolerant” values) to those in their own ranks who refuse to toe the liberal line. Many will have noticed the murky civil war among feminists on the transgender issue, or the venom heaped on anyone daring to _______ on 100% endorsement of the #MeToo movement. Prominent women, many of whom would call themselves liberal feminists, have been turned on and accused of treason for daring to dissent
demur Source
The advantage of removing a problematic president via the 25th Amendment is speed: if Mike Pence, the vice-president, and more than half of the executive agency heads in the cabinet have the will, they could relieve Mr Trump of his duties in a flash. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, have called on Mr Pence to do this and promise to begin fresh impeachment hearings should he _______ . But the convoluted process of making a 25th Amendment invocation stick poses challenges
demur Source
Moreover, vaccine passports discriminate against people who have no control over the ability to get inoculated. Many groups are unable to get a vaccine or might reasonably _______ because of the risks, such as pregnant women in some places for safety reasons (though the policy is changing), people with some autoimmune conditions (where data on safety are unclear), and those with allergies to vaccine ingredients. Children are also unable to access the vaccine
demur Source
But the dramatic swings have highlighted a shift in market dynamics that may continue to foster instability. It is driven by a rare combination of retail investors and high- octane _______ s trading. Derivatives have been called weapons of mass destruction
derivative Source
Nevertheless, the coincident publication of these studies suggests a change of emphasis may be needed, and that efforts should be made to preserve not just forests, but also bogs. One approach might be to encourage uses of marshland that do not _______ the peat—for example, growing moisture-loving rubber trees rather than oil palms, which need dry soils. Another might be to pay for the “rewetting” of abandoned land
desiccate Source
But there is evidence—on the streets, as well as in opinion polls—that the crescent nationalism of Mr Putin's foreign policy is catering to the Russian mood as much as shaping it. ","description":"Vladimir Putin's recent _______ against America reflects the deeply resentful attitude the former superpower has towards the remaining one","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
diatribe Source
THERE is nothing al-Qaeda would like more than for Europeans to turn on Muslims in their midst, uniting fundamentalist militants with those who are neither fundamentalist nor militant. In that sense, Osama bin Laden won yet another victory this week with the publication of another hate-filled, anti-Islamic _______ by an Italian writer who has become noted for such
diatribe Source
Middle East & AfricaTunisiaHunger for changeA showcase summit may end up advertising a muzzled oppositionFamine reliefThe wonders of Plumpy'nutSaving lives with peanut butterPalestine and IsraelWrong guy to killIsrael's latest (mis)targeted killing could play into the Islamist hands of HamasZanzibarSpiced with tear-gasAn election in Zanzibar, Tanzania's main island, is violently disputedIranIs the new president truly an exterminator?Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's _______ against Israel and the United States was made against a backlog of muddle, infighting and weaknessEritrea and EthiopiaBacking the favouriteEthiopia defies an international ruling and its western allies do nothingNigeriaThe fat of the landAn anti- corruption campaign runs into politicsIraqNew constitution, old gripesAt last
diatribe Source
It involves an exchange with a male colleague who approvingly notes her testing of men’s limits. Her mock- _______ riposte: “Do men have limits?”
incredulous Source
The claim has sparked a debate among economists that is as ill-tempered as it is geeky. Left-leaning economists are _______ . Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jason Furman, who led the CEA under Barack Obama, pointed out that if the report is right, wage increases would total about three to six times the cost of the tax cut
incredulous Source
When asked to prove it by copying a Vermeer he scorned the offer. Instead he turned out a completely new painting, “Jesus Among the Doctors”, in the style of the master, before the eyes of his _______ inquisitors. Göring, who was facing a little local difficulty at the time, did not sue van Meegeren
incredulous Source
His brother has helped him buy a ticket back to Chile (he still has a visa): after he returns to work, he’ll decide what’s next. Sabrina’s cousin in Illinois was _______ when Louis phoned to tell him they weren’t coming. “I just put up the bed where you’re going to sleep! I’m sitting in front of it and looking at your sneakers!” He had bought Louis new trainers after hearing that he’d ruined his Adidas Sambas while walking through the Darién Gap
incredulous Source
That puts them narrowly ahead of their peers in Luxembourg, ranked second, and a whopping two-thirds better off than federal minimum-wage earners in America (see chart). Australians may be _______ to learn that they are doing relatively well. In recent years one of their big gripes has been sluggish wage growth
incredulous Source
The party will not admit it, but Mao traumatised China Today, once-cherished customs have a markedly weaker grip. Asked whether customers believe that burned funeral-goods reach relatives in the afterlife, traders in Mibeizhuang are _______ . “What day and age is this? It is just a tradition,” says one
incredulous Source
Ransoms can be eye-watering: an attack in March on the Broward County school system, which includes Fort Lauderdale in Florida, came with a demand for $40m in Bitcoin. In messages leaked by the hackers, one of the district’s negotiators was _______ : “You cannot possibly think we have anything close to this. ” But the consequences of not paying can be just as costly
incredulous Source
This huge layer of vocabulary was either borrowed directly, borrowed from Latin via French or coined in English from Latin roots. Educated people are expected to know these words, which means a lifetime of trying to keep things like ingenious and _______ distinct. What sort of person would coin antonym pairs like adjure and abjure (the former meaning to vigorously encourage someone to do something, the latter meaning to renounce)? The answer is the Roman sort
ingenuous Source
It is particularly active in renewable energy—on which a lot of the NGEU money will be spent. “Anyone who thinks that the Mafia has lost its ability to penetrate the legitimate economy is either being _______ or devious,” he says. ■
ingenuous Source
Here is his opening paragraph: Even those who count Ronald Reagan among the handful of great American presidents have a hard time saying exactly where his greatness lay, or how it made itself felt. Reagan was an enigma: affable but friendless, a nonintellectual man of ideas, an _______ power politician. His presidency seemed like a success until 1986 and a failure thereafter, yet his most important legacy — the ending of the cold war — dates from those last two lame-duck years
ingenuous Source
The story is set in Vigata, an imaginary town modelled on Porto Empedocle, where Mr Camilleri was born. The _______ narrator, a mill inspector, falls victim to arrogant local bosses when he pokes into the deaths of two predecessors. Framed for the murder of a womanising parish priest, he jumps sideways, like a knight in chess, to save his skin
ingenuous Source
Many writers of this generation subsequently built literary careers around these experiences; “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress” is a welcome addition to this phenomenon. Set in 1971, Mr Dai's charmingly _______ narrative—more “Famous Five” than “Wild Swans”—contrasts intriguingly with the accounts of political violence familiar to western readers of Cultural Revolution memoirs. The narrator and his friend Luo are banished to Phoenix of the Sky, a remote fairytale-like mountain village, to be “re- educated” by hauling buckets of excrement and toiling in mines nearby
ingenuous Source
Because they cut carbon-dioxide emissions, local authorities are subsidising the craze. But the well-intentioned schemes look pricey when you consider how much carbon is _______ d. One such scheme costs the city €370,000 ($450,000), but is expected to reduce emissions by only seven tonnes a year
abate Source
The “last mile” problem of vaccine delivery will become painfully apparent as health workers carry vaccines into the planet’s poorest and most remote places. But complaints about unequal distribution will start to _______ during 2022 as access to patients’ arms becomes a larger limiting factor than access to jabs. Indeed, if manufacturers do not scale back vaccine production there will be a glut by the second half of the year, predicts Airfinity, a provider of life-sciences data
abate Source
The move towards shorter supply chains is already under way, thanks to trade wars and covid-19. But whereas the pandemic will eventually subside and trade wars should _______ , the climate is shifting from stable to less so. “Things will just keep on changing,” says Hauke Engel of McKinsey, a consultancy
abate Source
This huge layer of vocabulary was either borrowed directly, borrowed from Latin via French or coined in English from Latin roots. Educated people are expected to know these words, which means a lifetime of trying to keep things like ingenious and _______ distinct. What sort of person would coin antonym pairs like adjure and abjure (the former meaning to vigorously encourage someone to do something, the latter meaning to renounce)? The answer is the Roman sort
abjure Source
The contrast with America’s bumbling response to covid-19 could scarcely be more glaring. In “Mission Economy” Mariana Mazzucato argues that societies ought to _______ tired ideologies and embrace the policy approach that put astronauts on the Moon. By setting grand missions for themselves, she writes, and deploying the power of the state in practical ways, they can become more prosperous and equitable
abjure Source
A lawyer who argued that time thus spent was a benefit not a cost, since breadmaking had turned from work into pleasure, might persuade a jury of economists. But that argument would raise the third reason why professionals should _______ handiwork: for the sake of their friends and family. The pleasure which professionals take in practising their new crafts may not be shared by those condemned to consume their output
abjure Source
Khalid Howladar of Moody’s, a rating agency, calls this “a landmark year” for Islamic finance, in that it is moving from “a very esoteric asset class to one that’s more… global. ” Most of the world’s Muslims are not so devout that they completely _______ conventional finance: even in Saudi Arabia, the assets of Islamic banks account for barely half of all banking assets. Muslim account-holders, Mr Howladar explains, tend to be more concerned with the products and service on offer than with the strictures of sharia (rules based on Muslim scripture)
abjure Source
Rather, they centred on disgruntlement with Tsai Ing-wen, the president, who had pushed through several controversial reforms since taking office in 2016, while dithering over some of her supporters’ most cherished causes. But the outcome, a crushing defeat for Ms Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which would like Taiwan to _______ its notional status as part of China and declare itself a distinct country, will have prompted delight on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. The opposition Kuomintang (KMT), which favours ever-closer ties with China, has been revived after a dismal performance in 2016
abjure Source
In 1633, Galileo was found “vehemently suspect of heresy” because he had claimed that the earth revolves around the sun. Galileo was subsequently required to “ _______ , curse and detest” his beliefs. And in 1859, Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species”, which met with sustained opposition from the Christian Church
abjure Source
He wants economists to accept that evidence from other disciplines does not just explain those bits of behaviour that do not fit the standard models. Rather, what economists consider _______ is the norm. Homo economicus, not his fallible counterpart, is the oddity
anomalous Source
On August 6th American officials, including the Director of National Intelligence and the bosses of the CIA and the FBI, met to discuss the progress of investigations into the syndrome. Several of President Joe Biden’s advisers have said that they believe the CIA will eventually trace Havana syndrome (referred to by the administration as “ _______ health incidents”) to Russia. But some worry that politics are getting in the way of scientific fact
anomalous Source
And yet the UN is struggling, as are many of the structures, like the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), designed to help create order out of chaos. This system, with the UN at its apex, is beset by internal problems, by the global struggle to cope with the rise of China, and most of all by the neglect— _______ even—of the country that was its chief architect and sponsor, the United States. The threat to the global order weighs on everyone, including America
antipathy Source
With an official response from the government of Singapore FOND of having the last word, Singapore's government can nevertheless be flexible. Who would have thought it would be building casinos? But one policy that shows no sign of reversing is Singapore's _______ towards public welfare. The state's attitude can be simply put: being poor here is your own fault
antipathy Source
In these circumstances, arguing against gentrification can amount to insistence that poor neighbourhoods remain poor and that racially segregated neighbourhoods stay cut off. What, then, accounts for the _______ towards gentrification? The first reason is financial. Though the process has been going on for a few decades, the increased attention comes in the middle of a broader concern about the cost of housing in American cities
antipathy Source
QE—creating money to buy financial assets including sovereign bonds—was first used by the Bank of Japan in the early part of the 2000s; the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England introduced it in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. Long-standing German _______ to the policy, however, has made the ECB a late adopter. The central bank is turning to QE because of the enfeebled state of the European economy
antipathy Source
But new research suggests that this trend of increasing polarisation is not universal. In some Western countries, _______ between opposing parties seems to have declined in the long run. In a new paper, Levi Boxell and Matthew Gentzkow of Stanford University, and Jesse Shapiro of Brown University have quantified America’s rising tribalism
antipathy Source
But the virus is not going away. America’s _______ to vaccines and continued resistance to other interventions, particularly among Republicans, is worrying. YouGov’s poll indicates that, among those who voted for Donald Trump in 2020, 31% say they will not get vaccinated, 71% strongly disapprove of President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate and nearly 40% never wear a face mask
antipathy Source
Eventually released on bail, he fled in the belief that he would not receive a fair trial and would remain under house arrest for years. Some readers may be dismayed by the authors’ reluctance to speculate on the verdict should the trial have gone ahead (they conclude that, given the “ _______ ” accusations of financial irregularities, a “ruling is likely to be just as abstruse”). But the end result is that Mr Ghosn remains trapped, these days in Lebanon, where he is safe from the international arrest warrants that might be executed should he board any more corporate jets
arcane Source
When the first Chinese firm went public in New York in 1993, cross-border listings were endorsed by authorities, which acknowledged that American markets offered a lower cost of capital, more sophisticated investors and better corporate governance. Mainland regulators even turned a blind eye to fiddly legal work arounds, known as variable interest entities (VIEs), that allowed ambitious Chinese tech firms to circumvent _______ mainland restrictions on foreign ownership. Over the past two years the mood has shifted
arcane Source
North Macedonia may have dutifully jumped through every hoop required to begin accession talks, including changing its name to settle a dispute with Greece. Yet an _______ row about the origins of the Macedonian language led to Bulgaria vetoing the start of negotiations. Albania, whose application is linked to North Macedonia’s in a futile attempt to stop such political gamesmanship, is also stuck
arcane Source
Executives will “lead by example” by declining to show up to the firm’s San Francisco office, thus preventing remote workers from feeling left out. This shift will be a welcome change for many employees, especially those who used to have long, _______ commutes. But those who go remote on a full-time basis will incur at least one cost: paying for extra workspace at home
arduous Source
That is worse than India, China and four of the ten countries belonging to the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). It is not where a country _______ ly seeking to attract foreign investment wants to be. One way Jokowi has tried to fight corruption is by removing opportunities
arduous Source
As ever, the theatrics of the campaign before the election will not preclude the compromises that will, eventually, be made after it. ■\nFor more coverage of the German elections, visit our dedicated hub","description":"The post-election coalition talks are likely to be extremely _______","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
arduous Source
It left many workers bewilderingly idle, or stuck at a disorienting remove from their colleagues. Having downed their usual tools, the bored often took up Neolithic habits, like growing food or baking bread—ironically, given that it was the turn to agriculture, beginning some 12,000 years ago, which first set humankind on the path towards _______ work in dense cities, through which zoonotic diseases might one day run rampant. “The Story of Work” by Jan Lucassen, a scholar at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, chronicles the long-term background to these jarring developments
arduous Source
His brother has helped him buy a ticket back to Chile (he still has a visa): after he returns to work, he’ll decide what’s next. Sabrina’s cousin in Illinois was _______ when Louis phoned to tell him they weren’t coming. “I just put up the bed where you’re going to sleep! I’m sitting in front of it and looking at your sneakers!” He had bought Louis new trainers after hearing that he’d ruined his Adidas Sambas while walking through the Darién Gap
arduous Source
It prevents action on pressing real issues, from immigration to welfare; it erodes Americans’ faith in their government and its institutions; and it dims the beacon of American democracy abroad. The mid-term elections are a chance to begin stopping the rot—and even to start the _______ task of putting it right. Mr Trump did not begin this abasement
arduous Source
WHAT WITH his dozens of concubines, his obsession with collecting precious jade and his penchant for inscribing his own (not very good) poems onto ancient paintings, the Qianlong emperor makes an unlikely hero for the Communist Party of China, especially one led by Xi Jinping, a stern _______ . Qianlong was a man of formidable intellect and will, whose long reign from 1736-95 marked a high point of the Qing dynasty
ascetic Source
China is concerned about an escalation of such attacks. But it is doing nothing to _______ the anger of potential saboteurs, to avoid crossing the army. Its officials have only limited communications with Myanmar’s shadow government, which most Burmese regard as their legitimate rulers
assuage Source
) Start by considering “persuasion problems”. We need to _______ the concerns about side-effects and safety that are unfounded. Those who have little to fear personally from a coronavirus infection, like young adults, will also need convincing
assuage Source
IN ANXIOUS times, political leaders try to _______ fears. So it was this week when William Lai, Taiwan’s prime minister, appealed for calm after a run on that most essential of goods, toilet paper
assuage Source
It is especially useful for contacts between people who do not know each other, such as fellow travellers on a bus, or theatre-goers. The app’s developers have tried to _______ concerns about privacy and security. Downloading it is not compulsory
assuage Source
So why make the loan at all? The answers are not pretty. This deal is designed partly to _______ the rich countries' guilt over the extent of Argentina's mess, and their role in creating it. And it is partly a capitulation to highly effective Argentine pressure
assuage Source
Today's bankers can draw no such comfort from their behaviour. The attempts to rig LIBOR (the London inter-bank offered rate), a benchmark interest rate, not only _______ a culture of casual dishonesty; they set the stage for lawsuits and more regulation right the way round the globe. This could well be global finance's “tobacco moment”
betray Source
Officials in Kiev and the West dismissed the Russian offer as a cynical ploy. The details, diplomats say, _______ Russia’s true intent: Mr Putin foresees peacekeeping forces stationed along the front line inside Ukraine, and not along the border with Russia—essentially formalising the internal division of the country. Yet as unpalatable as the proposal is, its mere appearance hints at important shifts in Russian thinking
betray Source
Such warnings have fallen on deaf ears not just in Washington, but on Wall Street too. Financial markets, hungry for dollar-denominated safe assets, _______ no concern about America’s debts. The risk of a crisis is not the only theoretical downside to public borrowing, but the others are looking unconvincing
betray Source
If the first prisoner is planning to keep quiet, then the second has an incentive to denounce him, and so get off scot-free rather than spend a year in prison. If the first prisoner were planning to _______ the second, then the second would still be better off pointing the finger, and so receive a five-year sentence instead of a ten-year one. In other words, a rational, self-interested person would always
betray Source
A smartphone ban would hurt recruitment and morale. But a single mobile can _______ a big operation “like a fire in the dark”, says Lieutenant-Colonel Rouven Habel, a former commander of NATO’s troops in Lithuania. Phones bring other dangers, too
betray Source
What Mr Bewkes missed, but Mr Hastings did not, was not just that the wireless internet would become a reliable conduit for high-quality video, but that in doing so it would change the rules of television. There would be no time slots and no channels, no waiting until next week to see whom the Lannisters _______ or the Good Wife sleeps with. Given big enough pipes—in September 2017 Netflix streams were taking up 20% of the world’s downstream bandwidth, according to Sandvine, a network-equipment firm—a company would be able to offer every one of its customers something he wanted to watch, whenever and wherever he wanted to watch it, for as long as he wanted to
betray Source
, WTO membership), and it played a vital role in the supply-chain dynamic that drove globalization. However, trade flows into China increasingly _______ a move away from a globalized world and toward a more regionally focused one. For instance, IMF data show that in 2018, compared with 2011, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Malaysia traded more with China and relatively less with the United States
betray Source
For centuries the Hanseatic League’s cogs and hulks plied the inky waves, pregnant with cloth, timber and furs. Even today, cultural similarities _______ the old links: gabled merchants’ houses and pubs serving eel and herring are found on damp, blustery coasts from East Anglia to Estonia. The mercantile spirit lives on, too: Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordics and the Baltics share a taste for balanced books and free trade
betray Source
BRITAIN IS SEETHING with rumours of treason and plot. Hard-core Brexiteers speculate that Theresa May is preparing to _______ the 17. 4m people who voted Leave, at the behest of a Machiavellian establishment
betray Source
In the madness and the agony that is to come, we must cling fast to these principles. Only so can we be quite sure that, in defending democracy, we shall not _______ it, and that the freedom for which we fight is that freedom for all men on which alone permanent peace can be built. *For the sake of historical accuracy, a misprint in last week's issue should be corrected
betray Source
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bucolic Source
Although the population has been shrinking, “a new wind is blowing in the town”, says Watanabe Hikobe, its mayor. Over the past decade a small group of young outsiders has arrived, drawn by visions of a slow, _______ life, and the chance to try new models of untethered work and communal living. Yanagisawa Ryu, a 34-year-old with a computer- science degree from Japan’s leading university, ditched his job in Tokyo and became a “social entrepreneur”
bucolic Source
economist. com/printedition/2020-04-11","name":"Apr 11th 2020 edition"}}]} Middle East & AfricaApr 11th 2020 edition_______botchWhy big farms flopped in EthiopiaToo few investors knew the land; too many deals were crookedApr 8th 2020OMORATEFacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppTHE PLAN was to transform farming in southern Ethiopia. Twelve years ago Fri-El, an Italian conglomerate, signed a lease with the state government for 30,000 hectares of farmland in South Omo to make palm oil
bucolic Source
Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub THE GLASS and metal headquarters of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the UN’s health agency, contrast starkly with their _______ surroundings in the hills around Geneva. The only dabs of colour are the flags of its 194 member-states
bucolic Source
” In the shallow Umbrian valley beneath us sits a Palladian villa surrounded by vines, parkland, soft green fields, herb gardens and houses with yolk-yellow terracotta roofs. Over to the right, the large, L-shaped factory barely detracts from the _______ panorama. The hills are alive with the sound of stitching MAIN IMAGE The view of the Solomeo skyline in Umbria
bucolic Source
SET IN THE _______ countryside on the edge of Nashville, Christ Presbyterian Church is a stately building where, in normal times, hundreds of evangelical Christians gather to worship. On a recent Sunday a smaller, socially distanced congregation assembled to hear the preacher speak on the eighth chapter of the gospel of Mark, in which Jesus asks his disciples: “Who do people say I am?” Such questions of identity are troubling many in the congregation, too
bucolic Source
The Mulberry Tree Inn in Stockton Heath is creating an external bar covered by a louvre canopy system. The Union Inn in Falkirk is laying an artificial lawn from which covid- safe pods will _______ . Fletcher’s Sports Bar in Liverpool has a new 250-person capacity beer garden, with a large outdoor screen for live sports
burgeon Source
Expect inflation to take off: it was down to about 11% for the year until the crisis exploded last month, but has already passed the 40% mark since then. Expect the black market to _______ again. Expect further defaults on debt
burgeon Source
Building a primary-care structure that patients trust will require enormous effort, including finding doctors willing to work as general practitioners (who have fewer money- making opportunities than hospital doctors) and devising better incentives for GPs to promote preventive measures, such as healthy diets and physical exercise. Without an overhaul, China’s health-care system will be crushed by the burden of coping with the chronic diseases that will _______ as the population ages. In recent years annual increases in total health-care spending have been 5-10 percentage points higher than GDP growth
burgeon Source
On the bright side, there are 50 or 60 Greek firms in Istanbul, up from three or four a decade ago. Laki Vingas, a Greek businessman, says Greece's investment in Turkey will _______ if the country gets a date for EU negotiations. But will revival avert extinction? Despite the bonhomie that common roots in Cappadocia can inspire, it is a race against time
burgeon Source
As any self-respecting financial journalist knows, stockmarkets never simply decline or fall, they shudder, swoon, haemorrhage, crash, plunge or sink in a river of blood. That is, of course, unless they are subject to profit-taking or a correction, which happen when the writer has recently predicted they will surge, soar, balloon, _______ and so forth. Periods of falling share prices, such as this summer, bring forth much talk of meltdown, bloodbaths and volatility
burgeon Source
What is more, the supermajors are no longer the only game in town when it comes to providing the NOCs with any help they may need. Oilfield-service companies started to _______ in the 1980s when big companies thought it wise to outsource drilling and other aspects of production. Oil was relatively easy to come by, and operating a rig was a low- margin business
burgeon Source
You would spot a pumpkin farm, the odd homestead and red barn. But a recent visit revealed a _______ building site: a factory is emerging in this corner of the Midwest. Where chicken coops once stood, Foxconn, a Taiwanese contract-manufacturing giant best- known for assembling iPhones, has arrived
cacophonous Source
Despite its recent rude health, Bangladesh’s economy still needs all the help it can get. As even the briefest exposure to Dhaka’s _______ parade of tinkling cycle rickshaws, tooting three-wheelers and honking SUVs reveals, this is a country of bottlenecks. Traffic relief for the capital city’s 17m people—who, the UN predicts, will number 27m by 2030—will not come soon
cacophonous Source
The people standing on doorsteps and balconies making an anvil chorus with kitchen utensils are practising a Burmese tradition of dissent and exorcism. _______ pots and pans drive evil from the home. In 1988 they were also used to drive out Sein Lwin, the 17-day president nicknamed the “butcher of Rangoon”
cacophonous Source
EVEN by Europe's _______ standards, German policymakers sent mixed signals on the euro this week. At her party's conference on November 14th the chancellor, Angela Merkel, left no doubt about the gravity of the euro crisis (see Charlemagne)
cacophonous Source
All these debates—around the new Greek program, private sector involvement, the amount of funding necessary, the talk of 'selective default'—and the continued cacophony in the media only make the problems in front of us more difficult to solve. Going from crisis to crisis at such a weak stage of recovery, with such a _______ press and frightened public, is not any longer an option Greece can sustain. Greece is responsible for her past inaction
cacophonous Source
Anyone who has visited the charming old Egyptian Museum recently can attest to the country's need for a bigger, better showcase for its extraordinary wealth of ancient artefacts. The 100-year-old building stands in central Cairo's busiest square, exposed to pollution and vibration from some of the world's most _______ traffic. Ranks of tour buses squeeze in and out of an unsightly parking lot outside its gates, while tourists are forced to mill in the museum's small garden because its cafeteria and gift shops are perpetually packed
cacophonous Source
THE _______ capillaries of India's infrastructure may be about to get a lot more clogged. By the end of 2010 there could be as many as 300,000 Tata Nanos on India's roads
cacophonous Source
The boldest business publications, such as Caixin, still expose crooked firms. Optimists note the _______ rise of bloggers and social-media sites on commercial platforms such as Weibo or WeChat. Some blogs are written by veteran journalists and publicise stories that evoke such a public response, so rapidly, that censors cannot contain them, leaving state media scrambling to catch up
cacophonous Source
Perhaps the more self-aware protestors are questioning how capitalism can deliver nice things like an iPad and not so nice things like a CDO-squared. Jonathan Chait is mulling this question and reckons you can pick and choose--you can villainize the financial industry and _______ Silicon Valley visionaries--without being inconsistent. There is a reason the movement is called “Occupy Wall Street,” not “Occupy Main Street” or “Occupy Silicon Valley
canonize Source
Perhaps the more self-aware protestors are questioning how capitalism can deliver nice things like an iPad and not so nice things like a CDO-squared. Jonathan Chait is mulling this question and reckons you can pick and choose--you can villainize the financial industry and _______ Silicon Valley visionaries--without being inconsistent. There is a reason the movement is called “Occupy Wall Street,” not “Occupy Main Street” or “Occupy Silicon Valley
canonize Source
The conservative-leaning Supreme Court may have to determine the answer. If it prevents a Senate trial, Congress must fall back on other, less satisfactory tools such as _______ or banning Mr Trump from office under the 14th Amendment for having “engaged in insurrection or rebellion”. If it allows a trial to go ahead, then the Senate should proceed immediately rather than leave Mr Trump to fester
censure Source
The forum deals with a topic that is a huge potential embarrassment for China. The absence of the world’s most powerful democracy from its deliberations made it likelier that China’s abuses would escape _______ . But with Joe Biden preparing to take over as America’s president, China fears trouble ahead
censure Source
The “ultimate” question of whether Texas’s ban “is consistent with the federal constitution” or wise “as a matter of public policy”, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, “is not before the court”. Yet the eight justices siding with the clinic in Whole Woman’s Health hindered, with varying degrees of _______ , Texas’s effort to circumvent Supreme Court decisions by throwing in obstacles to court challenges. Arguing in support of SB 8 last month, Jonathan Mitchell, architect of the law, was not coy about its design
censure Source
Illustration by JacTHERE is a growing consensus that loose credit and too-clever-by-half financial wizardry sowed the seeds of America's still-deepening economic malaise. One practice in particular has been singled out for _______ —the bundling of loans into assets that could be sold on to investors. The charge is that by breaking the link between those who vet borrowers and those who bear the cost when they default, securitisation led to the lax lending that both fuelled and felled America's housing market
censure Source
And yet the UN is struggling, as are many of the structures, like the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), designed to help create order out of chaos. This system, with the UN at its apex, is beset by internal problems, by the global struggle to cope with the rise of China, and most of all by the neglect— _______ even—of the country that was its chief architect and sponsor, the United States. The threat to the global order weighs on everyone, including America
censure Source
“Now there’s a different logic, of polarisation. ” That dynamic was at work when Mr Sánchez, with the help of Catalan and Basque nationalists as well as Podemos, toppled a PP government with a _______ motion over corruption in 2018. It was intensified by the rise of another new party, Vox, a hard-right splinter from the PP, initially in response to the threat of Catalan separatism
censure Source
Property rights are insecure: ask Repsol, the Spanish firm whose stake in YPF, an Argentine oil company, was nationalised in 2012. Statistics cannot be trusted: Argentina was due this week to unveil new inflation data in a bid to avoid _______ from the IMF for its wildly undercooked previous estimates. Budgets can be changed at will by the executive
censure Source
window. env = {"ENV":"production"}; Shenanigans and _______| The Economist {"@context":"http://schema. org","@type":"NewsArticle","url":"https://www
chicanery Source
window. env = {"ENV":"production"}; _______in Formula One? | The Economist {"@context":"http://schema. org","@type":"NewsArticle","url":"https://www
chicanery Source
Either way, the rebate cheque is a clever political tool to give average Americans a quick fillip from a tax cut whose main benefits will accrue years down the road to top tax- payers. Over the longer run, tax-cutters could also gain from the gross accounting _______ with which this bill is crammed. In order to introduce as much tax-cutting as possible, but also stay within the $1
chicanery Source
economist. com/printedition/2002-01-12","name":"Jan 12th 2002 edition"}}]} United StatesJan 12th 2002 edition_______in ChicagoMoniker businessWould the real Jesse L. Jackson please stand up?Jan 10th 2002chicago FacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppAPCONGRESSMAN Jesse L
chicanery Source
NEITHER fiscal cliff, nor sequester, nor any other Washington _______ can derail an American recovery that looks like maybe hitting its stride. Not yet, at least
chicanery Source
Why are IPOs as expensive and inefficient as ever?” asks Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia Capital, a venture-capital firm. He describes the IPO process as “ _______ and grand larceny”. With Wall Street banks allocating shares to top clients and encouraging companies to price their offerings low to ensure a rise on the first day, many in Silicon Valley feel the IPO “tax” is too great
chicanery Source
The crowd’s passion would have been familiar to football fans anywhere. But the canvas on which it was painted—a league beset by financial _______ and political meddling—was unmistakably Chinese. China can seem like an economic juggernaut
chicanery Source
Such places are infertile ground for long-run investment, the gains from which could be grabbed by rivals or stolen by government. Meanwhile trust is highest, and defences against _______ lowest, within some of world’s wealthiest countries. Studies of the relationship between measures of trust and economic growth find a close link between the two
chicanery Source
First-past-the-post voting like America’s tends inevitably to yield two-party systems, which usually require awkward coalitions. What determines which interest groups _______ ? In 1929 Harold Hotelling, an economist, wrote that a rational voter would choose a candidate whose views showed most “proximity” to his own. In turn, a political party serious about winning should take the positions most likely to convince the voter in the electorate’s ideological middle
coalesce Source
But these took years to agree on. Today, says the boss of a big pension fund with a large ESG portfolio, “there is greater urgency” to _______ around a set of common standards. Even so, this is expected to take at least five to ten years, slowed by competing interests and disagreements about what to measure
coalesce Source
Concrete floors, streets of metal shelving and minimal customer service looked less attractive in an era when rivals began offering play as well as product. Visitors to Build-a-Bear could watch bespoke soft toys _______ before their eyes. Customers at Lego stores could hunker down at benches filled with brightly coloured plastic bricks
coalesce Source
Popularity and wealth are among the chief qualifications for becoming a viable presidential candidate, in a political system where personality and potential to win outweigh ability, policies and parties. Since the Philippines’ restoration of democracy in 1986, the tendency has been for its politicians to _______ around whomever they regard as the most unbeatable presidential candidate. They trade their support for patronage
coalesce Source
As a consequence, not only could conservative Southerners feel comfortable in the party, but so could conservatives in the Northern, urban, industrial hotbeds of unionization. As an increasingly liberal Democratic Party began to _______ around the civil-rights agenda in the 1960s, conservative Southern Democrats trickled out of the party, and so did many conservative working-class whites in the North. But this is hardly the whole sorting story
coalesce Source
Its economy contracted in the first half of 2015, undermining Mr Harper’s claim that only the Conservatives could manage it. Two-thirds of voters wanted him out of office, but it was not clear they would _______ around either of his main challengers. In the end they swung behind Mr Trudeau, thanks to his deft campaign and to mistakes by the NDP
coalesce Source
But it failed to restore the two-party system that Marcos demolished. Today weak political parties tend to _______ not around sets of policies, which stir little debate, but around leaders with vivid personalities, who win elections. Thus Mr Duterte’s Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (“people’s power”) is at the centre of a loose pro- government coalition which dominates Congress because voters like Mr Duterte’s tough-guy act
coalesce Source
Generally, we do not accept press trips and cannot publish stories that are predicated on them. FEATURES We are looking for strong stories populated by _______ characters, with ideas that complement The Economist’s coverage, such as this story about the plight of Britain’s Uyghur community. We are eager for profiles, like these in-depth portraits of James Ellroy, Asma Assad and Avi Loeb
compelling Source
Distinguish between the rules of grammar that will help you write better sentences and the time-wasting rules that you can safely ignore. Module 5: “Making data beautiful and _______”Visualise data clearly, accurately and
compelling Source
Now the debate over that agenda is highlighting a rift in party strategy. Conservative Democrats such as Joe Manchin, a senator from West Virginia, _______ the party must not throw fiscal caution to the winds. But progressives such as Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont, argue that the party must be bold, proving it can honour its promises
contend Source
The parties have approved a detailed plan for governing, which includes a higher minimum wage and building more homes. First, however, they must _______ with a fourth wave of covid-19. Austria’s chancellor, Alexander Schallenberg, resigned after less than two months in the job
contend Source
They seek to preserve what is best in society by managing change, usually under a ruling class or an authoritarian leader who “knows best”. An engine of change True liberals _______ that societies can change gradually for the better and from the bottom up. They differ from revolutionaries because they reject the idea that individuals should be coerced into accepting someone else’s beliefs
contend Source
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google | Stitcher | TuneIn The Facebook lawsuits centre on its acquisitions. The firm maintained its monopoly in personal social- networking by systematically buying up potential competitors, both _______ —notably Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. A smoking gun could be Onavo, an Israeli firm Facebook bought in 2013—to protect user data, the firm said
contend Source
Like such strings, they have resonant frequencies and harmonics. These various vibrational modes, string theorists _______ , correspond to various fundamental particles. Such particles include all of those already observed as part of the Standard Model, the further particles predicted by Susy, which posits that the Standard Model’s mathematical fragility will go away if each of that model’s particles has a heavier “supersymmetric” partner particle, or “sparticle”, and also particles called gravitons, which are needed to tie the force of gravity into any unified theory, but are not predicted by relativity
contend Source
Meanwhile the benefits of separatism, in terms of being able to cater better to the preferences of voters, are less diminished. So the global reduction in barriers to trade since the second world war, the pair _______ , at least partly explains the simultaneous growth in the number of countries, even if national fractures often involve, or lead to, political instability and violence. And then there is the question of how the benefits of globalisation are shared out
contend Source
A forthcoming analysis by Chris Doucouliagos of Deakin University and Martin Paldam of Aarhus University of 141 studies published between 1970 and 2011 finds that the average estimated effect of aid on growth is positive and statistically significant, but so small that it may not be terribly meaningful. Advocates of freer trade or more liberal immigration regimes _______ that the economic benefits of such measures for poor countries far outweigh those of aid. Supporters of the 0
contend Source
Britain, by contrast, looks to be in line for its deepest recession since the Great Frost of 1709. Some economists _______ that the huge gap between countries is a statistical mirage, reflecting different methods of computing GDP figures. In Britain, for instance, the way statisticians tot up government spending means that school closures and cancelled hospital appointments have a bigger impact on GDP than elsewhere
contend Source
Darren Woods, who currently does Mr Raymond’s old job, does not deny that climate change is real. And he must now _______ with the biggest rebuke to the firm’s management in living memory. At his company’s shareholder meeting on May 26th a coalition of activist investors led by Engine No
contend Source
Another notorious case involves HNA Group, an acquisitive conglomerate which took over Yingkou Coastal Bank in Liaoning in 2014 (see chart 1). HNA put new leaders into the bank and transformed it into a mill for shadow-banking products that provided it and related groups with _______ amounts of credit. Its assets tripled in 2016, making it the fastest-growing bank in China that year—before it almost collapsed
copious Source
Meanwhile, the rising maintenance or energy costs associated with these assets are often either passed through to tenants (for property) or fixed for long periods (for infrastructure). And debt raised against them—often fixed-rate, and in _______ amounts—becomes cheaper to repay. As a result, real assets have done well during inflationary periods
copious Source
The notion is attractive in theory, but perilous in practice. If the _______ academic literature on strategic industries has a conclusion, it is that no one can agree on what counts as one. The narrowest definition covers sectors directly vital to war-fighting: makers of weapons and of stuff needed to forge them (steel) and operate them (energy)
copious Source
An example of the former could be geoengineering. Today the _______ carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere is left for nature to pick up, which it cannot do fast enough. Although the technologies are still nascent, the idea that humans might help remove carbon from the skies as well as put it there is a reasonable Anthropocene expectation; it wouldn't stop climate change any time soon, but it might shorten its lease, and reduce the changes in ocean chemistry that excess carbon brings about
copious Source
Nearly two-thirds of respondents, including 57% of Americans, went on to say that it was important that government actions aimed at economic recovery prioritise action on climate change. Gizza job Green boosters have always been keen to claim that strong climate policies have the added advantage of producing _______ jobs; the Obama administration credited clean-energy investments under ARRA with supporting 900,000 job-years of employment. In recent years of low unemployment such claims have come to seem somewhat beside the point
copious Source
The resurgence of Asia in world affairs and the global economy, which was happening before the emergence of covid-19, will be cemented in a new world order after the crisis. The _______ to Western societies, which was the norm in the 19th and 20th centuries, will be replaced by a growing respect and admiration for East Asian ones. The pandemic could thus mark the start of the Asian century
deference Source
The resurgence of Asia in world affairs and the global economy, which was happening before the emergence of covid-19, will be cemented in a new world order after the crisis. The _______ to Western societies, which was the norm in the 19th and 20th centuries, will be replaced by a growing respect and admiration for East Asian ones. The phrase has been bandied around for a while, but the pandemic could mark the real start of an Asian century
deference Source
At home its people want continued growth, its leaders the stability that growth can buy. On the international stage people and Communist Party want a new _______ and the influence that befits their nation’s stature. Thus China wants the current dispensation to stay the same—it wants the conditions that have helped it grow to endure—but at the same time it wants it turned into something else
deference Source
What of the risk that the sudden appearance of screaming, chocolate-smeared children will undermine the impression of domestic perfection? Best if you can to hide them away in another room—“Minecraft” might keep them occupied—or dress them smartly and persuade them to serve you with trays of tea and biscuits or canapés, as appropriate. Either approach will convey the desired impression of domestic order and _______ , to contrast pleasingly with the yells and curses to be heard in the background of your friends’ and colleagues’ homes. Humanity is now coming together to fight a common enemy
deference Source
He called for “new and positive roles” for Confucianism. The ancient system of thought emphasises respect for authority, reverence for ancestors and _______ to elders. Confucius taught that such values were essential to achieve moral excellence as an individual
deference Source
The questioning of institutions and received wisdom is a democratic virtue. A sceptical lack of _______ towards leaders is the first step to reform. The collapse of communism was hastened because brave people were prepared to challenge the official propaganda
deference Source
To descend as far, to take as much of her as he could survive, and risk even more. ” The Caribbean setting, where a _______ coup is under way, is pro forma; occasionally a hard- bitten journalist, shady CIA operative, or shifty junta general provides perfunctory (if painfully familiar) atmosphere. The local voodoo folderol (drums, dancing, rites, etc) borders on comical, and constitutes a lazy, cookie-cutter shorthand for the horror, the horror
desultory Source
The euro area has actually been growing for two years since an extended double-dip recession ended in early 2013. Yet the expansion has been so _______ that it barely deserved the name. The excitement generated by growth of just 0
desultory Source
The arrival of Nicos Anastasiades as president should also help, as he was one of the only Greek-Cypriot political leaders who voted for the Annan plan. _______ talks over the past three years have confirmed that the Turkish-Cypriot leader, Dervis Eroglu, is a fierce nationalist who has no love for the Annan plan, even though most Turkish-Cypriots backed it in 2004. But his patron, Turkey, still aspires to join the EU, which it cannot do so long as Cyprus stays divided
desultory Source
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s strong-man president and a co-founder of AK, was determined to undo that result. After the AK's _______ efforts to form a coalition government failed, Mr Erdogan called for new elections on November 1st. Mr Erdogan and the AK are widely believed to have escalated the war against the Kurds in order to inflame nationalist feelings and drive down the HDP's share of the vote
desultory Source
Mr Sánchez won a plurality of seats in Congress at an election in April, but not a big one: only 123 of the 350. Over the summer he broke off _______ coalition talks with Podemos’s leader, Pablo Iglesias. Against the instincts of wiser heads in his party, he called a fresh election for November 10th to seek “a strong progressive government that doesn’t depend on separatists”, as a government official put it
desultory Source
An outright military alliance between India and America remains unlikely, but even the remote prospect of one will concentrate Chinese minds. ","description":"Once _______, India is beginning to join the dance","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
diffident Source
One newspaper said a fire escape on a nearby IKEA store was a good vantage point, but the Chinese navy kept quiet about when the date would be. It has reason to be _______ . The ship is hardly a symbol of China's prowess in technology
diffident Source
Tony Blair, the British leader, sent a similar if more circumspect message while visiting Poland last month, saying it was “better to be in [the European Union] than out”. Yet many Poles seem _______ . Forecasters were confident this week that a majority would support entry, but less confident that the turnout would top 50%, the threshold for making the vote binding
diffident Source
Scholars and officials in China itself, however, are divided over whether there is a China model (or “Beijing consensus” as it was dubbed in 2004 by Joshua Cooper Ramo, an American consultant, playing on the idea of a declining “Washington consensus”), and if so what the model is and whether it is wise to talk about it. The Communist Party is _______ about laying claim to any development model that other countries might copy. Official websites widely noted a report by a pro-Party newspaper in Hong Kong, Ta Kung Pao, calling the expo “a display platform for the China model”
diffident Source
BACK when I lived in Hanoi, admirals with the American navy would periodically come through on official visits to cultivate America's _______ but promising new defence alliance with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Because Vietnam also claims to be an ally of the Socialist Republic of China (you would too, if you had a border with them!), these visits were rather sensitive, and both the Americans and the Vietnamese would have to come up with formulations to explain their partnership that elided its real reason, namely to deny China naval supremacy in the South China Sea
diffident Source
During a stint at the Kellogg School of Management in Illinois, he recalls, his Asian students tended to be quiet. On arriving at Hong Kong University (HKU), he discovered that students there were not _______ at all but instead stereotypical, opinionated MBAs. Mr Fong concludes that, in America, Asian students were unfamiliar with corporate culture and even company names
diffident Source
That was a turning point in China's military history: the PLA navy's first active-duty deployment beyond East Asia. China had long been _______ about long-range engagements, fearing they might stir anxiety about China's military ambitions while at the same time revealing frailties to its potential enemies (America being the biggest concern). Western powers have long been trying to cajole the PLA into playing a more dynamic role, both in UN peacekeeping (China is a big contributor of troops, but not of front-line ones) and disaster relief (the PLA did not send forces to help out after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004)
diffident Source
Not Chinese researchers, though. A Confucian rejection of the idea that embryos are in any meaningful sense human beings (a view shared by many Koreans), together with the possibility of stealing a march on the _______ West, has stimulated a lot of research into stem cells in China. And not only research
diffident Source
If the Europeans get serious about cleaning up their banks, the Americans should make one final, genuine attempt to get the FSB’s global rules to work. ","description":"America should give global banking rules—and Europe’s _______regulators—one last chance","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
dilatory Source
So the fifth industrial revolution that started in America in the late 1980s may last no more than 25-30 years. If, as seems likely, we are already a decade into this new industrial cycle, it may now be almost too late for the _______ to catch up. The rapid- upswing part of the cycle—in which successful participants enjoy fat margins, set standards, kill off weaker rivals and establish themselves as main players—looks as though it has already run two-thirds of its course, with only another five or six years left to go
dilatory Source
Even his supporters admit Mr Martelly himself is partly to blame for the trouble. He has been _______ in pushing through a new electoral law, which has meant a two-year delay to elections for the Senate and in local municipalities. That gave the opposition a potent reason to mobilise protesters
dilatory Source
His florid account was largely upbeat. Yet it soured along the northern coastline of Vietnam, where he lamented the “ _______ attitude of a red-tape administration” when it came to exploiting the area’s coal reserves. Now red tape is again impeding foreign investment in Vietnam’s energy sector
dilatory Source
For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub THE BANGLADESHI version of lockdown, observes Rumi, a garment-worker, is quite ruthless: “Police and soldiers beat up people, rickshaw pullers and street vendors, anyone who comes out onto the street. ” But when it comes to garment factories (and mosques—see Banyan) the authorities _______ . The factories’ 4
equivocate Source
This may not turn out to be a correct assumption. On Libya, I'm prepared to _______ with the best of them, but it's worth noting that research on bullies suggests that they are not generally boastful cowards who will back down when you stand up to them. Bullies in fact tend to be confident, popular, and socially adept, and to be more likely than non- bullies to endorse "retaliation" as the appropriate response to perceived aggression, suggesting that if you stand up to them, they will fight rather than back down
equivocate Source
Platts is now tightening up on what it calls “lower-quality data”. The firm now insists that price information must no longer come directly from traders, with an incentive to lie or at least _______ , but from back-office staff instead. The firm is also asking traders to reveal their counterparties—a move that many of them dislike
equivocate Source
But you suggest that she can overcome these deficiencies because she has learned from watching Bill's presidency. You've got to be kidding! The only thing Hillary learned from Bill's presidency was his ability to lie, cover-up adulterous relationships and _______ . Oh yeah, she also learned that she can use Sandy Berger to remove documents from the National Archives if need be! Michael Anderson Washington
equivocate Source
Either arrangement would wreck Ukraine’s dream of integrating with the European Union and NATO. Even the whiff of peace will encourage some Europeans to argue that Mr Putin need not be punished further—just as there were some who used his denials of involvement as a pretext to _______ . That would be an inexcusable mistake
equivocate Source
An astonishing proportion of anti-Brexiteers seem to come adorned with titles and company directorships. Mr Corbyn continues to _______ . Adding to the sense of inevitability is the fact that the governing party is overwhelmingly one of Brexiteers
equivocate Source
YOU can't accuse Gary Reiner of being _______ and inefficient. Ask General Electric's chief information officer a question, and you get a three-sentence answer that is right to the point
verbose Source
BUSINESSES have always told stories about their products. But in recent years they have become particularly _______ , bombarding consumers with any small detail that might enhance the brand. Shoppers at Whole Foods can peruse scintillating biographies of the chickens they are about to casserole
verbose Source
For many Peruvians, to have to choose between these two extremes is painful. Lots may _______ . The next president will be weak: the two contenders won less than a third of the vote combined; the total of blank and spoiled votes was more than Mr Castillo’s haul
abstain Source
Men who have sex with men are entirely prohibited from donating blood in countries such as Austria, Denmark and Greece. Elsewhere men must _______ from gay sex from between three months to five years before donating. Why are gay or bisexual men still barred from donating blood? Such policies stem from the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s
abstain Source
That prospect seems poised to make Mr Bolsonaro, a former army captain, Brazil’s president in a run-off election on October 28th. A survey by Ibope, a pollster, gives him around 52% of votes, to 37% for Fernando Haddad, his opponent from the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT); 9% of respondents said they would _______ . Mr Bolsonaro has benefited from a public mood of despair over rising crime, corruption and an economic slump caused by the mistakes of a previous PT government
abstain Source
” Still, the City cannot count on a SPAC frenzy. Jason Manketo of Linklaters, a British law firm, notes that even under the new regime the sponsor of a British SPAC will be forced to _______ from the merger vote. That puts them at the mercy of other shareholders and at a disadvantage compared with much of the rest of Europe, including Amsterdam
abstain Source
Making voting mandatory seems like a quick fix. Voters still have the right to _______ by leaving their ballot blank or otherwise spoiling it. The punishment for failing to vote is usually quite mild: in Australia, where voting has been mandatory since 1924, non- voters must either provide an excuse for their absence, or pay a A$20 ($14) fine
abstain Source
In his essay on John Stuart Mill, Isaiah Berlin proposes to establish a "right to err" as a corollary of the ability of each person to seek, to transform and to improve oneself. In the context of AI, the right to err is the right to _______ from social networks, the right to not accept recommendations, the right to refuse notifications—in short, it is the right to not obey the common definition of utility and instead, to follow one's own path, including against one’s self-interest. This is the profound meaning of the much-discussed “privacy”: it is not merely to protect individuals from the prying eyes of others (after all, most of the time the data are anonymous and processed by blind algorithms)
abstain Source
The trouble was that some of his compatriots “saw politics, like religion, as something to be done in public if it was done at all”. Today’s representative democracy finds it easier to accommodate a division of labour between thinkers and doers, actors and observers, participants and _______ ers. Many citizens eschew even the minimal commitment of voting
abstain Source
Published in 1936, amid the struggle of the Great Depression, it was an instant hit, selling out 17 editions in its first year. “Be hearty in _______ and lavish in praise,” Carnegie advised. Riches and happiness will follow
approbation Source
For decades Mr Biden was a deficit hawk. Like Mr Clinton, he was part of a rising generation of “New Democrats” seeking to escape the image of _______ liberals that Republicans had successfully attached to their party. As far back as 1984 (federal debt: 37% of GDP) he supported a freeze on all federal spending to deal with what he called the “runaway deficits” of Ronald Reagan’s administration
approbation Source
The results of the São Paulo CoronaVac trial, which were due after The Economist went to press on January 7th, are eagerly awaited beyond Brazil. Other forms of _______ are also available. Sputnik V is similar in its design to the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine—both use a harmless adenovirus to deliver a genetic transcript describing SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein—and in December AstraZeneca and the Gamaleya Centre agreed to work on trials that combine the two vaccines
approbation Source
But she found herself unable to shake off the Nehruvian tradition completely. So ingrained was her desire for public _______ that she stayed democratic. Indian democracy had proved its resilience
approbation Source
Delayed price increases for public services risk widening the budget deficit beyond the limit set by the IMF. But it is Argentine voters, not the IMF, whose _______ Mr Macri needs now. The latest polls suggest that he could lose to Ms Fernández, even though she has been indicted on several counts of corruption
approbation Source
Alan Greenspan, Mr Volcker’s successor, was dubbed the “maestro”. Rather than bully him, presidents sought his _______ for their policies. Nevertheless, the seeds were being sown for today’s attacks on central banks
approbation Source
This year Chinese across the country mourned lives lost to the covid-19 pandemic. Immersed in sadness, we _______ the memories of those who will not see this or any other spring—and we reflect on what can be learned from the tragedies. This pandemic is the third major unconventional security crisis in the 21st century that has refocused the world’s agenda
cherish Source
SIR DAVID AMESS was killed doing what he loved: speaking directly with voters. We examine the dangers inherent in the “constituency surgeries” that British politicians _______ . The fight against tuberculosis is made harder by mutations that confer drug resistance; we look at research that has traced nearly every one of them
cherish Source
Such estimates have been extrapolated from patchy and often unreliable local-government data, from company records—including of deaths among staff—and from analysis of such things as obituaries. Evidence from another source, opinion surveys, _______ s the higher numbers. One, conducted in May by Prashnam, a new polling group, asked 15,000 people, across mostly rural areas in Hindi-speaking states in the north, whether anyone in their family or neighbourhood had died of covid-19
corroborate Source
In the study of poor communities, fewer than one in 20 parents said that their children’s skills improved during school closures. Preliminary findings from a respected periodical survey of learning in rural schools, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), _______ the decline. Released this month, it found that among 18,000 children in the state of Karnataka, the proportion of third-graders who could read a grade-two-level test had halved, from nearly 20% to just under 10%
corroborate Source
It is clear that people want what the services offer, perhaps more than they want social media. In 2019 Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s boss, noted that “private messaging, _______ stories and small groups are by far the fastest-growing areas of online communication. ” The number of people in Europe who use Facebook every day (305m) has not increased since the end of 2019, according to the company’s quarterly filings, and in the third quarter of 2020, for the first time, the number of daily users in North America fell—a remarkable development in the midst of a pandemic
ephemeral Source
Some compare the NFT craze to the boom in initial coin offerings, a form of crowdfunding in which firms issue digital “coins” in return for a payment, in 2017-18, which turned to bust soon after. The soaring prices of many NFTs, reliant on _______ buzziness in places like Clubhouse, a hot new audio app, could quickly collapse. Celebrities including Lindsay Lohan jumping on a trend that was meant to be about helping penniless artists is, some reckon, another ominous sign
ephemeral Source
THE ABSENCE of vapour trails in a clear sky is an obvious sign that commercial aviation has been hit hard by covid-19. The upshot for the makers of the jet engines that create those _______ streaks—fewer planes sold, fewer flying hours and older aircraft retiring early as fleets are pruned—is a triple blow for an industry that mostly profits by keeping them in the air for years after they are sold. The immediate impact for the business, which is dominated by a handful of manufacturers, was on full display on March 11th
ephemeral Source
Working together, they can also form what is, in effect, a private CCTV network, allowing the firm to offer its customers a “digital neighbourhood-watch” scheme and pass any interesting video along to the police. Businesses will get efficiency, as information about the physical world that used to be _______ and uncertain becomes concrete and analysable. Smart lighting in buildings saves energy
ephemeral Source
Connoisseurs, snobs and old-skool DJs will pay top dollar for vinyl; some photographers still treasure the information density of large-format film, or the chemical idiosyncrasies of the Polaroid. Oldies and goodies Indeed, digital technologies may prove to be more _______ than their predecessors. They are based on the idea that the medium on which a file’s constituent 0s and 1s are stored doesn’t matter, and on Alan Turing’s insight that any computer can mimic any other, given memory enough and time
ephemeral Source
Between 2006 and 2009, Brazil moved up five places on a Gallup ranking of happiness, to 17th among 144 countries. The optimism proved _______ . The PT did not invest enough in areas promising long-term productivity gains, like infrastructure
ephemeral Source
Tony Perkins, a member of the state legislature, is a darling of the Christian right. Louisiana's elections commissioner, Suzanne Haik Terrell, appeals to moderate Republicans who consider Mr Perkins too _______ and Mr Cooksey too tacky. Mr Perkins has dubbed her “Landrieu-lite”, but she is second in the polls
fervid Source
In 2011 the masses will be furious at the mess the world is in, and will blame not only big bankers but the global elite in general. This anger will manifest itself on _______ talk shows, at protest rallies and at the polls. Wherever voters are given a chance, they will apply their boots to incumbent politicians' behinds
fervid Source
Visitors who have long known the city are in two minds. Egyptian expatriates returning home are liable to cringe at the worse-than-ever traffic, the ever-louder noise, the _______ religiosity, and what they often bemoan as a new aggressiveness that spoils their nostalgia for a sweeter, cheerier Egypt. But tourists who came here, say, 20 years ago, tend to delight in the sleeker look of the place, the surprisingly efficient and still friendly service, the far better quality and variety of goods in the markets, and the fact that some taxis now actually have functioning meters
fervid Source
ONE hundred years ago, in March 1911, the American Economic Review (AER) published its first article—on irrigation in the “sun-blistered” deserts of the western United States. The article described how the “ _______ suns of May and June” melted “vast beds of snow and ice”, so that “springs and torrents rush down to the lowlands” and “the rivers overflow their banks”. It is fair to say that the journal's prose style has rushed downhill since those first lyrical pages
fervid Source
Deficit-cutting is a weak issue, less important to voters than employment or personal income, but it used to be the one economic issue where Mr Romney could count on a consistent advantage over Barack Obama; now, even that's no longer the case. And he can't win on immigration reform because he's barely talked about immigration reform, he represents a political party that has largely been co-opted by a _______ anti-amnesty movement, and when he has talked about the issue he's vowed to veto the DREAM Act and used terms like "self-deportation". He trailed Barack Obama among Hispanics by 64% to 27% as of late August
fervid Source
Eli Roth’s remake of “Death Wish”, the film from 1974 in which Charles Bronson played a vigilante, has just opened in Britain, so viewers with the stomach for it can see what goes on in the mind of the most _______ National Rifle Association supporter. A surgeon (Bruce Willis) responds to his wife’s murder by sneaking out at night, blowing bloody holes in carjackers, and then heading home for coffee (he has a semi-automatic stashed in his coffee table)
fervid Source
) Though many expressed horror at being required to disturb a stranger, those who did were happier than the other two groups. Lest you think this applies only to the _______ , the moods of both self-described introverts and extroverts were boosted by a chat. A repeat of the experiment found almost exactly the same effects in England, supposedly an emotionally repressed sort of place
garrulous Source
UNTIL RECENTLY Li Guangman, the retired editor of an obscure state-owned newspaper who writes leftist screeds online for a few fellow travellers, was unknown to the general public. That changed on August 29th, when the country’s biggest state and party media outlets circulated an _______ blog post by Mr Li to their huge audiences, causing many to assume his views had official support. This prompted such a stir that a prominent state-media figure—Hu Xijin, editor of Global Times, a jingoistic party tabloid—felt compelled to post a scathing rebuttal
incendiary Source
But the payment may be some way off. On October 19th the head of the inquiry announced that it would be dropping the most _______ accusations, of homicide and genocide against indigenous groups. The president is likely to escape legal consequences for the other claims, too
incendiary Source
His email was merely carrying out a “thought experiment”, imagining an unhappy scenario in which people had little incentive to cultivate a reputation for personal integrity. PAUL ROMER has stepped down as chief economist of the World Bank, 12 days after an _______ interview with the Wall Street Journal in which he suggested that the political leanings of bank staff may have marred its annual rankings of the ease of doing business around the world. His resignation, and retraction of those remarks, is unlikely to end the controversy
incendiary Source
Dresden’s inhabitants knew only too well the devastation that mass bombing raids had brought to other German cities. In Hamburg, firestorms whipped up by _______ bombs had killed 37,000 civilians. But many were convinced that their city, the “Florence of the Elbe”, would be spared because of its cultural importance
incendiary Source
Pope Francis, an Argentine, is the first pontiff to come from the world’s less-developed south. His language on the economy is often _______ , referring to it as “unjust at its root”. He blames big business, more than governments, for crony capitalism, while ignoring the role firms have played in helping lift many out of poverty through globalisation
incendiary Source
This implies that Google’s main form of favouritism is to boost viral articles. The most _______ stories about Mr Trump come from leftist sources. Gory crime coverage is more prevalent on right-leaning sites
incendiary Source
Ada suspects that Defne’s decision to emigrate and to marry her father, Kostas—a Christian Greek-Cypriot—was a difficult one. She learns just how _______ it was only after talking to Defne’s sister Meryem, who vowed never again to speak to Defne as long as their own parents were alive. Cutting between past and present, the novel tells the story of Defne’s and Kostas’s romance
incendiary Source
I have comforted myself with the idea that anxiety in the face of the real is an American cynosure—a point of pride, even—essentialized by Edward Hopper in painting and by the likes of Robert Frank and Diane Arbus in photography. But Shore invokes another tradition: that of Walt Whitman, who recommended “a perfectly transparent, plate-glassy style, _______” (quoted in the catalogue by the show’s fine curator, Quentin Bajac). That’s Shore precisely, with artfulness aplenty but so understated—somewhat akin to the shrewdness of Whitman’s free-verse cadences—as to be practically subliminal
artless Source
Frequently she asks the reader how to play wife, mother, or sister—while asking how those roles came to exist, according to whose specifications. Would Shaughnessy be left alone—and _______—if she didn’t adhere to some of society’s conventions? But what about her heart? Is there a tradeoff between the presumed security of family life and one’s untamed id stomping through order, making poems and threatening to wreck the discipline necessary to care for a husband and protect one’s children?..In “All Possible Pain,” Shaughnessy writes: “Feelings feel like made-up things / Though I know they’re not. / I don’t understand why they lead me around
artless Source
Just as buildings shouldn’t leak or fall down, nonfiction ought to work within the limits of its claim to be about the world as it really is. But narrative journalism is far from _______. In crafting “Hiroshima,” Hersey left out most of his interview material so that he could focus on a limited number of characters whom his readers would remember; he built suspense by cutting away from each character, as he notes in the *Paris Review* interview, at “the verge of some kind of crisis”; and he carefully calibrated the pace at which the events he was describing unfolded
artless Source
Everest, where climbers have taken to shoving one another out of the way in order to take selfies at the peak, creating a disastrous human pileup. It struck me as a _______ metaphor for how we live today: constantly teetering on the precipice to grasp at the latest popular thing. The story, like many stories these days, provoked anxiety, dread, and a kind of awe at the foolishness of fellow human beings
cogent Source
. and I learned how to _______. ”..Although Atwater’s adult professional rise was meteoric, toward the end of his life his double game of paying homage to Black cultural leaders while milking racism for political gain caught up with him
polarize Source
After doing extensive research on the subject, I was shocked to find out how horrible it was for our land, water and air. I was saddened by how the gas companies try to hide the damage they are doing not only to the environment but also to the communities they _______… As fracking increases around the world, an increase in truck driving is one of many ways the extraction of natural gas from shale leads to extensive and growing climate change problem. ”More:Climate ChangeThe New Yorker RecommendsWhat our staff is reading, watching, and listening to each week
polarize Source
To their credit, the writers of the New Knowledge report understand this. The Internet Research Agency’s effort, they state,..> was absolutely intended to reinforce tribalism, to _______ and.> divide, and to normalize points of view strategically advantageous to.> the Russian government on everything from social issues to political.> candidates. It was designed to exploit societal fractures, blur the.> lines between reality and fiction, erode our trust in media entities.> and the information environment, in government, in each other, and in.> democracy itself
polarize Source
to have been run by a Bay Area teacher named Talia, who used a photograph of a Brazilian model as her avatar and tweeted, on average, a hundred and thirty times a day. Is Talia a real person, or was the account a form of social-media marketing? Does it matter? Regardless of who tweeted it, the video was boosted by Twitter’s algorithms and interaction model, which gamify opinion by rewarding users for sharing content quickly, in an emotionally charged way; in the end, it had an “agenda-setting effect” on journalists, who quickly commenced the work of emphasizing the divisions that _______ Americans instead of writing about other, more substantive subjects. The processes on which cyberwar depends unfold automatically, because they are built into the way our media platforms work
polarize Source
These characters are, necessarily, held together not only by “Cloud Cuckoo Land” the fable but by “Cloud Cuckoo Land” the novel. Having laid out his flagrantly _______ cast, Doerr must insist on that cast’s almost freakish genealogical coherence. This formal insistence becomes the novel’s raison d’être
disparate Source
Rooney also shows us that there is plenty to glean about how people get on with one another without taking up residence inside their heads. ..In the best moments of “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” Rooney does what I think of as “meanwhiling,” letting the routine of one character sidle up next to that of another, placing simultaneous, _______ doings in a kind of ambivalent solidarity: “That morning, while Felix was at work, Alice had a phone call with her agent, discussing invitations she had received to literary festivals and universities. While this phone call took place, Felix was using a handheld scanner to identify and sort various packages into labelled stillage carts, which were then collected and wheeled away by other workers
disparate Source
It’s an appropriately evangelic interpretation of Parton’s seemingly apolitical poise. In lieu of taking a stand, Parton walks the walk, binding the country’s _______ passions with a better politics—good works and the call of homecoming. ..+++dropcap..Parton was born in 1946, the fourth child of twelve, on her family’s small farm in a “holler” (country for “hollow”), in Sevier County, Tennessee
disparate Source
From the stage, Zumthor suggested that encyclopedic museums fail by definition. No museum can be a complete catalogue of all art, and no master narrative explains how _______ objects relate. A new encyclopedic museum, therefore, must not strain for logic but appeal to the visitor’s emotions
disparate Source
Do you feel lucky, punk? For already existing technologically mediated risks, such as those of nuclear war and climate collapse, there is no such reassuring record to point to, and Mr Ord duly rates them as having a higher chance of rising to the existential threat level. Higher still, he thinks, is the risk from technologies yet to come: advanced bioweapons which, unlike the opportunistic products of natural selection, are designed to be as devastating as possible; or artificial intelligences which, intentionally or incidentally, change the world in ways fundamentally _______ to their creators’ interests. No one can calculate such risks, but it would be foolish to set them at exactly zero
inimical Source
Mr Xi has embarked on a no-holds-barred effort to cut China’s capitalist titans down to size, erasing as much as $1. 5trn in shareholder value with his clampdown on technology companies and imposing tough restrictions on industries, from video-gaming to private tutoring, that are deemed _______ to “common prosperity”. In America, bipartisan fulminations about the corrosive impact of Facebook and other tech giants will lead to little more than Congressional hearings
inimical Source
Rather, there is evidence from polling data that in this crisis Spaniards want the centre to take charge as Mr Sánchez has done, argues Ms León. But that is _______ to the moderate and influential Basque nationalists, as well as to their Catalan counterparts. Some in the PP say that one condition for a national agreement should be the departure of Podemos from the government
inimical Source
(Full disclosure: I used to write for them. ) Though the editorial makes clear—in great detail—that they think there are many reasons to prefer Mr Obama, the board nevertheless has a lot of nice thing to say about John McCain—his history of principled stands _______ to his electoral prospects and to his standing in his own party, for one. But the Post zeroes in on one thing Mr McCain has done that they cannot easily forgive: elevating Sarah Palin
inimical Source
4%. These findings would not have surprised Montesquieu, who in 1748 argued that hot climates were _______ to the material conditions of the good life. But it does not follow that if global temperatures were to rise by 1°C because of climate change, then world output would be 8
inimical Source
This is all the more surprising because 2012 has in other ways been a pretty ordinary year in the Arctic. In 2007 the summer weather was particularly _______ to the persistence of ice, with lots of warm southerly winds and clear skies that allowed the sunshine to do its worst. This year has seen far less in the way of special circumstances
inimical Source
That we currently screen for Down’s syndrome should not be taken as an axiomatic and unproblematic starting point. Many disability-rights organisations oppose screening, as they believe it is _______ to adequately valuing the lives of the disabled. It is understandable that today, parents might choose to select against Down’s syndrome
inimical Source
Every year China continues to grow, the case that countries need to be democracies in order to become wealthy and developed becomes more tenuous. In fact, what's happening both in America and in the EU at this point is raising the possibility that democratic governance may in some modern situations be _______ to competent economic stewardship. The incentive structure created by democratic political competition in an internet-era media society may actually be driving countries towards fiscal self-destruction
inimical Source
window. env = {"ENV":"production"}; A war correspondent’s _______portrait of an embattled minority | The Economist {"@context":"http://schema. org","@type":"NewsArticle","url":"https://www
intimate Source
The internet is the second-most-popular way for Americans to meet people of the opposite sex, and is fast catching up with real-world “friend of a friend” introductions. Digital dating is a massive social experiment, conducted on one of humanity’s most _______ and vital processes. Its effects are only just starting to become visible (see Briefing)
intimate Source
In 2015, an Indian security guard living in Australia escaped a jail term after his lawyer successfully argued that his harassment of women was influenced by Bollywood. Love Matters, a website providing factual, non-judgmental information on sex and relationships, began to address the issue of _______ partner violence in 2015 with a campaign called #BearNoMore. Focusing on young unmarried couples, it identified the various forms of abuse and how a victim may be feeling
intimate Source
window. env = {"ENV":"production"}; An _______portrait | The Economist {"@context":"http://schema. org","@type":"NewsArticle","url":"https://www
intimate Source
The film begins on the eve of his wedding to his Danish partner, Kasper. Mr Rasmussen and Amin have been friends for 25 years after meeting on a bus in Denmark as teenagers, which gives the film a candid and _______ quality. The Danish film-maker has a background in radio documentaries and used an interview technique whereby subjects lie down and, with their eyes closed, describe their memories in the present tense, paying attention to the details of how things looked, smelled and felt
intimate Source
window. env = {"ENV":"production"}; _______details | The Economist {"@context":"http://schema. org","@type":"NewsArticle","url":"https://www
intimate Source
window. env = {"ENV":"production"}; _______portraits of Africans in India | The Economist {"@context":"http://schema. org","@type":"NewsArticle","url":"https://www
intimate Source
More immediate because instead of being used to plan future encounters, or to chat at a distance, they can be used on the fly to find someone right here, right now. More personal because the phone is _______ in a way the keyboard is not, camera-ready and always with you. More public for the same reason
intimate Source
They may wonder if there is room for their ideas in a discipline that can seem hidebound, hierarchical and homogenous. Will they _______ economics or will it indoctrinate them? Budding economists can draw comfort from our series of six economics briefs that begins this week. Each looks at an issue (competition policy, minimum wages, inflation, the dollar, culture and public debt) that has prompted economists to revisit their field’s presumptions
invigorate Source
A property tax would make it more costly to buy second or third homes and keep them empty, in the hope of selling them on for a higher price. It could therefore discourage speculation and _______ China’s underdeveloped rental market. But a property tax will also be unpopular
invigorate Source
Little of what was feared about Mr Trump’s economic policy has come to pass. To some, rising economic growth, which exceeded 3% in the second and third quarters of 2017, combined with accelerating blue-collar wages, suggest that Mr Trump has delivered on his promise to _______ the economy. In truth, Mr Trump has benefited from a global economic surge that has lifted confidence—and stockmarkets—across the rich world
invigorate Source
They could spin turbines to light up swathes of energy-starved South Asia. Exports of electricity and power for Nepal’s own homes and factories could _______ the dirt-poor economy. National income per person in Nepal was just $692 last year, below half the level for South Asia as a whole
invigorate Source
More than 50 countries have given more than 68m jabs. That is not much of a dent in the global population of more than 7bn, but it is enough to _______ a debate about whether people who have been vaccinated should be permitted to move around more freely. To allow this, those who have been vaccinated need to be able to prove it
invigorate Source
Significantly lower taxes on households would encourage a rebalancing away from exports and towards consumption. A dose of competition could _______ coddled service industries. The German economy has had an impressive run, but cracks are appearing
invigorate Source
But greenhouse warming is making the tropics larger. Models suggest this will mean that more tropical storms reach high latitudes, where they can _______ the meanders of the jet stream in rather the same way that a child sends a wave down a skipping rope with a flick of the wrist. Some scientists are concerned that, as climate change worsens, the ability of Rossby waves to drive sudden changes in the weather will increase
invigorate Source
Women should decide whether the law should be changed, he said. But Argentina’s decision will also _______ abortion’s foes, many of whom are women. “It sets up a battlefield,” says José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch (HRW), a pressure group
invigorate Source
Still, Mr Rajan offers reasonable recommendations. Devolution of policymaking authority might _______ community spirit. Governments should also practise “responsible sovereignty”, he reckons, and limit unnecessarily disruptive forms of economic integration, like reckless financial globalisation
invigorate Source
For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub MOST PEOPLE associate the office with routine and conformity, but it is fast becoming a source of economic uncertainty and heated dispute. Around the world workers, bosses, landlords and governments are trying to work out if the office is _______ —and are coming to radically different conclusions (see article). Some 84% of French office workers are back at their desks, but less than 40% of British ones are
obsolete Source
Planned obsolescence is a business strategy in which the obsolescence (the process of becoming _______ —that is, unfashionable or no longer usable) of a product is planned and built into it from its conception. This is done so that in future the consumer feels a need to purchase new products and services that the manufacturer brings out as replacements for the old ones
obsolete Source
IN 1993 THE management guru Peter Drucker argued that “commuting to office work is _______ . ” As of last year, his vision hadn’t quite come true: nearly half of global companies in one survey still prohibited remote working
obsolete Source
Over the past year Economist journalists have been analysing and reporting on the disruptive forces influencing the world of work. We have questioned long-held assumptions about the purpose of the office—and whether it is now _______ —examined the benefits of more part-time work and explored the science behind zoom fatigue. Visit this page to view the schedule for our upcoming events
obsolete Source
America will be the first country to roll out a mass-vaccination programme, and will have to grapple with the daunting logistics of inoculating 300m people. In Britain, too, the search is on for suitable venues for an operation that promises to render covid-19 social- distancing restrictions _______ . In the meantime, many are finding it a struggle to stay cheerful though a bleak, socially distanced winter
obsolete Source
All those problems are compounded by software engineering’s breathless rate of change. Even when a system works, it rapidly becomes _______ . The woes of British banks are largely the result of trying to maintain such “legacy” systems, written by long-departed programmers (often outsourced) in half-forgotten computer languages to satisfy criteria no one can quite remember
obsolete Source
The EU’s attempt to create a barter mechanism to help its firms get around American sanctions has failed to take off. China’s financial system is _______ and largely closed. The yuan accounts for just 2
opaque Source
A subsequent effort to value them used software to read and evaluate the documents. So far, however, not even machine-learning techniques have allowed code to penetrate the _______ legal language in which patents are couched. Now a startup called PatentVector, founded by a law professor, an information science professor and a software engineer, is trying something new
opaque Source
) Yet there are also differences between stablecoins and the private money of antebellum America. Back then, anyone who needed banking services or currency had to place their financial fate in the hands of _______ and risky institutions. By contrast, no one in the rich world is obliged to hold stablecoins; safer alternatives, such as insured bank deposits and cash, are readily available
opaque Source
CHINA’S VAST and _______ financial system has long posed a threat to its economy and the world. The agonies of Evergrande, a property firm with towering debts, are a reminder of how hard it is to manage the risks
opaque Source
In crude terms, the health-care labyrinth comprises six layers, each involving the state, mutual organisations and private firms. People and employers pay insurance companies, which pay _______ aggregators known as pharmacy-benefit managers and preferred provider organisers. They in turn pay doctors, hospitals and pharmacies, which in turn pay wholesalers, who pay the manufacturers of equipment and drugs
opaque Source
Rivals accused of plotting to seize power have been jailed. Chinese politics is more _______ than it has been for decades, but Mr Xi’s endless purges suggest that he sees yet more hidden enemies. In the past when commodity prices were surging, as they have been of late, the world’s miners piled into mega projects
opaque Source
Instead, if everything goes right, there will be some more ambitious and detailed plans for how countries will move towards limiting global warming to less than 2°C above pre- industrial levels, as set out in the Paris agreement. \nMore from The Economist explains:\nWhat to look out for at COP26\nWhat would different levels of global warming look like?\nWhat are “nationally determined contributions” to curb climate change?","description":"The process is _______ to outsiders and often infuriating to insiders","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
opaque Source
A takedown of the bendy-banana myth focused on the fact that it was not “Brussels bureaucrats” who decided to regulate them, but national governments which pushed for changes to existing EU regulations. A _______ clarification missed the wider truth: the curvature of bananas in Europe is a supranational matter. A bullshit attack was countered with a defence that was also bullshit
pedantic Source
He had a gift for friendship, enjoying an intellectual romance with the English humanist Thomas More. But he also had a talent for mockery, which he wielded against the pompous, _______ and closed-minded. “In Praise of Folly” attacked everyone from doctors (quacks and flatterers, in his eyes) to monks (donkeys braying out psalms that they had memorised because they could not read)
pedantic Source
Travis is no mere character, subject to the plot of “Taxi Driver”: he is the plot. “Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets,” he says in voiceover, in the flat, _______ tone of someone reading aloud a letter of complaint about drainage to their local council. It is the tone of autodidacts, sociopaths and bores, and Travis is all three
pedantic Source
Inflation is remarkably subdued. These forces mean that a _______ expansion can continue well beyond historical norms, but also suggest that the way it will eventually end will be different. Recessions used to be triggered by housing bubbles, price surges or industrial busts
placid Source
Its output per person, in real terms, is unexceptional by the standards of the rich world. In fact, Japan has been able to borrow so much, now and in more _______ times, because the rest of its economy spends so little. High levels of net saving by households and firms—that is, savings less investment—are a persistent problem, and represent forgone consumption and unused economic capacity
placid Source
That fluidity, combined with the fact that CRT is not a movement with a specific platform but an approach to examining society, makes misrepresentation and caricature easy. The popularity of _______ bestsellers influenced by CRT, such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”, and the debates on social media that they have spawned, raised CRT’s profile and made it a target. Some politicians and activists mistake CRT’s claim that American institutions benefit white people at the expense of others as meaning that white people are intrinsically racist
polemical Source
Though food refrigeration is an unquestioned part of modern civilisation, chilling a room causes sniffiness. In his book “Losing our Cool” Stan Cox, a _______ plant scientist, blamed it for “resource waste, climate change, ozone depletion and disorientation of the human mind and body”. In 1992 Gwyn Prins, a Cambridge University professor, called “physical addiction” to cooled air America’s “most pervasive and least noticed epidemic”
polemical Source
Whose fault is this? Some, including Albert Edwards of SocGen blame the government for its "help to buy" scheme. In a _______ piece, Mr Edwards issues a word of warning to George Osborne. If he presses on with phase II of "help to buy" and the UK does suffer its inevitable bust, history may judge him even more harshly than Alan Greenspan The outright pace of house price rises is not that rapid
polemical Source
But if history is a guide, those at the top of the income distribution could yet face a reckoning. Disruptive global events have often _______ d shifts towards a more equal distribution of income and wealth. In his influential book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, Thomas Piketty points out that high levels of inequality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were reduced by the calamitous events of the period from 1914 to 1945
precipitate Source
Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, is hastening the process—in the name, he claims, of development. The ecological collapse his policies may _______ would be felt most acutely within his country’s borders, which encircle 80% of the basin—but would go far beyond them, too. It must be averted
precipitate Source
If this water is of the right temperature and passes through layers of rock that contain plenty of oxygen, metals will dissolve easily in it. Then, when the metal-laden water reaches strata where oxygen is scarce, its dissolved contents will _______ and accumulate. But the temperature range required for this to work is narrow: between 50°C and 200°C
precipitate Source
Another process that could be co-opted is mineral weathering—reactions with rocks that use up CO2 dissolved in water. What is going on in the basalt under Hellisheiði is a form of weathering which produces calcium and carbonate ions that go on to _______ out as calcite. Rock weathering already soaks up a billion tonnes of CO2 a year
precipitate Source
It floats gently through forests as mist. “For rest,” writes Park Ji-min, one of BTS’s members, in a misguided quest for _______ , “our rest comes from for-rests”. The marketing may be silly, but Hyundai is serious
profundity Source
Many come and go; no one really notices. In consequence, too many summits and conferences held between states are tortured affairs that lack _______ but are full of jargon and tiresome clichés that are, in a word, meaningless. What is absent is a sincere will to work together, though all will claim—again, under the lights and on camera—that they are wholly committed to doing so
profundity Source
Artists have been trying to pass this message on for centuries, for better or worse. The _______ of death can yield some pretty banal work. Perhaps the message is most profound when it is expressed obliquely, as with the art in "Still Life", a new exhibition of work by six contemporary British and American artists at the Lismore Castle
profundity Source
This droll application of the quotidian to the wonders of the universe is at the heart of Adams’s appeal. He strips away sci-fi’s more portentous attributes without depriving it of either its sweep or its potential _______ . He is often so deliciously funny that readers may find themselves dwelling on the insights he has offered only when they close the books
profundity Source
“Mine was a glamorous life but completely unfulfilling. ” The tapes are a performance, too, of course, maybe one of Brando’s best—by turns bawdy, wounded, sentimental, self- pitying, bewildered—much of it teetering on the edge of pseudo-philosophical _______ , like Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now”. “All of you are actors, and good actors, because you’re all liars,” he says at one point
profundity Source
I think both are perfectly good pieces but the column has left me with a bad conscience. There is a trick in journalism that entails ending an article with an arresting question (which implies _______ ) but failing to answer it (which is evasive). And this is precisely what I did: So the court is not only divided within itself but also sailing towards a new collision with the executive branch
profundity Source
The Azores were the setting for the mystery of the Mary Celeste. To anyone with a romantic imagination, they are fearful places, imbued with the _______ of the sea that surrounds them. A hundred yards from the shore of Pico, one of the central islands, the depth falls to half a mile
profundity Source
The similarities between O’Higgins’ and Helen’s journeys (both passed through Cobh harbour leaving and arriving in Ireland, for example) propel a meditation on migration, place, experience and identity. Such a project runs the risk of ending up mired in pseudo- _______ . Yet the film is saved from such a fate by two things; one is the beguiling cinematography
profundity Source
The faithful had to be kept alert to the dark deviousness around them. Does the idea have any relevance now, when the word seems merely quaint to anyone outside the tradition of _______ Christianity? Mr Almond likes to think it does. If the great eschatological conflict and the triumph of good are dispensed with, history and human existence may seem to have no purpose
prophetic Source
As the crow flies that is 2,433 miles from Bethlehem. It's unlikely that even someone of Jesus’s _______ powers could have foreseen that 2,000 years ago.
prophetic Source
But “We”—recently republished with an introduction by Ursula Le Guin—is more than an academic curiosity. Zamyatin’s bleak vision was forged in the ferment after the Russian revolution; but, with its _______ reflections on climate change and surveillance culture, it is as relevant today as it was a century ago. A hair’s breadth of time “We” was written between the fall of the Russian empire and the rise of the Soviet Union
prophetic Source
Still, international institutions are hardly advocating stopping inflows altogether. In a report earlier this year the Bank for International Settlements, a club of central bankers, argued that deep and liquid financial markets, _______ monetary and fiscal policy and strong company balance-sheets could act as buffers against the sometimes volatile ebb and flow of capital. If India is to realise the full benefits of inclusion, it will have to heed that counsel
prudent Source
A widely watched measure of economic uncertainty, based on analysis of newspaper articles, last year hit an all-time high—and it may rise further if the covid-19 outbreak worsens. All this encourages _______ behaviour. According to the Fed, the share of people saying that “liquidity” (in plain English, having rainy-day money) is the most important reason for saving has been rising since the mid-2000s
prudent Source
Some analysts had thought the central bank might announce “tapering”—a reduction in its monthly purchases of bonds—in September. A delay may now seem more _______ . The unemployment rate continued to edge down, but there are still nearly 6m more Americans out of work than before the pandemic
prudent Source
. _______ management requires that the government prepare for a lapse in funding. ” Notwithstanding the rosiness of his expectations, he’s not wrong about the prudence
prudent Source
KAL animates our _______ in-house style guide. Featuring wracked sheep, a bloodied, blooded fop, Dr Frankenstein and his monster
punctilious Source
What can be done so that projects like the imaginary Wilson line do not go off the rails? State and federal agencies can ensure that teams have enough capacity to review multiple projects and to manage contractors. Being too _______ can backfire, though: New York’s exacting requirements are partly responsible for the astronomical costs of subway construction there. More advanced construction practices can also help
punctilious Source
Cassandra's own modest, perhaps banal, view is that much of the problem stems from inflexible labour markets, especially in France, Spain and Italy, where the difficulty of firing employees discourages employers from hiring in the first place. Add to that the global financial crisis stemming from all those ludicrously risky subprime mortgages in America, and add, too, the present crisis over the euro—a currency ill-designed to suit both _______ Germans and relaxed Greeks. One statistical result is that euro-zone unemployment is at a record 11
punctilious Source
“Sometimes we are criticised for being an overly homogeneous society, but I think it played a positive role this time,” Mr Nishimura says. And already spick-and-span Japan became even more _______ about hygiene. While Americans argued over whether face coverings were an assault on personal freedom, Japanese lined up outside Uniqlo for the release of its new line of masks
punctilious Source
IT PUZZLES many in Germany that the country's _______ parsimony and restrained housing market have not saved it from a banking crisis that seems every bit as bad as those suffered by spendthrifts abroad. Having refused for months to consider a “bad bank” to buy troubled assets, Germany is belatedly wrestling with a plan to do just that
punctilious Source
IT WAS, he said, like falling in love. When Geoffrey Hill was ten years old he was given a Victorian anthology of English poetry, an award to mark his _______ attendance at the Sunday school of his local church. It was filled with the kind of high-flown, sentimental stuff he would later scorn
punctilious Source
Soon, they decide to recreate all the various sieges of the 18th-century War of Spanish Succession, awaiting reports in the government’s Gazette so they can fish out the relevant map and set to work drawing up their battle lines. Uncle Toby is close to the ideal stereotype of a board-gaming hobbyist: harmless, _______ , eccentric. But that stereotype might need revisiting
punctilious Source
So sacred are old trees that concessions are made for them even when tarmac is laid. Officials charged with monitoring the trees’ welfare have long toured courtyards and alleyways with tape-measures and callipers, making _______ handwritten additions to previous years’ notes in bulky registry books. Haidian district in north-western Beijing is now trying to make this easier
punctilious Source
The language of wine is easy to mock. It can be _______ , even downright obscure. Oenophiles make a convenient subject for ridicule: if their cellars require such a wide- ranging lexicon, they are probably rich enough to cope with it
recondite Source
And that's why America's intellectual-property system is a travesty which threatens the wealth and welfare of the whole world. It may seem a _______ subject, but the stakes couldn't be higher. This recent episode of Planet Money, "When Patents Attack", is an informative and entertaining primer on the way America's patent system squelches competition, slows innovation, and enables egregious predation through the legal system
recondite Source
Yet for a surprisingly large number of Europeans, a different emotion came before pride: paranoia. Despite _______ tests showing that the vaccine is safe, many people doubt it. One in three French people thinks vaccines in general are unsafe—the highest figure for any country, according to the Wellcome Trust, a British charity
scrupulous Source
” Mr Chiesa says that giants were a standard embellishment of faraway places in Norse folklore and, indeed, Galvano cautioned that “no sailor was ever able to know anything for sure about this land or about its features. ” The Dominican was _______ in citing his sources. Most were literary
scrupulous Source
Newspapers plastered in press kiosks grant equal space to all contenders. Uzbekistan is engaged in a _______ attempt to show one-person, one-vote democracy at work in a competitive election. But in truth there is only one man, and that is the president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who is guaranteed to win with a thumping landslide
scrupulous Source
To support that analysis, a mass of survey data and statistics is mapped onto what Mr Putnam calls “I-we-I” curves, which show a rise and fall in economic equality, political co-operation, social solidarity and a sense of shared American culture. “The Upswing” ranges widely, yet its _______ survey-mining and curve-fitting is not wholly persuasive, or indeed necessary. Up on the latest research and impeccably open to counterargument, Mr Putnam tends to take away with one study what he has just offered with another
scrupulous Source
Here’s how to make them workThe world this weekBusiness this weekKAL's cartoonPolitics this weekLeadersThe marine worldDeep troubleHumans are wrecking the ocean. Technology shows the scale of the problem—and offers some solutionsThe Manchester bombingAlmost is never enoughThe best answer to a suicide-bomber is the _______, iron-willed application of the lawBrazilThe Temer tapeWho is president matters less than the continuation of economic and political reformsTech unicornsNot the enemyStartups can stay private for longer. That doesn’t mean they shouldReforming prisonsJail breakAmerica’s approach to incarceration is an expensive failure
scrupulous Source
Government agencies in America and western Europe, in particular, are eager customers. Others are less _______ . For example, e-mails posted to WikiLeaks in 2015 show that Hacking Team, a Milanese broker, sold exploits to Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, none of which has a sparkling record of democracy and freedom
scrupulous Source
In the 1990s many conservatives became alarmed by the likely economic cost of a serious effort to reduce carbon emissions. Some of the less _______ decided to cast doubt on the need for a climate policy by stressing to the point of distortion uncertainties in the underlying science. In a memo Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, argued: “Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly
scrupulous Source
(The African average masks a wide range, from under 25% of GDP in Mauritius and South Africa to about 65% in Nigeria. ) Some policymakers see informal enterprises as parasitical, profiting at the expense of more _______ rivals who heed regulations and pay taxes. Others see them as aspirational, embodying the poor’s entrepreneurial spirit and ambitions for the future
scrupulous Source
If you make it too obvious, like John "I'll make every school an outstanding school" Edwards, you will stumble. But the system rewards those who can peddle plausible snake oil, and excludes anyone who is _______ about telling the truth. The book includes countless vignettes illustrating the oddness of those who are prepared to do what it takes to become president
scrupulous Source
Perhaps most important, ahead of any French presidential election the stirring of indignation and the promise of salvation is a practised political art. François Mitterrand campaigned as “the _______ force” in his successful bid for the presidency in 1981, hinting at the chaos he would calm. Jacques Chirac promised in 1995 to mend the “social fracture” that he claimed threatened French unity
tranquil Source
BEYOND the _______ Lincolnshire village of Gedney Dyke, along a winding lane lined with willow trees, some of the 96 farm workers due in for the growing season are busy at work at the Norfolk House Farm, picking, cutting, washing and packing spring onions for a British supermarket chain. But these are not local labourers, hired from the surrounding villages and towns
tranquil Source
ON THE AFTERNOON of August 17th, as scenes of horror unfolded around Kabul, China’s envoy to Afghanistan recorded the _______ mood at his own embassy. The ambassador’s smartphone images, proudly shared on social media by Hu Xijin, the editor of a Communist Party tabloid, show the Chinese flag snapping crisply against a summer sky, and front doors guarded by nothing more menacing than a tall porcelain vase
tranquil Source
Locals and tourists from elsewhere pass the tree without a second glance. But for educated Chinese, who learned Xu's poem in school, this _______ spot, watched over by handsome white cows and an arched stone bridge, is a shrine to lost youth. Many are visibly moved, even as the cameras click and flash
tranquil Source
Yet the record he describes in his dispassionate yet fluid style suggests how untrue that was. Though he had shortcomings—a tendency to _______ , a distaste for political cut- and-thrust that bordered on aloofness—Mr Obama was a relatively unassuming chief executive. He rehired his Republican predecessor’s defence secretary, awarded a plum cabinet job to his resentful Democratic rival and considered his celebrity status absurd
vacillate Source
But it is hard to believe that yields of 4% or so will look good value in five years' time. ","description":"The markets have become incredibly volatile as investors _______ between these outcomes","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
vacillate Source
So they look leaderless as well as disunited. Perhaps worst of all, the Americans, without whom no durable deal can be done, have seemed to _______ , with neither a vision nor a plan. Suddenly, after the brightest of starts, Barack Obama appears to be making a hash of it
vacillate Source
Alas, youthful impatience appears to have got the better of him. His tendency to micromanage the IPO and _______ over where Aramco should be listed has caused delay and confusion. Matters came to a head this week when advisers, speaking anonymously, and company executives doing the same, gave conflicting reports, suggesting a mutinous atmosphere
vacillate Source
Against a candidate as unpopular as Mr Trump, Mr Sanders might still achieve victory—only to find that there are insufficient Democrats left on Capitol Hill to carry out his revolutionary marching orders. Sandernistas often _______ between the idea that their agenda is the one, true route to restoring the American dream and the idea that it is merely a maximalist opening bid in the bruising negotiations with Congress. Rather than Medicare for All, for example, they might end up with a government agency that could provide public health insurance, if they wanted it, to middle-class people who did not qualify for Medicare
vacillate Source
Germany will find it hard to sustain its chummy economic relationship with China, which the rest of the West has come to see as a strategic competitor. Relations with Russia _______ between the firmness Mrs Merkel displayed after the invasion of Crimea and the conciliatory Ostpolitik she has pursued on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Germany’s assent to the European Union’s covid-19 recovery plan masks deep divisions over collective European spending and debt
vacillate Source
S. THE joy of a Scarlett Johansson performance lies in watching her _______ evasively in the face of grave alternatives, sensing all the while, with delicious dread, that she will ultimately make the wrong choice. In "Match Point" we see her alternately provoke and resist Jonathan Rhys Meyers' adulterous craving for her, then helplessly give in
vacillate Source
Now, says Mr Rigby, they see a limit to that process and are seeking other ways to deliver the value investors have built into their share prices. Despite the impression that managers _______ wildly from one trendy technique to another—mission statements one year, Six Sigma the next—most of the top slots are filled by hardy perennials. Strategic planning has been top since 1996
vacillate Source
There is plenty to fear. Mr Trump has been known to _______ over great swathes of policy, but on trade he has been consistent in his belief that America gets a bad deal. In the first days of his presidency, he pulled America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement designed to knit together economies in Asia and the Americas; threatened a big border tax on American firms that moved jobs abroad; and affirmed his intention to renegotiate NAFTA, a North American free-trade deal
vacillate Source
With a dyed-black pompadour, white half-sleeved shirts and traditional veshtis, he started to cultivate an image of his own, albeit piously subordinate to his father’s. Now 68, Mr Stalin remains _______ . Until recently he kept undistinguished company: party hacks rather than the Tamil intelligentsia whose conversation Karunanidhi sought out
aloof Source
The candidates to become leader of the Labour Party in Britain in 2015 lost to Jeremy Corbyn not because he is a dazzling political talent so much as because they were indistinguishably bland. Liberal technocrats contrive endless clever policy fixes, but they remain conspicuously _______ from the people they are supposed to be helping. This creates two classes: the doers and the done-to, the thinkers and the thought-for, the policymakers and the policytakers
aloof Source
FOR most of human history rich people had the most leisure. In “Downton Abbey”, a drama about the British upper classes of the early 20th century, one _______ aristocrat has never heard of the term “weekend”: for her, every day is filled with leisure. On the flip side, the poor have typically slogged
aloof Source
Ms White reckons a conversational manner that might be called “assertive” by, say, polite Britons, is, for New Yorkers, not rude but the opposite: a sign of engagement, and therefore of warmth. Patient, slow-paced styles can, to the New Yorker, seem _______ . In New York, as in Britain, accent signals class
aloof Source
Over the past decade, albeit to a lesser degree, the same story has unfolded elsewhere. The financial crisis persuaded voters that they were governed by _______ , incompetent, self-serving elites. Wall Street and the City of London were bailed out while ordinary people lost their jobs, their houses and their sons and daughters on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan
aloof Source
Some in Delhi even counsel shunning the West and seeking a similar alliance with neighbours to the north. Why is India so _______ ? To countries worried by the rise of China, the construction of a containing ring of military allies looks sensible. Individually, small Asian countries are no match for the Chinese dragon; allied with bigger powers, they might be
aloof Source
ONCE UPON a time, a slight, upstanding, mild-mannered person came to inhabit the presidential palace in Jakarta, carried there on the shoulders of millions of Indonesians who recognised in the former furniture-maker a man of the people. Today’s incumbent, by contrast, remains remote and _______ , surrounded by courtiers from the capital’s intertwined business and political elites. The previous president used to talk of using political capital to help ordinary folk
aloof Source
But this is less likely in stable, developed countries. Second, DeFi may begin to merge with _______ finance. Assets typically handled by the financial system—houses, shares and bonds—might find their way onto a blockchain system
conventional Source
Cryptocurrencies are no different from the dollar, in that they rely on people having a shared expectation of their utility. However, _______ money is also backed by states with a monopoly on force and central banks that are lenders of last resort. Without these, DeFi will be vulnerable to panics
conventional Source
6m were granted. Most are the property of companies, but balance-sheets and _______ accounting are ill-suited to capturing their worth. Using acquisition cost, then depreciating it, does not work
conventional Source
Some firms will cash in on the digital rush, while others will be left behind. Capital markets think a new era is dawning: _______ banks now account for only 72% of the total market value of the global banking and payments industry, down from 81% at the start of the year and 96% a decade ago (see chart 1). Fintech firms such as Ant Group and PayPal make up 11%: their market value has almost doubled this year to nearly $900bn
conventional Source
It has, indeed, spread beyond medicine to embrace another sort of plague—disinformation. Demaskuok, which means “ _______ ” in Lithuanian, is a piece of software that searches for the patient zeros of fake news. It was developed by Delfi, a media group headquartered in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, in conjunction with Google, a large American information- technology company
debunk Source
BEFORE I came to Brazil I was baffled by the suffix “inho” (feminine form: “inha”). It is used a lot in Brazilian Portuguese, my textbook explained: as a _______ ; as an endearment; for emphasis; to indicate displeasure—and my favourite, “in a manner that is characteristic of the language, without defined meaning”. I guess you have to be Brazilian to get all the nuances, but now that I've lived here for all of eight months I'm starting to get a handle on some of them
diminutive Source
Her first volume was published in 2018 and the second is ready for the press. The rhythm of Latvian is hard to translate, but more difficult is conveying the affection of the language’s _______ suffixes. The English
diminutive Source
Even so, at a packed rally in Brooklyn this week, the gracious way he referred to his recent rise in the Democratic primary pack was refreshing. The _______ mayor, appearing before a crowd of bearded hipsters in his regulation shirtsleeves and tie, celebrated the fact that his campaign was being taken seriously. He did not spell out that, almost unknown three months ago, he is now polling in third place in Iowa and pulling in as much cash as any rival except Bernie Sanders
diminutive Source
” Mr Trump was, of course, referring to Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, who is vying with several other Democratic Party hopefuls to run for president in November. The billionaire businessman (who is in fact five-foot-seven) is the latest in an eclectic and ever-lengthening list of supposedly _______ figures whom Mr Trump (who stands at six-three) has ridiculed—among them Kim Jong Un, the dictator of North Korea (around five-seven), and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London (five-five). These jibes are often dismissed as frenzied fits of Twitter-induced rage
diminutive Source
HOSPITABLE, _______ and currently reliant on a wheelchair, Brenda Stevenson, pastor of the New Outreach Christian Centre in Charlotte, North Carolina, makes an improbable gunslinger. So averse was she to weapons when her children were young that she wouldn’t let them play with water pistols
diminutive Source
All the same, they will be Deng Xiaoping's children. ","description":"The definitive biography of a _______ giant of the 20th century","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
diminutive Source
Of course, a small animal will have a small brain. But what is noticeable about Homo floresiensis is how small the brain is, even in comparison to the _______ body. The species had regressed, more or less, to the brain/body ratio found in Australopithecus
diminutive Source
Its share price has risen 15-fold since 2015 (see chart). AMD is more important to the chip business than its _______ stature suggests. It provides the only meaningful competition to not one but two Goliaths in two important parts of the semiconductor industry
diminutive Source
Firms with more women seem to work better, with higher attendance and tougher monitoring of management. But no _______ impact on company performance has been identified. And the hoped-for trickle-down effect—whereby more female board members would swell the ranks of female executives—has yet to materialise
discernible Source
In Congo the slide back to carnage has already begun. Beyond Africa, why should the world care? Congo is far away and has no _______ effect on global stockmarkets. Besides, its woes seem too complex and intractable for outsiders to fix
discernible Source
Journalism has proved more successful. On the other side of the divide, Ian Paisley, the leader of the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), has no _______ leisure interests apart from hell and damnation. His party has gone from fire-breathing outsider to the main representative of the province's Unionist majority
discernible Source
Though people tend not to talk about it much, familial estrangement seems to be widespread in America. The first large-scale nationwide survey, recently conducted by Cornell University, found that 27% of adult Americans are _______ from a close family member. Karl Pillemer, a professor of sociology who led the research and wrote a book about its findings called “Fault Lines”, says that because people often feel shame, the real figure is likely to be higher
estranged Source
That joke didn’t go down too well. He was plainly conservative, a foreign-policy hawk who disliked labour laws, environmental protection, over-regulation and _______ social services. But he had mostly become a Republican because he was a doer, and without being red you could do nothing in Kansas
extravagant Source
The visual tropes of this world are familiar even to non-VIPs: angular cheekbones, Louboutin heels, sprays of champagne. What most people don’t realise is that the apparently spontaneous abandon of those _______ nights is, in fact, painstakingly planned. It takes a carefully hidden, intricate economy, based on a complex brokering of beauty and status, to create an atmosphere in which people will spend $100,000 on alcohol in a single night
extravagant Source
Some version of this origin story can be found across cultures. From this perspective, religion is an _______ scheme for the recovery of our lost perfection, at least in its monotheistic variants. But religion also has a contrary, or perhaps complementary, purpose
extravagant Source
Mr Piketty argued that wealth naturally accumulates and concentrates, so that familial riches are ever more critical to determining an individual’s success or failure in life. The _______ inequality of the Gilded Age could return if no preventive action is taken. Mr Piketty chose to compress his sweeping narrative into a compact economic model backed up by a few simple equations
extravagant Source
Billionaire entrepreneurs have been hounded. Over- _______ entertainers have disappeared from the internet. Now a new type of tycoon is feeling the heat
extravagant Source
A scheme as generous as Miller’s cannot last long. But what if the promises were less _______ and the repayment intervals less tight? What if, for example, a scheme asked investors for money in their younger years in return for a payout in their dotage? Over that time scale, a Ponzi scheme need not limit its recruitment efforts to the people alive when it begins. It can repay today’s contributors with money from future participants not yet born
extravagant Source
A decade ago the Communist Party declared a new goal: to build “soft power”, as a complement to its rapidly growing economic and military strength. It spends some $10bn a year on the project, according to David Shambaugh of George Washington University—one of the most _______ programmes of state-sponsored image-building the world has ever seen. Mr Shambaugh reckons that America spent less than $670m on its “public diplomacy” in 2014
extravagant Source
Ask your child how real Hogwarts feels to get a sense of our ability to invest in other dimensions. Sometimes this is only escapism or _______ play. But cognitive science sees the seriousness of it
frivolous Source
Did you ever think you’d miss the subway? You may be surprised at the bittersweet longing stirred by a cut that takes you through a rush-hour station and onto a train, metal-shredding brakes and all, where a hip-hop dance crew suddenly launches into a between-the-poles performance. There are eight tracks in all, full of hustle and _______; they might even work as alternative sound-machine tones for sleepers immune to “Gentle Surf” or “Rain Falling on Fern Fronds
clangor Source
From an amplifier in the barrel, the vibrations of sound are sent quivering through the raw spirits, which soon lose the characteristics of youth and become serene and docile. The noise that's aging us at the moment is the _______ of declaratives and imperative as Dr. Copeland strives to smash the New Deal at its weak point, in the Bronx
clangor Source
I’m startin’ to believe that I’m way too much for you / All that talk but it seems like it can’t come through. ” A sweet, sinuous thump runs under the _______, but messages to the hips will not necessarily make it through. This song is shouting, arms upraised, and it’s coming straight at you
clangor Source
) That slender output could be part of the mystique, compounded by her disappearing act. But Garbo had acquired an _______ mythos even before she ended her career—the Hollywood colony treated her like royalty. Nor has it seemed to matter that only a handful of her movies are much watched or admired today
enigmatic Source
If Mr Draghi is seen to fail in a bid to be chosen as the next occupant of the Quirinale palace, his standing will be diminished and thus his capacity to hold together the broad coalition of parties that support him but whose only common denominator is awe-struck respect for him. If, however, he succeeds, a replacement will need to be found who can stop the _______ coalition from falling apart. And that will not be at all easy
heterogeneous Source
But a side-effect of the pandemic was to turbocharge Silicon Valley and its various offshoots, amplifying an already unprecedented bull run. All manner of sins, from questionable accounting to _______ executive behaviour, tend to be overlooked in good times. As Warren Buffett famously noted, only when the tide goes out can you see who has been swimming naked
imperious Source
With four outside directors, Toshiba (which owns about 3% of Toshiba Machine) was considered a model of good governance until it was hit by an accounting scandal in 2015. Nissan’s board, which also looked diverse, failed to rein in the carmaker’s _______ boss, Carlos Ghosn, for years before turning on him. For oversight actually to benefit shareholders, it must be more than token, according to a new study by Mr Benes of listed non-financial firms’ performance between 2014 and 2018
imperious Source
But in recent years, as injuries and age have ravaged Messrs Nadal and Federer, Mr Djokovic has surged ahead. In 2021, he was _______ , winning the first three grand-slams and securing the year-end number one ranking for a record seventh time. But while other elite players must find the dominance of the big three daunting, recent results offer them hope
imperious Source
For on June 28th 1914 a Habsburg named Archduke Franz Ferdinand got into an open-topped car and went for a drive in Sarajevo. ■","description":"European history is unimaginable without the once-_______ family","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
imperious Source
Hotel floors were locked down by the official secret service; the corridors were crammed with lines of petitioners and in one case a Wall Street boss gatecrashed the room in order to hug his idol. The message from both titans—you ain’t seen nothing yet—was _______ . Over the next decade, they say, conventional industries will face an onslaught from tech competitors wielding vast financial resources, new technologies and massive reserves of data
imperious Source
What about an Asian rival? One obvious candidate is Tharman Shanmugaratnam, a former finance minister and deputy prime minister of Singapore, who also chairs its monetary authority. As well as a background in economics, he has the virtue of hailing from a small country that is neither improvident nor _______ —the kind of country that would be a member of Asia’s Hanseatic league if it had one. But even in a fair race he would struggle to beat Mr Carney, who has run two of the world’s biggest central banks
imperious Source
By 1963 its music director, George Szell, was on the cover of Time and its albums were bestsellers. But after the _______ Szell died in 1970, the orchestra, now in its centennial season, came to lack a distinct identity. “We give a great concert and Szell gets a great review,” griped a former music director in 1997
imperious Source
The internet, in particular, looks like a threat. It spreads _______ , widely spoken tongues like English at the expense of more modest, local ones, as an introduced species of animal or plant drives out less robust natives. Dr Harrison, however, is helping speakers of threatened languages use IT to fight back
imperious Source
But the atmosphere has been worsened by his personality, variously described as “tightly wound”, “controlling” and “cold”. Some officials have taken to calling him “five i’s”, a double reference to the “five eyes” arrangement that sees Britain share intelligence with America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and what they see as his attributes: insular, _______ , idle, irascible and ignorant. He has handled this hostile environment by sidelining ambassadors and surrounding himself with special advisers
imperious Source
Yet it welcomed Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, despite his indictment by the ICC for orchestrating genocide and mass rape in Darfur. And rather than let a fellow African leader face such _______ charges, Mr Zuma’s officials whisked him away just before a South African court ordered his arrest. All countries struggle to balance principles and national interests
impertinent Source
Allen Lane; £30 WHEN A COALITION of footloose merchants, sea captains, hard-pressed peasants, landlords, bandits, clerics and intellectuals raised the flag against the Ottomans in the spring of 1821, the great powers of Europe knew exactly what they thought. This _______ move to establish a state called Greece spelled trouble and should be discouraged. After six years of grinding warfare, economic ruin and atrocities, the calculus shifted
impertinent Source
His regime has raised public servants' pay and broken a taboo by agreeing to talk to the Muslim Brothers. At the same time, state media have damned the protesters as _______ , drug-fuelled, foreign-backed, Islamist troublemakers. The security services have arrested, beaten up and tortured more than a few
impertinent Source
So if you're like Mr Perry, you run for the presidency (like everyone wants you to do). But if your background thus far has been mostly limited to your home state, you're not ready for the onslaught of _______ , annoying questions about your policy towards Durkadurkastan. In a panic you start to study
impertinent Source
His throne may not be under immediate threat. But pro-democracy protests on Fridays on the streets of Amman, the capital, and elsewhere are getting angrier and more _______ towards Abdullah. So far the police have handled them cautiously, though pro-regime thugs have become more active
impertinent Source
MY PRINT column this week argues that under the influence of the tea-party movement too many Americans have begun to turn admiration for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution into a form of worship, and that this is unfortunate. I know it is a trifle _______ for a Brit to say such things, and I am bracing for the tar and feathers. But there are, of course, many Americans who say so too, and one of those I spoke to whilst writing my piece deserves more attention than the column was able to give him
impertinent Source
HAS the cultural atmosphere in America changed in the ten years since the attacks on September 11th 2001? The question might seem irrelevant, even _______ , given the profound transformations that have taken place in America and the world since that terrible day. But one of the strangest episodes in the days following the attacks was a loud collective sigh of relief at the prospect of liberation from selfishness and shallow irony
impertinent Source
Of course they always have been. Marcus Valerius Martialis tormented Roman emperors with _______ epigrams two millennia ago. But it’s worse today
impertinent Source
Credit goes to the RSPB, which organised the eradication programme, and the British government, which paid for it. Programmes to get rid of _______ species are one way in which governments, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and effectiveness, try to tackle threats to other species. Others are laws against killing endangered creatures or trading in them, regulations to make pesticides safer and protection of habitat
invasive Source
There is the same feeling that those in charge don't know what they are doing; that all this sacrifice is going to waste. To quote Churchill, Europe's leaders seem decided only to be undecided, resolved to be _______ , adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all- powerful to be impotent A year or two ago, the EU leaders seemed to be operating on the theory that, if Greece could just be propped up, Italy and Spain would have the time to address the problem. Instead, the problems have spread
irresolute Source
Jealousy. Jealousy will appear by the Arms suspended, or a particular pointing the middle Finger to the Eye; and by _______ movement throughout the Scene .
irresolute Source
Then it refused to undertake any serious concerted action against Russia lest an angry Russia reduce energy supplies to its best customer and only terminus of its pipelines. Yet Brussels' _______ and craven policy of accommodation has achieved nothing. Since provoking Georgia's reckless attack on South Ossetia, Russia has violated its own ceasefire, expanded its occupation zone, looted Georgian territories, demanded an arms embargo and regime change in Georgia, unilaterally recognised South Ossetia and Abkhazia, issued repeated ultimatums to America not to rearm Georgia and to stop providing humanitarian assistance, threatened to suspend co-operation with America against Iranian nuclear proliferation and send Iran S-300 anti-air missiles, threatened retaliation against Turkey for opening the Straits to those shipments, threatened Poland with nuclear strikes, announced the Nazi-like doctrine that it has the right to protect ethnic Russians and Russian “citizens” beyond Russian borders, and claimed a sphere of influence encompassing the CIS, eastern Europe and the Middle East
irresolute Source
Serbia has voiced disappointment with a negative report from Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunal. Earlier this week Mrs Del Ponte said Serbia’s co-operation was still “slow, without results, _______ ”. Rasim Ljajic, Serbian minister for co-operation with the UN's Hague tribunal, said the remarks would boost "anti-European political structures" in Serbia
irresolute Source
The field in Iowa has been especially fluid this year, with no fewer than six candidates topping local polls at one point or another. No candidate has polled over 25% in recent days, and most soundings show large proportions of undecided and _______ voters, setting the stage for almost anything to happen next week. The race is so fluid in part because the sizeable chunk of caucus-goers who are evangelical Christians do not seem to have rallied round any of the candidates
irresolute Source
. likely to be timid & _______ in action. ” Instead, Lee became the foremost exemplar of what Mr McPherson calls “an offensive-defensive strategy”, and not just because of his natural audacity
irresolute Source
President Joe Biden has a big-government agenda that is founded on an alliance with business to bring about national renewal, to fight climate change and to gird America against the rise of China. Even if those goals are individually _______ , all this amounts to a shift in the role of business that brings underappreciated risks. One is of a display of hypocrisy that discredits everyone
laudable Source
Mr Boric wants to expand tax revenues by 8% of GDP over six to eight years (impossible, say many economists) and review trade agreements in order to engage in industrial policy. The _______ intention is to diversify the economy, but by means that seem likely to do far more harm than good. Mr Boric might well prove to be more pragmatic than his programme suggests
laudable Source
According to the Internal Revenue Service, 87% of tax returns do not bother to itemise all their exemptions, which would amount to less than the standard deduction ($12,000 for a single filer in 2018). But legislators in high-tax states such as New York and California saw the reform not as a _______ effort to tax the rich (which it did rather well), but a punitive blow. The SALT Caucus was soon formed as a resistance movement
laudable Source
Start with crony capitalism, which in South Africa goes by the euphemism “black economic empowerment”. The idea behind it seemed _______ enough—to right a historical wrong. Under apartheid the country produced white titans of industry such as the Oppenheimer family (owners of DeBeers), while making it hard for black South Africans to own businesses
laudable Source
These students’ hearts are in the right place. Wanting to shield others from offence is a _______ thing. As informal norms, politeness and civility are virtuous
laudable Source
Mr López Obrador swept to power in 2018 at the head of his populist Morena party, voted in by people attracted by his promise to make Mexico more democratic and to work for the majority long neglected by the elite. That was, and is, a _______ aim. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governed Mexico for 71 uninterrupted years until 2000, and again from 2012 to 2018, with two terms for the conservative National Action Party (PAN) in between
laudable Source
By contrast, America’s plan is based on 2005 levels, and its emissions have fallen by less since. Once put on the same basis, America’s goal appears more _______ . Rich countries should not feel smug about their efforts, however
laudable Source
They could also be used to do more with less. Plants and their soil microbes could produce their own fertilisers and pesticides, ruminants less greenhouse gas—though to ensure that synthetic biology yields such _______ environmental goals will take public policy as well as the cues of the market. The second example of biological change sweeping the world is the Columbian exchange, in which the 16th century’s newly global network of trade shuffled together the creatures of the New World and the Old
laudable Source
At the time it was agreed such a fulsome promise, the biggest ever offered to a client by an auction house, seemed to hark back to a bullish age before covid-19 roiled the art market. But Sotheby’s _______ was well judged: the evening brought in $676m including fees, to which the proceeds of a second auction in May will be added. For beyond the Macklowe sale, the art market is changing, in three important ways
panache Source
SINCE THE Romans began doing it with great _______ more than 2,000 years ago, road- building has been something of a sweaty and grubby business, involving heaving great quantities of rocks and stones into place and, in more recent times, covering the surface with asphalt or concrete. Now a group of Swiss researchers think they have come up with a more elegant solution
panache Source
It is no “death cross” or “vomiting camel”. But what it lacks in _______ , the inverted yield curve more than makes up for in predictive potency. Just before each of America’s most recent three recessions the yield curve for government bonds “inverted”, meaning that yields on long-term bonds fell below those on short-term bonds
panache Source
Its armed forces accused the Resolute of “cowardly and criminal behaviour” by initiating the collision in Venezuela’s national waters. The Bolivarian navy insisted that its gallant sailors put in an “impeccable performance” against the unarmed cruise ship, presumably by sinking with particular _______ . The navy darkly added that the Resolute, which boasts a jacuzzi and sauna, might have been carrying mercenary commandos to attack Venezuelan bases
panache Source
ROUSING MUSIC accompanies the H-6K, a hulking Chinese bomber, as it sweeps up into a pink sky. Moments later, its pilot presses a red button, with the _______ and fortitude that only a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer could muster, and a missile streaks towards the island of Guam. The ground ripples and a fiery explosion consumes America’s Andersen air force base
panache Source
By contrast, the people's advocates drive small cars and stay in budget inns that are filthy with second-hand smoke; they sip Diet Coke and run out of clean shirts. The villains, at moments of triumph, light up cigarettes with an almost sexual _______ ; the heroes fret to find that only smokers' rooms are left in their hotels, and grimace when they have to walk into a meeting where people are inconsiderately shortening their lives. Big Tobacco's fall was, indeed, sudden
panache Source
General Dutra frets his men may be summoned there again before long. ","description":"Its _______ infantry are ill-suited to repel threats to natural resources","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
plodding Source
Both sides agreed to return their ambassadors, who were recalled earlier in the year, after Mr Biden called Mr Putin a “killer”. On these issues grown-up, _______ diplomacy will resume. The second bucket is trickier
plodding Source
There have been many histories of the cold war, but the virtue and originality of Mr Sixsmith’s is to see almost every aspect of the stand-off in psychological terms. Deranged Stalin, volatile, bombastic Nikita Khrushchev, _______ , insecure Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev’s desperate optimism—he sketches the leaders’ states of mind, and the means used to stimulate fear of “the other”. He chronicles the brinkmanship over Berlin and Cuba; the repression of the Hungarian and Czech uprisings; the propaganda and spying; the absurdities of the nuclear arms race and the effect on populations of living with the permanent threat of mutual extinction
plodding Source
It is politically stable, without the ethnic tensions that have riven other Caribbean nations. Jamaica has reasons for its _______ growth of late. Tourism, which employs one in ten islanders, has dipped with the world economy
plodding Source
Furthermore, the researchers noted, the destruction of routine work in recessions seems to account for much of the joblessness of economic recoveries since the mid-1980s. But output per worker eventually stagnated over these _______ recoveries, perhaps because low-wage service-sector work only slowly expanded to absorb the lingering pool of unemployed labour. The present recovery might reveal whether a more forceful policy response can yield a different outcome
plodding Source
After the revolution, hunting previously restricted to nobles was permitted for all. By the mid-to-late 20th century over 2m hunters spent winter weekends _______ after boars and birds. But fewer do so now, a consequence of rural depopulation and the lure of video games
plodding Source
From an amplifier in the barrel, the vibrations of sound are sent quivering through the raw spirits, which soon lose the characteristics of youth and become serene and docile. The noise that's aging us at the moment is the _______ of declaratives and imperative as Dr. Copeland strives to smash the New Deal at its weak point, in the Bronx
clangor Source
The fumbling heart,\\.Thud-thud. The microbe _______ in every cell. ..I want to publish a book with on every page\\.The one same poem
clangor Source
I’m startin’ to believe that I’m way too much for you / All that talk but it seems like it can’t come through. ” A sweet, sinuous thump runs under the _______, but messages to the hips will not necessarily make it through. This song is shouting, arms upraised, and it’s coming straight at you
clangor Source
) That slender output could be part of the mystique, compounded by her disappearing act. But Garbo had acquired an _______ mythos even before she ended her career—the Hollywood colony treated her like royalty. Nor has it seemed to matter that only a handful of her movies are much watched or admired today
enigmatic Source
El Segundo is also the sandbox for the second phase of Soon-Shiong’s business career, which involves numerous ventures gathered under an umbrella organization called NantWorks. .Inside the NantWorks ga_______y, there is NantHealth, which builds diagnostic medical software; NantCloud, which offers cloud-computing services; ImmunityBio, which develops immunotherapy treatments for cancer; and NantStudios, a movie soundstage and visual- effects studio. There are also NantMobile, NantBioScience, NantEnergy, NantOmics, and NantGames
lax Source
A recent study by Gallup, in America, suggests that “employee engagement”, a rough proxy for job satisfaction, is near its all-time high: hard to square with the notion that lots more people are desperate for a way out. That suggests two more _______ explanations for soaring quit rates. One relates to vacancies
prosaic Source
That is a part of it. But the deeper reason for Visa’s success is more _______ . Being the biggest player in a deeply entrenched payments oligopoly turns out to be fabulously lucrative
prosaic Source
AMID the headline-grabbing news from the Supreme Court this term—the travel ban upheld, Anthony Kennedy’s retirement—came something altogether more _______ : a fight over fish. The case, United States v Washington, asked whether Washington state must ensure a healthy supply of salmon in its rivers and streams for fishing by Indian tribes
prosaic Source
Instant economics isn’t about clairvoyance or omniscience. Instead its promise is _______ but transformative: better, timelier and more rational decision-making. ■ Dig deeper All our stories relating to the pandemic can be found on our coronavirus hub
prosaic Source
But it is not obvious that great business ideas are being ignored. The downside of the flood of venture capital is more _______ . Run-of-the-mill startups are overindulged
prosaic Source
Instead, he beat him in politics, with words rather than fists. As things turned out, the contrasting styles of his predecessors may have made Mr Biden’s deeply _______ register an asset after all. Receiving his party’s nomination in 2008, Mr Obama said future generations might remember the occasion as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”
prosaic Source
Some fee-hungry fund managers make hyperbolic claims about their influence, even as big- business bashers pin most of the blame for pollution on companies. The reality is more _______ . Fund managers have some influence over a big slice of the economy, but many emissions occur outside the firms they control
prosaic Source
economist. com/europe/2009/06/18/_______-colonels-and- generals","dateline":"ISTANBUL\n","headline":"Restive colonels and generals","articleBody":"OLD habits die hard. No institution in Turkey lives up to that adage more than its meddlesome army, which is embroiled in yet another row with the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party
restive Source
Inexplicable noises, spectral sightings, sudden drops in temperature – something strange is going on at the British Museum. A _______ corner of India is becoming more peaceful | The EconomistJan 29, 2020 .
restive Source
Her biennial speeches at the Munich Security Conference were compelling tours d’horizon of the global security landscape but rarely heralded meaningful changes in German foreign policy. During the covid-19 pandemic the chancellor was a solid, reassuring presence, but she struggled to impose her will on the _______ premiers of Germany’s states. Mrs Merkel has at times seemed more monarch than chancellor
restive Source
The OSCE's problem may be that words like freedom and democracy mean one thing in, say, Tashkent and another in Vienna. ","description":"Using its power to ostracise and exclude, the Commonwealth has had _______ success as a promoter of democracy; other clubs find it harder","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
sporadic Source
In places with easy commutes more workers will go to the office; megacities with long, expensive journeys may see fewer. Companies will have to adapt to this pattern of _______ attendance in which the office is a hub, not a second home. There is a risk that over time a firm’s social capital erodes, creativity flags, hierarchies ossify and team spirit fades, as Mr Hastings fears (see article)
sporadic Source
It worked—there was no fighting in Pavlopil, and the locals stayed alive, apart from one whose tractor hit a mine. Ceasefires have come and gone since September 2014, and _______ shooting continues in eastern Ukraine. Just on October 12th, the day of an EU- Ukraine summit in Kyiv, monitors counted nearly 300 ceasefire violations, including 77 explosions
sporadic Source
” He also sacked a health minister who supported lockdowns and replaced him with one who favours a return to business-as-usual “as quickly as possible”. _______ protests broke out in several American state capitals against lockdown measures. Some states took steps to reopen businesses
sporadic Source
On what seems to be every block, they still decorate downtown Portland a year after racial-justice protests began peacefully, turned violent, and were met with tear-gas and federal shock troops. They have not been removed because of _______ bouts of anarchy euphemistically called “direct action”. A recent May Day riot left another round of vandalised buildings and broken windows in its wake
sporadic Source
The north ran a 2% deficit. To add insult to injury, the north has also been disrupted more by _______ covid-19 outbreaks. Geography is part of the problem: a harsher winter makes the virus more transmissible
sporadic Source
A select committee of America’s House of Representatives is investigating the Capitol riot on January 6th, in which a mob stormed the building in an attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. The committee has subpoenaed various figures from Donald Trump’s administration who may have been involved in the riot or otherwise aided his attempts to _______ the result, but the malaise in American democracy runs beyond the world of officialdom. Among Republican voters, there is a great lack of trust of America’s election officials and democratic institutions
undermine Source
In October 2001, a few weeks after the attacks of September 11th, Abdul Haq, probably the most revered figure in the Afghan anti-Taliban resistance, was interviewed by Anatol Lieven, a leading specialist on the region. Abdul Haq bitterly condemned the invasion, which he recognised would kill many Afghans and _______ the efforts to overthrow the Taliban from within. He said that “the US is trying to show its muscle, score a victory and scare everyone in the world
undermine Source
The venture capitalist, techno-Utopian and scourge of the liberal left is a myriad of contradictions. He co-founded PayPal, a payments platform that, as a young libertarian, he hoped would _______ the world’s monetary system. Instead it gave him the money to bestride Silicon Valley, a place he disdains
undermine Source
Bloomsbury; 272 pages; $28 and £20 One of our deputy editors considers the rise of the car, and the history and future of urban transport, in a 5,500-year road-trip that explodes myths and imagines roads not taken. “Great fun—and _______ timely”, reckoned the Sunday Times. “Standage writes with a masterly clarity,” said the New York Times
utterly Source
Though they remove many of the most egregious accounts, their actions do not match the scale of the problem. And they are _______ ineffective at limiting person-to-person sharing once falsehoods have entered the bloodstream of their networks. We can’t look to them for the complete solution (nor conversely, to alone adjudicate questions of legitimate scientific debate)
utterly Source
In the 1950s, they show, there was almost no relationship between how densely populated a place was and the share of its residents with college degrees. That has changed _______ : the share of the working-age population with a college degree is now 20 percentage points higher in urban places than it is in rural ones. In 1970 that gap was just five percentage points
utterly Source
ALMOST ANY parent will agree that once you have a child, life is never quite the same again. Having to provide for another, _______ dependent, human being can spur new mums and dads to find reserves of generosity, care and energy they never knew they had. A new paper by Maxim Massenkoff and Evan Rose, two economics PhD students at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the very prospect of becoming a parent makes them much more law-abiding, too
utterly Source
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM has it that the capital of Europe’s most powerful economy is poor, bolshie, chronically indebted and _______ reliant on subsidies from richer states. The debacle of the construction of the Berlin-Brandenburg airport, completed in 2020 nine years late and more than €4bn ($4
utterly Source
Set between an icy upheaval in Kyiv and a London summer, it stars a sly oligarch, an idealistic young activist and a disgraced British diplomat. “ _______ gripping,” said the Observer, “a novel with its finger on the pulse of geopolitics that still manages to move deeply. ” The Spectator called it “a searing indictment of our times”
utterly Source
economist. com/printedition/2021-12-11","name":"Dec 11th 2021 edition"}}]} BriefingDec 11th 2021 editionA _______ superpowerThe world that the West built after Pearl Harbour is crackingNot least because America is lukewarm about preserving itDec 11th 2021HONOLULUFacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppA LINE OF white-painted moorings in Pearl Harbour—the old “Battleship Row”—maps America’s trajectory in the second world war. At one end a memorial straddles the sunken remains of the USS Arizona, a battleship destroyed during Japan’s surprise attack on December 7th 1941
weary Source
Its relative power has waned, even if it remains unmatched. After Iraq and Afghanistan, voters have grown _______ of foreign adventures. Partisan politics, which once stopped at the water’s edge, paralyses most aspects of policy
weary Source
Governments have an obligation to fight the deception, tax evasion and money laundering that plagues the crypto world. Police seizures of bitcoin suggest that they are becoming more _______ . The harder issue they must grapple with is whether cryptocurrencies threaten the financial system
zealous Source
More than a whiff of misogyny is in the air. It is striking that there is no comparably _______ campaign to abandon the word “men” in favour of “prostate-havers”, “ejaculators” or “bodies with testicles”. It is almost always women who are being ordered to dispense with a useful word they have used all their lives
zealous Source
But even if it includes some old-style values voters, this is no longer your father’s moral majority. Most white evangelicals backed Mr Trump—more _______ ly than they had any previous Republican—mainly for cultural reasons that had nothing to do with Christianity. They were motivated far more by his immigration policies and racially infused law-and-order rhetoric than his judicial nominees
zealous Source
Nine members of Insulate Britain, a green protest group, were jailed for three to six months for defying court injunctions not to block busy roads. The group’s _______ tactics have made life even more miserable for London’s already frustrated drivers. The judge said there was no alternative to prison for the nine, given their intention to keep flouting the injunctions
zealous Source
By the time it ends, the proceeds may exceed $90bn. At first blush, this seems like a classic case of overbidding by _______ telecoms firms chasing a shiny new technology. It could leave AT&T and Verizon, America’s mobile-telephony giants, saddled with huge debts
zealous Source
The Catholic church should be reinvigorated by calling it back to its original purpose; society should be reformed by educating princes in the art of government. But this moderate champion had the great bad luck to live in a _______ era. Soon after climbing to the intellectual and social pinnacle of Europe, Erasmus was thrown down and condemned
zealous Source
No landmarks of racial progress—neither Reconstruction in the 19th century, nor the civil- rights movement of the 20th—made a difference. Nor has the National Rifle Association (NRA), the _______ defender of gun rights that came to the fore in the 1960s, targeted this prejudice. In 1967 the NRA helped draft a bill in California to disarm the Black Panthers, a black self-defence organisation that “had broken no firearms laws”
zealous Source
Economists, meanwhile, are locked in debate over whether much higher debt-to-GDP ratios might be sustainable (see article). Is lunch free after all? Changing attitudes to budget deficits are in part a backlash against the _______ fiscal rectitude that prevailed in much of the rich world after the financial crisis. America began deep and indiscriminate spending cuts in 2013 after a commission failed to agree on alternative measures to contain its deficit
zealous Source
Consider how they are smashing one conservative tradition after another. Conservatism is pragmatic, but the new right is _______ , ideological and cavalier with the truth. Australia suffers droughts and reef-bleaching seas, but the right has just won an election there under a party whose leader addressed parliament holding a lump of coal like a holy relic
zealous Source
American courts have resisted putting the brakes on purely ceremonial religious references in government contexts. “In God We Trust” is staying put; nor will the judiciary _______ presidents for asking God to bless America. Chaplains delivering benedictions in Congress and in state legislatures are common and, since the Marsh v Chambers ruling in 1983, constitutional
admonish Source
A company hawking diet products plasters cinemas all over the country with posters urging patrons to “reconsider your popcorn”. Serious-looking plastic surgeons _______ commuters in ads on Seoul’s subway: “Think you’re pretty? Think again. ” Celebrity culture also plays a role, says Mr Yoo
admonish Source
LOTS of things come with warnings in California. Signs in parking garages _______ drivers that they could be exposed to carbon monoxide gas. Recently a judge ruled that coffee-sellers must warn of cancer
admonish Source
Paul Krugman of the New York Times may be the darling of the left and the Wall Street Journal editorial page the bible of many on the right, but inside finance ministries few are cited as often as Mr Wolf. He likes to _______ policymakers. As a centrist who favours free trade and free markets, though, he does so from within the mainstream
admonish Source
For instance, on Air India, the country’s state-owned flag carrier, who you know can apparently determine where you sit. The airline’s chief executive, Pradeep Singh Kharola, recently felt compelled to _______ his staff to stop upgrading friends and family members for free from economy class to business or first. “It has come to my knowledge that operating crew carry out upgrades to business and first class unofficially during the flight for their friends and relatives,” Mr Kharola wrote on March 13th to his employees, in a letter that was leaked last week to the Hindustan Times, a newspaper
admonish Source
The region is a net food importer. In the weeks before Ramadan, state-run media _______ their citizens to be less wasteful. On social media diners now swap recommendations not on lavish buffets but on à la carte options
admonish Source
But the price of breadth is a lack of depth that may leave curious readers frustrated. Part of the problem is a tendency to _______ . The rather pedestrian observation that distant, abstract crises tend not to change people's behaviour even if the consequences are extremely unpleasant is christened “Giddens' paradox”, and the opening chapter mentions every fashionable meme from the internet and social networks to Barack Obama's “yes we can” campaign slogan
affectation Source
Additionally, since higher voices are characteristic of children, using uptalk seems like a voluntary abdication of authority. And vocal fry, for its part, is criticised as a put- on sexy, fake-femme-fatale _______ . The rise of both is said to constitute an epidemic of “sexy baby voice”
affectation Source
ONE stereotype of wisdom is a wizened Zen-master smiling benevolently at the antics of his pupils, while referring to them as little grasshoppers or some such _______ , safe in the knowledge that one day they, too, will have been set on the path that leads to wizened masterhood. But is it true that age brings wisdom? A study two years ago in North America, by Igor Grossmann of the University of Waterloo, in Canada, suggested that it is
affectation Source
Jan Freeman, a language columnist, has found that women have disliked being described as female for more than a century. The word was relatively harmless (used uncontroversially by Jane Austen, for example) before becoming in the 19th century a journalistic _______ , to avoid having to choose between highborn "ladies" and plain "women". By the early 20th century, usage-mavens were discouraging the term "female" to refer to humans
affectation Source
The book exposes—through hundreds of detailed, meticulously footnoted examples—a pattern of exaggeration and statistical manipulation, used by green groups to advance their pet causes, and obligingly echoed through the media. Bizarrely, one of Dr Lomborg's critics in Scientific American criticises as an _______ the book's insistence on documenting every statistic and every quotation with a reference to a published source. But the complaint is not so bizarre when one works through the references, because they so frequently expose careless reporting and environmentalists' abuse of scientific research
affectation Source
To his critics, Johnson is less, not more, authentic than his conventional rivals. They regard his demeanour – bumbling, stuttering and posh, a charming mix of Billy Bunter and Hugh Grant – as an _______ . That isn’t quite fair
affectation Source
True to form, the Roys unblinkingly sell out their children, spouses, parents and siblings. Once again political principles are just an _______ (adopting them means being derided as “Woke-a-hontas”). Mercenary as they are, even the put-upon retinue of consiglieres, lawyers, executive assistants and publicists are scarcely sympathetic
affectation Source
“We find it more chic and more spiritual to doubt everything. ” Up to a point, this is an _______ of the elite. “It is in a certain Parisian milieu that there are intellectuals who are grumpy by trade,” argues Jack Lang, the Socialist former culture minister: “There is a gap with the rest of French society
affectation Source
Wodehouse. He loathes the common establishment _______ of world-weariness. On the matter of Scottish independence, upon which depends the very future of the United Kingdom he governs, he seems to think that the threat will dissipate if he does nothing
affectation Source
And crucially, the balance of spending is beginning to swing in favour of services, as more people travel, go to concerts and eat in restaurants. That, in turn, should help _______ some of the pressure on supply chains as consumers shift from buying things to buying experiences. It could also, just as importantly,
alleviate Source
Prices have soared in recent weeks, especially in Europe, following a convergence of adverse factors, such as booming demand in Asia coinciding with tight stocks of liquefied natural gas. In Europe some governments are stepping in to _______ the pressure on spiralling household bills. The International Energy Agency pointed out that Russia’s gas exports to Europe are below their level of 2019, and urged it to “do more to increase gas availability”
alleviate Source
BECCS-based electricity generation is often talked of, but BECCS might actually be better suited to cement-making—because in a carbon-conscious world the CO2 capturing equipment will already be there, dealing with results of calcination. And if that happened, one of the pariahs of global warming might thus redeem itself by helping _______ the damage being done to the planet, and so leave behind a legacy as impressive in its way as that of the Romans. ■ For more coverage of climate change, register for The Climate Issue, our fortnightly newsletter, or visit our climate-change hub Curious about the world? To enjoy our mind-expanding science coverage, sign up to Simply Science, our weekly newsletter
alleviate Source
This may be more politically palatable than lending dollars. Second, the IMF must _______ the dollar liquidity shortage in solvent countries that have good institutions but which cannot borrow from the Fed. In 2017 the fund’s board rejected a proposal to provide its own swap-like funding to countries with strong institutions
alleviate Source
How does this apply to eating meat? Think about patterns in world meat consumption the same way you’d look at the different types of pandemic supermarket customers. First, there are the restrained shoppers – _______ to countries where moderate amounts of meat are eaten, which include India, Iran and Thailand. If the whole world followed the diet of these populations, less land would be used up in livestock grazing than is currently the case
analogous Source
Liberal critics accused Mr Hirsch of prioritising the achievements of white men and Western European perspectives. Perhaps the most _______ fight, though, was in the 1990s over voluntary national history standards. The optional curriculum, originally conceived under the George H
analogous Source
It just shifts them to central banks, whose profits and losses end up back with the taxpayer. The central-bank reserves created to buy bonds carry a floating rate of interest, making them _______ to short-term government borrowing. Over the past decade, issuing short-term liabilities to buy long-term debt has been a profitable strategy
analogous Source
There were demonstrations across Europe, especially in France. For many on the left, the execution of the Rosenbergs on charges of spying for the Soviet Union—and passing on atomic secrets—was _______ to the Dreyfus affair in France half a century earlier. In the grip of McCarthyite anti-communist hysteria, this interpretation ran, America had sent an idealistic Jewish couple with two young children to their deaths on trumped-up evidence
analogous Source
Finally, the authors performed a reversed scrambling process on the now-damaged system. This was _______ to running the quantum system all the way forwards in time to where it all began. They then checked to see how similar the final state of the chosen qubit was to the zero-state it had been assigned at the beginning of the experiment
analogous Source
How does a central bank incur a loss? Like private banks, they have balance-sheets. These consist of assets—such as government bonds—and liabilities, which include the interest- bearing reserve balances of private financial institutions, _______ to current accounts at high-street banks. A central bank makes a loss if the income it earns on its assets falls below the interest it pays out on its liabilities
analogous Source
The pressure to marry begins from your early to mid-twenties, often with your own mother ringing you on a daily basis to encourage you to settle. Education and job opportunities are rigged towards men in a broadly _______ culture. Harrassment in the work place, and domestic violence at home, are rife and difficult to bring to court
chauvinistic Source
On the contrary, they are likely to be as good for movie-makers’ profits as they are for female talent. That is because Hollywood’s _______ assumptions about audience tastes are based less on scientific fact than on prejudice. Although women account for half of cinema-ticket sales in North America, for example, executives were so convinced that female-led action flicks were a turn-off that they hardly made any
chauvinistic Source
) But it is useful to see how the author has changed his tone. In the first edition of “Eurasian Crossroads”, Mr Millward dispassionately surveyed the _______ debates which dog scholars in his field, particularly in China: the possible Indo-European origins of the Xinjiang Stone Age; the contested beginnings of a Uyghur nation. The goal is not to be political, he says in his original preface, but to offer an overview of history
chauvinistic Source
SOVEREIGN wealth funds have captured the popular imagination and ignited _______ tendencies. Perhaps foreign governments have had enough and we’ve started to feel the consequences
chauvinistic Source
His foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, on the coalition's far right, champions building quarters for soldiers' families in the town. The equally _______ interior minister, Eli Yishai, who heads an ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, grants building permits for religious Jews. A series of gated estates are sprouting across the city reserved for religious Zionists
chauvinistic Source
Greece, for instance, scores 112 on the UAI dimension while Denmark, a fellow member of the European Union, scores only 23. Less surprisingly perhaps, Sweden scores only five on the MAS of its organisations, while persistently _______ Japan scores 95. On LTO, while China excels with a score of 118, the not-so-far-away Philippines scores a mere 19
chauvinistic Source
APSomething to look forward toTHERE is a curious contradiction between China's vigorous embrace of information technology on the one hand and the myopic nationalism of many of those who use it on the other. If public sentiment had to be judged by the outpourings on the country's numerous Internet bulletin boards, it would appear alarmingly _______ and bellicose. In reality, nationalist sentiment in China is not demonstrably stronger now than it has been for decades
chauvinistic Source
After brief encounters during his bourgeois upbringing in Lübeck and Munich, Mann’s taste for younger men settles into chaste flirtations, private diaries, or just “the secret energy in a gaze”. In politics, too, Mann knows how to _______ and compromise. Even when his conservative patriotism has given way to outrage at the Nazis, his courage falters and he prevaricates over taking a public stand
dissemble Source
In the long run, the policymaker learns about his or her adviser's type. A biased adviser has no incentive to _______ in the final round of a repeated interaction. So the more accurately a policymaker can distinguish between types of adviser, the more likely it is that he (or she) will be able to ignore biased advice
dissemble Source
He claims that Harvard’s “holistic” admissions policy disguises “the fact that it holds Asian-Americans to a far higher standard than other students and essentially forces them to compete against each other for admission”. Harvard’s admissions policy is “a figleaf”, he says, “to hide, _______ and obfuscate racial balancing and quotas. ” In May 2015, 64 Asian-American organisations filed a complaint to this effect with the DoJ
dissemble Source
Although the main point of this biography seems to be to introduce Mr Drucker to a wider audience, Mr Beatty does not hold back on criticism of his hero. He points out when Mr Drucker gets it wrong, pulls apart some of his more airy-fairy ideas and even points to his tendency to _______ (Mr Drucker once told an interviewer that a soap bubble lasts for exactly 25 seconds). It is things like that soap bubble that make many academics a little nervous of Mr Drucker
dissemble Source
kept their Soviet-era name) to keep tabs on forces opposed to Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Belarus's president, inside Poland and Lithuania. How to _______ the KGB | The EconomistNov 13, 2011 .
dupe Source
It was an effective tactic in the past. As he describes the 2016 campaign: “The goal was to divide and conquer as much as it was to _______ and convince. ” Mr Woolley believes society is unprepared and needs to fight back—a point he hammers home in “The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth” (PublicAffairs, 2020)
dupe Source
People tend to date others within their rate bracket. “Dealers” trade blood stolen from people with high ratings for those who need to _______ the tests. A commercial industry of self-help programmes exist for people to improve their rating, if only marginally
dupe Source
economist. com/game-theory/2016/09/19/how-athletes-can-use-medical-exemptions-to-beat- drug-testers","name":"How athletes can use medical exemptions to beat drug testers"}}]} SportsGame theoryA doper’s _______?How athletes can use medical exemptions to beat drug testersThe system for granting the therapeutic use of steroids is flawedSep 19th 2016by H. G
dupe Source
” Analog is dead. To understand the new regime, she argues, we need a new _______s, “a new hierarchy of values. ” This is what she proposes to provide
aesthetic Source
) But during those decades vibes became a subject of philosophical fascination. In an article for the journal *Thesis Eleven*, from 1993, the German philosopher Gernot Böhme identified “atmosphere” as the basis for a new _______s of perception, a kind of over-all feeling that has much in common with vibe. Heidegger had used “mood” to describe the quality of being in the world, and Walter Benjamin had identified “aura” as the feeling inspired by the presence of a unique work of art, say, a painting
aesthetic Source
New essays, by scholars including Martha S. Jones and Dorothy Roberts, pointedly _______ the contributions from within the academy. Perhaps also pointedly, endnotes at the back of the book list the source material, which the series in magazine form had been accused of withholding
bolster Source
Frankl argued that those who suffer are spurred to help others because it gives meaning to their own pain. But Bloom believes that Frankl is an outlier whose case has been wrongly used to _______ the myth of redemptive suffering. “There is little actual evidence that sufferers are kinder than they would have been had they not suffered,” he writes
bolster Source
Is it sexual desire? A longing for revenge? Is he angling to be absorbed into Michel’s chaotic but warm family life, or even to steal it from him, à la “Single White Female”? No, no, and no. Harry just really likes Michel’s writing—not only the poem (its title is “The Dagger in the Skin of Night,” which, as a _______ of the poetry that hot sad boys publish in high-school literary magazines, I can assure you is deliciously apt) but also the first chapter of a sci-fi novel, called “Flying Monkeys,” that Michel started but never finished. Harry is crushed to discover that Michel is no longer writing, and, in the course of the film, he devotes himself single-mindedly—and, before long, violently—to removing any obstacles that might stand between Michel and his art
connoisseur Source
Between 2011 and 2015, and possibly for longer, Russia systematically doped hundreds of athletes. It roped in its spy agencies to _______ the anti-doping tests overseen by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), then fabricated data as part of an attempt to get back into the authorities’ good books. A controversial court ruling last year reduced Russia’s initial four-year ban to two, which will expire in 2022
subvert Source
Unemployment insurance is usually reserved for those who have been fired through no fault of their own. Shortly after Mr Biden said on November 29th that the Omicron variant was cause for concern, Republican politicians began discussing ways to _______ new and existing anti-virus regulations. J
subvert Source
The optimistic case for engagement has crumbled under the realities of Chinese power. Led by President Xi Jinping, China has garrisoned the South China Sea, imposed party rule on Hong Kong, threatened Taiwan, skirmished with India and has tried to _______ Western values in international bodies. Many countries are alarmed by China’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy
subvert Source
THE best way to understand a system is to look at it from the point of view of people who want to _______ it. Sensible bosses try to view their companies through the eyes of corporate raiders
subvert Source
After the mayor outlawed the garment, a group of burkini-clad protesters began defying the ban and snapping themselves as they splashed about; a couple of pools were temporarily closed. In the national French press, the affair is discussed as though it were a sinister Islamist conspiracy to _______ the secular French republic. In Germany the federal constitutional court ruled in 2015 that any “blanket ban” on state school-teachers wearing the hijab (a head-covering which leaves the face exposed) was an affront to religious liberty
subvert Source
In 1911 voters amended California’s constitution to allow for recalls, as a Progressive- era tool that would allow voters to bypass the influence big business exerted on the legislature. But since then “interest groups have learned how to game the system to _______ the democratic will” by making use of recalls and ballot initiatives, says Rick Rivas of Govern for California, a good-governance group. Because of the way that California designs its recall process—with a majority needed for removal but just a plurality for the winner—Mr Newsom could win 49% of the vote but be replaced by someone with a much smaller share of support
subvert Source
IN THE late 1980s, as Mikhail Gorbachev launched perestroika, Russia made peace with the West. It was possible to believe that each would give up trying to _______ the other with lies and cold-war conspiracy theories. With the indictment of 13 Russians on February 16th by the American special counsel, Robert Mueller, it is clear just how fragile that belief was
subvert Source
Messages could now be sent much faster than letters, whizzing from one end of France to the other in minutes. The network was reserved for government use but in 1834 two bankers, François and Joseph Blanc, devised a way to _______ it to their own ends. The Blanc brothers traded government bonds at the exchange in the city of Bordeaux, where information about market movements took several days to arrive from Paris by mail coach
subvert Source
Many of them feel bound by standards laid down by those who came before them. When Mr Trump tried to _______ the election, he failed abjectly because countless people did their duty. As a result, the main harm identity politics does to America comes through animosity and gridlock
subvert Source
The song, a video of which appears on YouTube, proceeds in a rather unconventional manner. Mr Astley stammers out different lines in a jumble, going from dulcet bass tones to shrill trebles over a _______ three-and-a-half minutes. The only coherent thing about the apparent stunt is the progression from low to high notes—except then he goes back to low at the end
tortuous Source
MOST came quietly in the end. After a _______ process, the majority of private holders of Greek government bonds had agreed by March 9th to trade in their bonds for new longer- dated ones with less than half the face value of the old ones and a low interest rate. The biggest sovereign-debt restructuring in history allowed Greece to wipe some €100 billion ($130 billion) from its debts of around €350 billion
tortuous Source
” René Descartes’ aphorism has become a cliché. But it cuts to the core of perhaps the greatest question posed to science: what is consciousness? The other phenomena described in this series of briefs—time and space, matter and energy, even life itself—look _______ . They can be measured and objectified, and thus theorised about
tractable Source
Mick Jagger was once refused entry. This all seemed shallow and _______ . The make-up, the get-ups and the evident disdain for people who were not walking pieces of art were marks of unseriousness
transient Source
Instead, a froth of particles constantly pops in and out of existence everywhere in spacetime. These are “virtual” rather than “real” particles—that is, they are _______ fluctuations which emerge straight out of quantum uncertainty. But, although they are short-lived, during the brief periods of their existence they still have time to interact with more permanent sorts of matter
transient Source
But by far the biggest factor in that rise relates to last year’s oil-price falls dropping out of the annual comparison, not bottlenecks. And last year’s experience suggests that shortages may not last long enough to cause more than a _______ spike in inflation. Even as economies locked down in early 2020, firms quickly found new ways of sourcing material
transient Source
These Mittelstand firms, which often operate in specific niches, are a peculiar feature of the industrial landscape. The area round Cloppenburg also offers less salubrious work in the form of meat-processing plants, which attract _______ eastern European workers. Hoyerswerda has no such luck
transient Source
Joel Kotkin of Chapman University blames high costs for the city’s political make-up: “You wouldn’t have the politics of San Francisco if there was still a middle class left,” he says. Young techies are _______ and older residents, who locked in affordable housing decades ago, are happy enough with the status quo. The well-heeled can insulate mostly themselves, opting out of public schools and hiring neighbourhood security guards
transient Source
VIRUSES ARE the fashionistas of the microbe world. They change their appearance constantly but such changes are usually small, _______ and of little practical significance for how they spread or how deadly they are. SARS-CoV-2, the covid-19 virus, has so far been no exception
transient Source
They are not. Most are (or at least have been) either _______ owners, trading in and out of faddish stocks, or closet index-huggers. The best-performing stockpickers are both patient and strong in their convictions
transient Source
Whether the markets prove to be right on the timing of interest-rate rises or whether central bankers instead keep their original promises will depend on how persistent inflation looks likely to be. Central bankers have said that price rises so far are _______ , reflecting an intense supply crunch. But some onlookers believe that a new inflationary era may be on the way, in which more powerful workers and faster wage growth place sustained pressure on prices
transient Source
The pandemic has led governments and central banks to experiment, from monitoring restaurant bookings to tracking card payments. The results are still rudimentary, but as digital devices, sensors and fast payments become _______ , the ability to observe the economy accurately and speedily will improve. That holds open the promise of better public-sector decision-making—as well as the temptation for governments to meddle
ubiquitous Source
The magic of computers is that they provide in a machine an ability—to calculate, to process information, to decide—that used to be the sole preserve of biological brains. The IoT foresees a world in which this magic becomes _______ . Countless tiny chips will be woven into buildings, cities, clothes and human bodies, all linked by the internet
ubiquitous Source
At an IoT conference in London earlier this year, companies from TVH, a Belgian firm that makes forklifts and industrial vehicles, to ABB, a Swedish heavy engineering firm, were lining up to describe the benefits of what Alexandra Rehak, an IoT expert at Ovum, a firm of analysts, describes as “servicisation”. Secure beneath the watchful eyes If _______ computing will turn companies of things into companies of services, the IoT will transform consumers of things into computer users, with all that implies. Like social networks or email, smart gadgets offer convenience and comfort, at the price of turning everything done with them into fuel for an ever more pervasive data economy
ubiquitous Source
“They’re dead because of the failure of this government,” a protester bellowed into a megaphone. To _______ the point, protesters had laid the “corpses” across a giant portrait of the prime minister, which they then set ablaze. In many countries around the world, from Brazil to Belarus, the pandemic is stirring unrest
underscore Source
Alternative explanations include the possibility that many of these jobs may be a by- product of families moving, or perhaps evidence of the emergence of new kinds of remote work. The strong numbers may also _______ how, notwithstanding the devastation of the past year, the country’s banking system remained sound. Neither house prices nor household incomes declined, providing a foundation, of sorts, for building a new business
underscore Source
“We make no attempt to estimate how many jobs will actually be automated,” the authors write. That, they _______ , will depend on many other things, such as cost, regulatory concerns, political pressure and social resistance. The paper was intended for an academic audience, says Mr Frey, and got “more attention than we would ever have expected”
underscore Source
But the glory days of Marks & Spencer are long gone. As if to _______ this, it recently became a “fallen angel”: its bonds were demoted to speculative-grade (or “junk”) status by S&P, a rating agency. Many other once-admired companies have been similarly humbled
underscore Source
It was on an unsustainable course before the pandemic. The speed and scale with which lockdowns crushed people’s financial lives _______ that. As part of wider reforms to create a fairer, sounder global economy, basic income should become the anchor for a new income-distribution system
underscore Source
Yet in 2015 the country’s score on Transparency International’s index got worse. Dan Hough, a corruption expert at Sussex University, notes that Britain’s score on the Transparency International index declined after the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009, though the excesses had been taking place for decades—and, in the scheme of things, Britain was not especially _______ . It was the exposure, not the activity, that created the perception of corruption
venal Source
A book, “Global Crises, Global Solutions”, containing the full set of papers written for the project is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. ","description":"Corruption enriches the _______, but hurts everyone else.
venal Source
And many are anything but loyal to the state. Some take orders from Iran; others from _______ warlords. It would help if Ayatollah Sistani, who has gone silent of late, told the militias that their mission is over
venal Source
Thanks to its nuclear weapons and plentiful religious zealots, it poses a danger for the world, too. Many, including Mr Khan, blame _______ politicians for Pakistan’s problems. Others argue that Pakistan sits in a uniquely hostile part of the world, between war-torn Afghanistan and implacable India
venal Source
LAST MONTH Svina (“Swine”), a thinly veiled cinematic portrait of Slovakia’s _______ political class, opened to record-breaking crowds. At an election on February 29th Slovakia’s voters proved similarly motivated, turning out in large numbers to kick out Smer, a left-wing party whose 12 almost unbroken years in office had become a byword for corruption and complacency
venal Source
Its younger faces typically have family ties to the old guard. “Party politics is a market for lemons,” says Fernando Haddad, the fresh-faced PT mayor of São Paulo and a rare exception to the dynastic rule, nodding to George Akerlof’s classic analysis of adverse selection in the market for used cars: it attracts the _______ and repels the honest. Consultants who have advised consecutive Congresses agree that each one is feebler than the last
venal Source
History buffs debate whether the moment more closely resembles the rise of an angry, revisionist Japan in the 1930s, or that of Germany when steely ambition led it to war in 1914. A veteran diplomat bleakly suggests that China’s rulers view the West as ill- disciplined, weak and _______ , and are seeking to bring it to heel, like a dog. In Washington and other capitals it is not hard to hear voices suggesting that China is making rash, clumsy mistakes
venal Source
The Silicon Valley streamers are more comfortable with spreadsheets than stardust. But their unwillingness to _______ A-listers also has an economic rationale. The star system, in which actors like Archibald Leach were transformed into idols like Cary Grant, was created by studios to de-risk the financially perilous business of movie-making
venerate Source
That can either mean proximity to God or, in the case of a non-theistic religion like Buddhism, a high spiritual state. In most religions there is an internal tension between the desire of ordinary believers for flesh-and-blood heroes whom they can _______ and the fear among religious authorities that such cults are a distraction. In the world of Islam, that tension is still raging and claiming lives, as it did among the Christians of medieval Europe
venerate Source
In the realm of social, cultural and even diplomatic reality, the veneration of saintly relics has in recent weeks become an even bigger phenomenon than ever in two Orthodox lands, Greece and Russia. Russians are queueing to _______ the relics of Saint Nicholas, a bishop of the fourth century which is remembered in church history as a discreetly generous shepherd of his flock, to whom sailors, travellers and vulnerable women have looked for protection. Russian believers, including the tsars who bore his name, have always a particular fondness for the saint
venerate Source
But there are other consequences that are far less salutary. To _______ influential domestic environmental constituencies, Western political leaders have made far-reaching but non-binding commitments to cut emissions that they almost certainly cannot keep. To justify those commitments politically, even as theatre, those same leaders need to demonstrate that they are demanding similar commitments from emerging economies, notably China and India
appease Source
A semblance of democracy may help keep their subjects quiescent and certainly makes international summits less awkward. Their dream is to create some scope for genuine political competition, the better to _______ the masses and their foreign friends, while retaining control over all important decisions. The generals who run Pakistan and Thailand have attempted to devise such systems, as have the autocrats ruling Cambodia, Russia and Venezuela, among others
appease Source
But few governments have weighed the costs and risks carefully. Many have kept schools shut even as bars and restaurants open, either to _______ teachers’ unions, whose members get paid whether they teach in person or not, or to placate nervous parents. As a result, young brains are being starved of stimulation
appease Source
“WHAT the hell is wrong with this country?” fumed Beatrix von Storch to her 30,000 Twitter followers on December 31st: “Why is the official police page in NRW [North Rhine- Westphalia] tweeting in Arabic?” The MP for the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party detected in the force’s multilingual new-year greeting a bid “to _______ the barbaric, Muslim, rapist hordes of men”. The next day her tweet—and, for 12 hours, her entire account—vanished from Twitter
appease Source
In addition to burning various paper offerings, the devout leave out food to placate the hungry ghosts. Stage performances of Chinese operas and Getai, or live song-and-dance numbers, were common features to _______ the spirits before the pandemic. These are often held outdoors, under a big tent, with at least a front row of empty seats for the ghosts-of-honour, while the living crowd on the back benches
appease Source
IF AT first you don't succeed, cut and cut again. The Greeks have been forced to unveil their third austerity package to _______ the markets, the rating agencies and their fellow euro-zone governments. In what may be a preview of the approach of other governments, it has gone for "easy" rates, raising taxes on consumption (including VAT) and curtting civil service pay and benefits
appease Source
If that share is to grow, self-censorship on LinkedIn may be the price. ■","description":"To operate in the communist country, Microsoft’s professional social network has to _______ censors.
appease Source
It might disempower technology firms, but it would empower regulators. If concentrations of market power should be viewed with suspicion, so should concentrations of regulatory power: they bring the risk of _______ and unaccountable decision-making. In America, its home territory, this debate is predictably partisan: neo-Brandeisians are listened to only by Democrats
arbitrary Source
This theory, devised in the 1970s and known as Susy for short, is the all-containing basket into which particle physics’s eggs have until recently been placed. Of itself, it would eliminate many _______ mathematical assumptions needed for the proper working of what is known as the Standard Model of particle physics. But it is also the vanguard of a deeper hypothesis, string theory, which is intended to synthesise the Standard Model with Einstein’s general theory of relativity
arbitrary Source
Such a softening would help. But it would fail to deal with a more basic flaw with debt limits, which is that they are intrinsically _______ . There is little empirical basis for keeping debts to 60% of GDP, much less to exactly $28
arbitrary Source
Buyers of sex, though, can still be charged with “patronising a prostitute in the third degree”. The language sounds _______ because the law is. Whereas many rich countries have decriminalised the buying or selling of sex (or both), prostitution remains illegal across America, apart from in a few counties in Nevada
archaic Source
He recently learned that before his own ill-starred purchase the seller told his staff that the new boss was rich, and that they should save up their grievances until the deal went through. ","description":"An _______ labour code penalises businesses and workers alike"
archaic Source
css-g6fo13+. e1smrlcj0{margin-top:0;}Many North Korean women outearn their husbands, but still do the choresWomen trade; men do badly paid state jobsBipin Rawat, India’s chief of defence staff, is killed in a helicopter crashHe had been tasked with reforming the country’s _______ armed forcesSubscribeGroup subscriptionsReuse our contentHelp and contact usKeep updatedFacebookInstagramTwitterLinkedInYouTubeRSSPublished since September 1843 to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ” The EconomistAboutAdvertisePress centreStoreThe Economist GroupThe Economist GroupEconomist IntelligenceEconomist ImpactEconomist EventsWorking HereWhich MBA?GMAT TutorGRE TutorExecutive JobsExecutive Education NavigatorExecutive Education: The New Global OrderExecutive Education: Business WritingTerms of UsePrivacyCookie PolicyManage CookiesAccessibilityModern Slavery StatementDo Not Sell My Personal InformationCopyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2021
archaic Source
Such stasis is a big reason why being on the front line does not mean being in the vanguard. Japan’s treatment of women is retrograde, its protection of minority rights weak, its government services _______ and its climate policy dirty. Many institutional frameworks are stuck in the past
archaic Source
This should encourage the growing number of new political parties, like Change UK and new candidates to be worldy-wise in how they approach the process of political reform and change. The Economist: You foresee new international institutions to replace _______ 20th-century ones that are suited for a different time. How would they work? And can countries with such different values (ie, democratic, market-based "Levellers" and state- managed societies and economies, the "Leviathans") really cooperate? Mr O'Sullivan: A lot is made of the Cold War rivalry between communist Russia and America, and now some want to see a clash of civilizations between America and China
archaic Source
The cranium in question was dug up in Harbin in 1933 and is held at Hebei GEO University, in Shijiazhuang. It is 146,000 years old and was originally badged as an _______ form of Homo sapiens. But Ni Xijun and Ji Qiang, who work at the university, disagree
archaic Source
Its elevated price tag covers more than just good looks: wherever you perch it, this aluminium cone will swathe a room in wondrously calibrated sound that proves difficult to trace to a single source. (£1,650/$2,250) Bowers & Wilkins PX headphones Most headphones with a noise-cancelling function trade sonic faithfulness for the (admittedly useful) capacity to tune out the _______ world at the press of a button. With these golden thoroughbreds from Bowers & Wilkins, great sound comes first, impeccable design second, and the capacity to reduce your entourage to mouthing spectres is a bonus extra
clamorous Source
As their perception of the risks the disease poses both to themselves and others begins to fall, seclusion will irk them more. It is also at this point that one can expect calls to restart the economy to become _______ . In Germany, where the curve of the disease has started to flatten, Armin Laschet, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s largest and second-most-covid-afflicted state, has said it should no longer be out of bounds to talk about an exit strategy
clamorous Source
On November 13th Zambia became the sixth country this year to default on its bonds. Eight spend over 30% of their fiscal revenues on interest payments, reckons Fitch, a rating agency, more than in the early 2000s when Bono and other debt-relief campaigners were at their _______ best. Fitch gives 38 sovereigns a rating of B+ or worse, where B denotes a “material” risk of default (see chart 2)
clamorous Source
David Cameron will not—and should not—lose his job over revelations that his family has made use of offshore tax arrangements. But the Panama papers have led to _______ demands that politicians should be required to make their tax returns public. Mr Cameron revealed six years of tax data on April 10th (see article), the first time a British prime minister has done such a thing
clamorous Source
IN A dismal primary season, the enthusiasm and moral purpose of Bernie Sanders’s _______ supporters has been uplifting. Reflected in the vast crowds that have flocked to hear the crotchety senator from Vermont, and the vaster sums he has raised—over $210m so far, mostly in donations of less than $30—it suggests that America’s democracy remains vigorous
clamorous Source
L. Mencken, a 20th-century American wit, “is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence _______ to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. ” Third, he nobbles independent institutions that might get in his way
clamorous Source
L. Mencken, an American journalist, once wrote that “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence _______ to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. ” He could have added that when people have real cause for alarm, they are even keener to be led to safety
clamorous Source
David Marquand, a former British MP and a commentator on Europe, writes: “At the heart of the European project lay an unacknowledged but pervasive ambivalence about politics. In transcending the nation state, the founding fathers were also seeking to transcend—or rather to escape from—the messy, vulgar, _______ irrationality of political life. ” Inspired by the quest for peace, Europe's designers expected their creation to be justified by what the Brussels officials still call “output legitimacy”—that Europeans would accept the EU because it worked
clamorous Source
What is the quest to purify if not more impurity?” (“The Human Stain”, 2000) KEY DECISIONS To mine every last seam of his own humanity in the service of the novel; and, when there were no more seams, to start fracking. His work is thronged with _______ alter egos, led by Nathan Zuckerman. In “Operation Shylock”, there are two characters called Philip Roth
clamorous Source
Cloudy with a _______ of chipsHow the pandemic has changed the weather in the technology industryThe cloud, hardware and competition are gaining in importanceOct 30th 2021SAN FRANCISCOFacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppTHE TECH industry recently appeared to be sitting on cloud nine. One record after another fell when quarterly results were reported three months ago
dearth Source
6bn, in large part because Marvel and others have postponed releases until audiences come back. The _______ of blockbusters is reshaping box-office economics. Six of last year’s top-ten money-makers worldwide were not in English
dearth Source
Dropping out of the labour force is a status symbol for upwardly mobile households, showing they are able to get by on the husband’s earnings alone. But the _______ of working women in India is not simply a reflection of cultural preferences. Many women on the sidelines of the economy are not there by choice
dearth Source
ON JUNE 12TH The Economist’s pages featured an activist investor “honing in on the _______ of energy experience” on a company’s board. A few readers honed in on a solecism: the original phrase is to “home in” on something, like the creatures that find their way back to their nests—that is, they “home”—with surprising precision
dearth Source
For a culture that likes to differentiate between generations of men by number rather than name, it’s surprising that the two Bushes are the only close relations to have made a bequest of the highest office. Their case is _______ . George W appealed to the electorate’s desire for continuity, and perhaps spoke to something in voters who hoped their own less talented sons would prosper
explicable Source
The best companies sometimes prefer discretion to shouting about their merits, or even delay their results. Isn't this irrational, and further evidence of the uselessness of economic theory? Not according to a recent article* in the RAND Journal of Economics, which argues that such behaviour is readily _______ . Rather than assume (as most signalling models do) that there are just two classes of people—above and below average—the authors start with three categories: high, medium and low ability
explicable Source
Nothing they say about the case can be believed. Any peculiarities—such as inconsistencies in Mr Snowden’s public statements, or the fact that he now lives in Moscow as a guest of Russia’s security service, the FSB, are mere side-issues, easily _______ by exigency and urgency. For his foes, nothing Mr Snowden says is trustworthy, whereas statements made by officials are true
explicable Source
But they cannot prove this. Earlier in Italian history, though, there was a clear and _______ crash in happiness in 1848, with the failure of revolutions intended to unite into a single nation what were then half a dozen disparate states. Surprisingly, however, successful unification in the 1860s also saw a fall in happiness
explicable Source
In other countries, historical ceremonies help transcend domestic squabbles. Not in Ireland, stuck in a deep political impasse, only _______ via the feuds of the past. Fine Gael, a centre-right party whose forebears backed the 1921 accord, has just lost control of the legislature after an election in which its vote slumped to 25
explicable Source
In Catalonia, the anger and disquiet at the jailings go well beyond the pro-independence camp. The ruling was “only _______ by the spirit of revenge, and its aim is to humiliate”, said Ada Colau, the left-wing but non-separatist, mayor of Barcelona. Spain’s judiciary, however, is fiercely independent
explicable Source
Since its inception in the early 20th century, management science has been dominated by what Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, two evolutionary psychologists, refer to disparagingly as the standard social science model (SSSM). This assumes that most behavioural differences between individuals are _______ by culture and socialisation, with biology playing at best the softest of second fiddles. Dr Zyphur is part of an insurgency against this idea
explicable Source
Holocaust deniers such as Mr Irving are expert at taking anomalies and contradictions in the historical record and erecting such pyramids of loathsome nonsense upon them. From the gaps (all _______ ) in the surviving evidence about Auschwitz-Birkenau they infer that the gas chambers there were a propaganda invention. And not only that: other details of the Holocaust are invented too
explicable Source
So far the only other big country to conjure up sums on this scale is China (and its huge stimulus keeps on having to be revised downward as the figures are checked). Some of the timidity in Europe is _______ : its generous welfare states have more “automatic stabilisers”, such as payouts to unemployed workers, to support economies in recessions than hard-hearted America does. Even so, the Europeans have hardly impressed with their daring
explicable Source
Oddly, it had only two names on it: the United States and the Czech Republic. The latter was unexpected, but _______ . In April the Czech government revealed that a deadly explosion in 2014 at an ammunition depot in the town of Vrbetice, previously thought accidental, was set off by Russian agents
explicable Source
css-1ehrfcr . _snippet{grid-column:4/-1;}}Do not accuse Nouriel Roubini of _______ | The EconomistDo not accuse Nouriel Roubini of
hyperbole Source
“COMPETITIVE markets by their very nature spawn deception and trickery. ” This is not the _______ of a diehard Marxist, but the contention of two Nobel prizewinners in economics in a new book, “Phishing for Phools”. Economic models tend to assume that people are informed about the decisions they make; in the jargon consumers have “perfect information”
hyperbole Source
IT IS HARDLY _______ to call the cultural fascination with Diana, Princess of Wales, cultish. Nearly a quarter of a century after her death in 1997, the stream of intrigue, betrayal, exploitation, obsession and recrimination seems in no more danger of running dry than it was during her lifetime
hyperbole Source
From June to September they generated almost $11bn in sales, an eight-fold increase on the previous four months, according to DappRadar, a market tracker. What exactly is an NFT? And why are people spending tens of millions of dollars on them? An NFT is a record on a cryptocurrency’s blockchain (an _______ ledger that can record more than just virtual coins) that represents pieces of digital media. Invented a few years ago, it can link not only to art but also to text, videos or bits of code
immutable Source
A few years of stronger earnings growth for poor Americans barely begins to narrow the chasm between them and their rich fellow citizens. Nevertheless, it is proof that ever- widening inequality is not an _______ law of a modern economy. ■
immutable Source
But Mr Mokyr recognises that acquired social codes also influence individual choices, and thus broader economic activity. Culture is not _______ , as those who ascribe countries’ diverging fates to deep-rooted cultural attributes often suggest. It evolves as the ideas and influence of different groups shift
immutable Source
Across all its streaming channels Disney expects more than 300m subscribers by 2024—maybe enough to overtake Netflix, currently on 195m. Disney will take Netflix on more directly via a new service, Star, with a wider range of programming, including a new show starring the _______ Kardashian clan. Two months ago Disney began a corporate restructuring to increase its focus on streaming
indefatigable Source
Netflix has had recent hits with documentaries and reality shows such as “Selling Sunset” and “Floor is Lava”. Disney announced that a new service, Star—to be included with Disney+ in some countries and offered separately elsewhere—will carry a wider range of programming, including a new programme about the _______ Kardashian clan. To help pay for all this the company plans to raise the subscription price of Disney+ by a dollar a month
indefatigable Source
New payment apps and social-media firms with hordes of customers are expanding into e-commerce, and retailers are shifting into online advertising and entertainment. For America’s _______ consumers, and for its workers, the good news is that competition—combined with an almighty shock—have led to a more innovative industry, rather than the end of the world. ■ For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter
indefatigable Source
ObituaryAn Englishman in ParisSteven Spurrier died on March 9thThe wine expert and organiser of the notorious “Judgment of Paris” was 79The uses of angerNawal El- Saadawi died on March 21stThe _______ campaigner for women’s rights in Egypt was 89Closely observed trainsWang Fuchun died on March 13thThe photographer of China’s railways and their passengers was 79The pain of displacementMourid Barghouti died on February 14th
indefatigable Source
Mr Stuart’s descriptions of Glasgow and the robust characters of its working-class districts are realistic and compelling. But the highlight of his writing is dialogue: he has managed to artfully capture the wry, _______ Glaswegian voice in all its various shades of wit, anger and hope. “If you’re going to set a book in Glasgow you need to embrace the language,” Mr Stuart says
indefatigable Source
” And with that, Mr Eastwood saves the day with his beloved handgun. It is a fitting scene for such an _______ supporter of the Second Amendment as Mr Eastwood (he has previously joked that he has “a very strict gun control policy. If there is a gun around, I want to be in control of it”)
indefatigable Source
Last year they had the choice of more than 2,500 different sessions over a week at the shindig, which was called “Re:Invent”. The high point was the keynote featuring AWS’s latest offerings by Andy Jassy, the firm’s _______ boss, who paced the stage for nearly three hours. But those who dare to walk the long city blocks of Las Vegas to the conference venues can connect to the cloud, and thus the mirror worlds, in another way
indefatigable Source
With Morgan Stanley's help, Gucci foiled a takeover attempt by LVMH a couple of years ago. LVMH is casting itself as a de luxe version of Eliot Spitzer, New York state's _______ prosecutor. It regards its success as a blow against investment banks' conflicts of interest between their advisory work for firms and research for investors
indefatigable Source
He may one day draw similar interest from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, for rarely has a failed state escaped political bankruptcy so fast (see article). With a population bigger than Germany's, Bihar still suffers from potholed roads, _______ teachers, apathetic officials, insurgent Maoists, devastating floods, shortages of power, skewed landholdings, caste resentments and an income per head that is only 40% of India's as a whole. And yet, bad as that may sound, Bihar is far better today than it was in November 2005, when Mr Kumar came to power
indolent Source
As a result, despite the laudable efforts made by the dedicated conservationists over the years, the tiger and lion population has been declining. The Indian forest service, itself a relic of the Raj, entrusted with guarding its wildlife, is largely ineffective, _______ , and even indifferent. Aside from the market-based strategies aimed at eradicating wild tiger and lion poaching, a better idea is to employ the tribal villagers living in areas surrounding the forests as guards
indolent Source
Our village newsagent is an aficionado of British and American rock music. Clearly, the French, however far they may be from sophisticated Paris, can hardly be described as _______ . The mystery, then, is that this presidential campaign has so far been so inward-looking
insular Source
Populist, authoritarian European parties of the right or left now enjoy nearly twice as much support as they did in 2000, and are in government or in a ruling coalition in nine countries. So far, Britain’s decision to leave the European Union has been the anti- globalists’ biggest prize: the vote in June to abandon the world’s most successful free- trade club was won by cynically pandering to voters’ _______ instincts, splitting mainstream parties down the middle. News that strengthens the anti-globalisers’ appeal comes almost daily
insular Source
Humiliatingly, the Peronists came third in Santa Cruz, her adopted home province in Patagonia, long a family fief. The election may mark the beginning of the end of kirchnerismo, the politically ductile but economically _______ grouping that Ms Fernández, who was president for eight years after succeeding her husband in 2007, turned into the dominant force within the Peronist movement. She has thwarted Mr Fernández’s inclination to deal with the IMF, to which Argentina owes $43bn
intransigent Source
Three years on, however, Syriza now serves as another warning to some on the left. The parable of Mr Tsipras’s eventual capitulation—his radical government brought to heel by capital markets and an _______ European Union—is seeping into the left’s consciousness. Support for the Syriza government has dwindled in Greece
intransigent Source
In his book “How to Be a Family”, Dan Kois, an American writer, argues that whingeing is actually an expression of naive Utopianism. The true subject of the gripe is not the vegetables that must be eaten or the homework that must be done, but the _______ indifference and unfairness of the universe itself. Parents, says Kois, have largely come to terms with this reality
intransigent Source
As it happens, the BJP won a victory so sweeping that it does not need to rely on the support of minority parties in India’s parliament. But the new government has nonetheless proved even more _______ than the last. In theory, the WTO can dust itself off and start negotiations to revive the deal in September
intransigent Source
Indeed, by splitting the centre-left vote more evenly, the NDP's rise—if sustained—may provide Stephen Harper, the Conservative leader, with the parliamentary majority that has eluded him ever since he became prime minister in 2006. In the ensuing years Canadian politics has become an unusually shrill, partisan and _______ affair. Frequent elections—this is the fourth since 2004—have seen falling voter turnout, while polls show that public trust in politicians is also declining
intransigent Source
■Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hubThis article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline "_______ banking"Reuse this contentThe Trust Project. css-1hnead5{padding-bottom:1
intrepid Source
No problem. The subversion bar has been reset so low by the censorious left that his _______ , observational comedy has never seemed more topical or edgy. Thus the furore stirred by his jokes about transgender politics in the last of those shows, entitled “The Closer”, which was released last week
irreverent Source
“THE only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable,” John Kenneth Galbraith, an _______ economist, once said. Since economic output represents the aggregated activity of billions of people, influenced by forces seen and unseen, it is a wonder forecasters ever get it right
irreverent Source
“We want to promote reading as a hobby for younger generations. ” Traditionalists quake at such _______ handling of the sacred language. And Arab regimes are nervous of the free expression a more liberal approach may inspire
irreverent Source
“It’s much easier to hate people you’ve been around than people you don’t know,” observes Yascha Mounk, a Harvard-educated scholar of populism. Yet Buckley’s _______ conservatism was not rooted in resentment but ideas, and firmly within the democratic tradition. He mocked his teachers to assert the superiority of classical liberalism over their progressivism
irreverent Source
Away With Words: An _______ Tour Through the World of Pun Competitions. By Joe Berkowitz
irreverent Source
Cutting-edge young architects dream of working for him. The sort of architect that conservatives usually _______ , then. In fact, says Ben Southwood, until recently the head of housing at Policy Exchange, a right-leaning think-tank, Mr Barber is “the modernist that traditionalists like”
loathe Source
Now that many companies are reopening their offices and reconfiguring their work arrangements into something hybrid, they are also rethinking their approach to meetings. Love them or (more often) _______ them, powwows are an integral part of modern commerce. Managers must therefore decide which parts of remote experience, if any, they want to keep
loathe Source
Perhaps because they are aware of the futility of their input, fewer than half of the people in a large meeting will bother to speak and at least half of the attendees will at some point check their phones. Part of the problem lies in the paradox that, although workers hate attending meetings, they _______ being excluded even more. Nothing is so likely to induce paranoia than a department meeting to which you are not invited
loathe Source
There are two popular explanations for this mayhem. One is that Europe was always destined to tear Britain apart, since too many Britons _______ the evolution of the common market into a European Union. A second is that Brexit has provided a catalyst for a long-simmering civil war between successful Britain (which is metropolitan and liberal) and left-behind Britain (which is provincial and conservative)
loathe Source
ECONOMISTS _______ energy subsidies. They wreck government budgets—Venezuela’s parlous finances are partly the result of letting citizens buy petrol for a few cents a gallon
loathe Source
It can also seem futile in a system where governance is so poor. Arabs _______ the bribes and wasta, or connections, required to navigate daily life in much of the region. Yet to survive in such a system requires the tacit acceptance of its terms
loathe Source
Productivity growth was lacklustre and the most popular new inventions, the smartphone and social media, did not seem to help much. Their _______ side-effects, such as the creation of powerful monopolies and the pollution of the public square, became painfully apparent. Promising technologies stalled, including self-driving cars, making Silicon Valley’s evangelists look naive
malign Source
Three forces are at work. The first is obviously _______ . Inertia and mission creep make government hard to pare back
malign Source
Both parties on Capitol Hill strike a similar tone. A bill called the Strategic Competition Act passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 21st, promising to “counter the _______ influence of the Chinese Communist Party globally”. Analysts at think-tanks and in the media have written stratagems for containment and elegies for engagement
malign Source
The influence of the new social-justice mindset is now being felt in the media, the Democratic Party and, most recently, businesses and schools. How did this breakout happen? Three things helped prepare the ground: a disaffected student body, an academic theory that was _______ enough to be shaped into a handbook for political activism, and a pliant university administration. First came a new generation of students keenly aware of unsolved social problems and willing to see old-fashioned precepts of academic freedom (such as open debate) as obstacles to progress
malleable Source
In 2020 Travis Scott, a rapper, hosted a virtual concert. The _______ physics of the digital world allowed him to do things no amount of stagecraft could accomplish in reality. His hundred-foot-tall avatar, wreathed in lightning, danced and stomped through the game’s pixellated universe, shaking the ground with every step
malleable Source
LEAD has proved to be such a useful, _______ metal that it turns up everywhere, from water pipes to window flashing and printing type. It went into car batteries, and into additives that gave petrol more vroom
malleable Source
It was a strange kind of revolution; no one talked about it at the time. Despite the _______ titles of many contemporary works—Galileo Galilei wrote the “Two New Sciences”, Johannes Kepler the “New Astronomy” and Francis Bacon the “New Atlantis”—the idea that there had been a scientific revolution in the 17th century did not take hold until the 1930s. Even so, the term has prospered as shorthand for a period of about 150 years that changed the way that people see the world
neophyte Source
On the surface, “Untraceable”is a taut spy thriller with Gothic flourishes. In the present day, Russia sends two agents to Germany to hunt down Kalitin, the self-exiled, Frankenstein-like progenitor of a substance called _______ , in a bid to stop him revealing its lethal secrets to the West. As they prepare to dispatch the scientist with his own invention, flashbacks reveal how Kalitin developed the chemical weapon in a laboratory in a mysterious far-eastern settlement known as “the Island”
neophyte Source
Football managers are asked whether they have “lost the dressing room” (have they looked in the last place they saw it?). You can’t escape sporting _______ s in everyday life, either. British MPs score “political own-goals”, such as snogging a colleague on camera
platitude Source
Bagehot, a column about Britain, is named after one of the finest editors of The Economist: Walter Bagehot (pronounced Bajut), who edited the paper between 1861 and 1877. A British Liberal politician once described Bagehot as someone who "hated dullness, apathy, pomposity, the time-worn phrase, the greasy _______ ". Woodrow Wilson kept a drawing of Bagehot in his study
platitude Source
The Hippocratic Oath holds that there is an art to medicine as well as a science, and that “warmth, sympathy and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug”. That is not just a _______ : the patients of sympathetic physicians have been shown to fare better. As Dr Topol says, it is hard to imagine that a robot could really replace a human doctor
platitude Source
The West is enamoured of the idea that innovation and creativity require free speech, Mr Lee says. Yet China’s growth debunks that _______ . Though the free-flow of ideas may be necessary in the social sciences, in apolitical technologies the Chinese system has already proved to be innovative
platitude Source
THE FORECAST that future wars will be fought over water has been made long enough for it to become both a _______ and subject to doubt. Demand for water has surged because populations have grown and rising prosperity has enabled them to live more water-intensive lives
platitude Source
This is, says Tim Haines, boss of Abingworth, a biotech venture-capital firm, “the golden age of diagnostics”. Bets placed years ago are making the stodgy-sounding, Basel-based company look _______ . Mr Schwan, whose background is in diagnostics, can barely contain his excitement
prescient Source
As for Ms Spears, her fans will eagerly await a comeback if the conservatorship ends. For now, the lyrics to “My Prerogative”, a song she covered, seem uncomfortably _______ : “I don't need permission, make my own decisions / That’s my prerogative”. Editor’s note (September 8th 2021): This article was updated after Mr Spears requested to remove himself from the conservatorship
prescient Source
The committee’s warnings went unheeded. After the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it turned out they had been eerily _______ . The arms race between America and the Soviet Union escalated during the cold war and today rogue states like North Korea threaten peace with their nuclear arsenals
prescient Source
wmba-nav-case-study{display:block !important;} Advertisement feature Case Study Competition 2015 Kerrisdale Capital Investment Case Study Competition Tweet Competition summary Kerrisdale Capital is known for publishing high quality reports on misunderstood and overhyped companies in an effort to correct market misconceptions. As we value independent, evidence-based, _______ thinking, we have sponsored this Investment Case Study Competition to challenge students from the nation's leading universities to find a conventional market view that is demonstrably misguided, and ought to be debunked. Each school in the competition will pick three students to complete the case study
prescient Source
Bids averaged less than $26 an acre, barely above the BLM’s minimum of $25. Mr Trump’s pursuit of energy dominance would then have a characteristically strange postscript: America’s most _______ natural habitat, sold for a song. ■
pristine Source
EVERY FEW weeks from June 1963 until July 1968, Robert Paine, a zoologist, made the journey from Seattle, where he taught at the University of Washington, across Puget Sound to the rocky shores of Mukkaw bay. There, he had found virtually _______ tide pools that teamed with life—limpets, anemones, mussels, seaweeds and purple-and-orange seastars known as Pisaster ochraceus. The unspoiled landscape offered the perfect setting for what was to become a seminal experiment in ecology
pristine Source
Last year, following a change of rules that stretched the retirement age, General Rawat was promoted to chief of staff of India’s combined forces. The army maintains a tradition of keeping a distance from politics that makes it almost unique in its region, but observers have detected a growing tendency for officers to weigh in publicly on civilian matters, and retired soldiers whisper _______ against officers for “cosying up” to politicians. Mr Modi has made a spectacle of his own commander-in-chief role as no other recent prime minister, and also minted electoral gold from pre-election military operations
reproach Source
We are transparent about conflicts of interest (see below). As an anonymous newspaper, we have to be especially beyond _______ . Conflicts of interest The editor-in-chief sets clear rules on conflicts of interest
reproach Source
Palestinians have damaged their cause through decades of indiscriminate violence. Yet their dispossession is a _______ to Israel, which is by far the stronger party and claims to be a model democracy. Israel’s “temporary” occupation has endured for half a century
reproach Source
IN 1962, as Britain pulled slowly out of recession, Harold Macmillan told an audience that he was determined to “prevent two nations developing geographically, a poor north and a rich and overcrowded south”. The price of failure, the Conservative prime minister said, would be that “our successors will _______ us as we
reproach Source
This is largely because Mr Erdogan seeks to stifle most forms of dissent, but also because the legacy of 1915 has made some topics especially taboo. The Turkish state and army are beyond _______ ; suggestions to the contrary border on treason. Mr Dink believed Turkey needed to become a fully-fledged democracy before it could face up to the genocide
reproach Source
Many people became disillusioned with the workings of their political systems—particularly when governments bailed out bankers with taxpayers’ money and then stood by impotently as financiers continued to pay themselves huge bonuses. The crisis turned the Washington consensus into a term of _______ across the emerging world. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party has broken the democratic world’s monopoly on economic progress
reproach Source
Or, there could be coalitions that include one or more Quad members, but not all of them. For example, Taiwan, whose bona fides as a vibrant democracy in a hostile neighborhood are beyond _______ , fully merits inclusion in an Indo-Pacific “variable geometry” (that is, allowing multiple overlapping efforts to take place at different speeds). There is no plausible rationale to give China in effect a veto over an expanded role for the manifestly independent island that Douglas MacArthur called an “unsinkable aircraft- carrier”
reproach Source
Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin held a two-hour video conference to discuss a huge build-up of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine. Mr Biden vowed to impose _______ economic sanctions if Russia were to invade Ukraine again. These might include blocking Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline
robust Source
These Mittelstand firms, which often operate in specific niches, are a peculiar feature of the industrial landscape. The area round Cloppenburg also offers less _______ work in the form of meat-processing plants, which attract transient eastern European workers. Hoyerswerda has no such luck
salubrious Source
Moreover, the lot of the poor has been improving at a phenomenal rate. Over the decade to 2005, the most recent years for which data are available, life expectancy for boys born in the least _______ neighbourhoods has rocketed by 2. 7 years to more than 75 years
salubrious Source
In March the billionaire founder of Kakao, which runs the country’s most successful messaging app and a slew of other digital services, promised to give away half his wealth for charitable causes, the second Korean tycoon to make that pledge. Now he is making headlines for some less _______ reasons. Antitrust officials have reportedly set their sights on his private holding company for allegedly failing to report properly on its shareholders and affiliates
salubrious Source
In the debate over health-care reform, you'd think "bipartisan" was the most positive adjective one could ascribe to a bill. Better than, say, "effective", " _______ ", "cost- saving", or "comprehensive". While it is no doubt good to get input from all sides on an issue as complicated as health care, should bipartisanship really be the primary goal of the reform effort? Does a bill become more effective if it attracts one, two or ten votes from the opposing party? As for a measure's "legitimacy", isn't that determined by its effectiveness in the long run? (Just look at Medicare
salubrious Source
Bill Browder, the firm’s founder and Magnitsky’s employer, has worked since to expose the scam. His lobbying has led several countries, including America and Britain, to pass “Magnitsky laws” that _______ foreign officials who commit human-rights abuses or steal money. An EU-wide version was adopted on December 7th
sanction Source
Used to thinking about strategy and hard power, he warned that America is dealing poorly with its most complex array of threats since the cold war—from Iran and Russia to the novel coronavirus. But he also spoke of a much less visible threat: how, through its aggressive use of economic _______ s, America is misusing its clout as the predominant financial power, thereby pushing allies and foes alike towards building a separate financial architecture. “I’m not sure of the decider-in-chief’s appreciation for how the financial system works,” he said
sanction Source
But the likelier aim was to hobble the efforts of Joe Biden, America’s president-elect, to resuscitate the nuclear deal signed between Iran and six world powers in 2015. Under the deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme and open itself up to rigorous inspections in return for the lifting of international _______ s. President Donald Trump called it the “worst deal ever”, pulled America out of it in 2018 and has lashed Iran with
sanction Source
She produced just three collections during her lifetime. She was _______ , pernickety, quietly determined; she would work on poems for years. Her letters—models of gentle, hesitant statement—have something of those same qualities of tentativeness, restraint and minute attention
sedulous Source
“MODERN MONETARY THEORY” sounds like the subject of a lecture destined to put undergraduates to sleep. But among macroeconomists MMT is far from _______ . Stephanie Kelton, a leading MMT scholar at Stony Brook University, has advised Bernie Sanders, a senator and presidential candidate
soporific Source
Disagreements on panels are rare. A _______ consensus is the norm. Admitting that the EU’s policy in the Indo-Pacific barely matters would send its authors, and the assembled wonks who pored over it, into an existential tailspin
soporific Source
As the sun burns high in the sky people retreat to their homes, save for a few men lying in the shade of colonial-era walkways, chewing qat leaves that bring on a hazy high. In the _______ heat you would be forgiven for thinking that time had forgotten the New Jersey-sized nation. Yet its quiet stability within the volatile Horn of Africa has made the country of just 875,000 people a hub for the world’s superpowers
soporific Source
The weeks dragged on and negotiations appeared fruitless. Yet in the usually _______ month of August, Mr Biden finds that his pipe dream might in fact yield some actual pipes, plus extra sending on the safety net and climate change too. On August 10th the Senate passed a bipartisan infrastructure package spanning 2,700 pages, which contains plans to spend $550bn, or 2
soporific Source
Mr Hirschman overstated his case. Plenty of evidence suggests that choice can act as an energiser, not a _______ . The most comprehensive study of school choice, in Sweden in 1988-2009, by Anders Bohlmark and Mikael Lindahl, found that “free schools” (private schools that are paid for by the state) were not only good for their own pupils but also forced ordinary state schools to shape up
soporific Source
ON A RECENT weekend several hundred academics and lawyers gathered in a hotel ballroom in Shenzhen for a discussion on “Innovation, inclusion and order”, an event jointly organised by the law schools at Peking, Oxford and Stanford universities. Legal conferences can be _______ , especially in China, and a scholar from Beijing duly set the tone by asserting that “order is important in the market. ” But one of the local speakers livened things up by delivering a surprisingly stout defence of disruptive innovation
soporific Source
The blind fury unleashed shows that its reputational problems have got out of hand. Some of this week’s criticism was _______ . Reports highlighted internal research showing that Instagram, Facebook’s photo-sharing app, makes one in five American teenagers feel worse about themselves
tendentious Source
But the swagger that lies behind China’s claims to be “an extensive, whole-process socialist democracy”, to quote Mr Qin’s clunky phrase, is growing. That confident talk of Chinese-style democracy rests on some _______ claims about the extent to which the public is consulted about new policies, and about the legitimacy that the party draws from much-vaunted successes, from controlling covid within China’s borders to managing decades of economic growth. Describing how governments earn mandates to rule, political scientists distinguish between input legitimacy (eg, an election victory), and output or performance legitimacy (ie, successful policies)
tendentious Source
It received valid criticism, too: some noted that the setting, an elite private school, is a rarefied world few Jordanians experience. Many complaints were of the more _______ sort, though. Saleh al-Armouti, an MP, asked the prime minister why the authorities had granted a licence for a show that “spreads moral and educational decadence”
tendentious Source
Although ostensibly aimed at hateful or defamatory speech, he believes that the German authorities are blurring the boundary between statements that would in any case be illegal and a dangerously ill-defined concept of fake news. Italian lawmakers, he notes, have been mulling a bill that would punish media outlets of all kinds for “fake, exaggerated or _______ news regarding data or facts that are manifestly false or unproven. ” But how can anyone define what “
tendentious Source
I suspect that Mr Richwine may have been able to survive either controversy taken in isolation. Had he not just argued, in an extremely _______ fashion, that Hispanic immigrants are, on the whole, parasites, he might have endured public criticism of his dissertation. Had he not in his dissertation argued that Hispanic immigration ought to be limited on grounds of inferior Hispanic intelligence, he would have endured the firestorm over the risible Heritage immigration study, as Mr Rector did
tendentious Source
” This, surely, was Hillary Clinton’s mistake in fighting Donald Trump in 2016, hence her unfortunate reference to the “deplorables”, those most likely to vote for Mr Trump. Likewise, in Britain the campaign to remain in the EU in the lead-up to the referendum in 2016 relied entirely on _______ economic forecasting at the expense of any emotional appeal to a shared European future. The Brexit campaign was the exact opposite, relying almost exclusively on appeals to “feelings” of nostalgia and patriotism
tendentious Source
In the end, Mr Moore fails to produce a convincing riposte to the argument that capitalism, though prone to the occasional spectacular bust, is the economic system best able to correct its own excesses. ","description":"Another _______ take-down from the showman","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
tendentious Source
GHOTI and tchoghs may not immediately strike readers as staples of the British diet; and even those most enamoured of written English's idiosyncrasies may wince at this _______ rendering of “fish and chips”. Yet the spelling, easily derived from other words*, highlights the shortcomings of English orthography
tendentious Source
Such pressures have, in some instances, exploded into political disorder. Pandemics expose and _______ pre-existing inequalities, leading those on the wrong side of the bargain to look for redress. Ebola, in 2013-16, increased civil violence in West Africa by 40%, according to one study
accentuate Source
Nonetheless a recent paper from economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests that slums are often traps rather than springboards. Economists have tended to _______ the good side of slums. By offering a toehold for rural migrants seeking their fortune in cities, they are thought to foster upward mobility
accentuate Source
Li Keqiang, China’s prime minister, revelled in the signing, calling RCEP “a victory of multilateralism and free trade” and, more lyrically, “a ray of light and hope amid the clouds”. It will _______ a regional tilt in China’s trade. A pattern dominated by supply chains for manufactured goods that stretched across various Asian countries before being exported to the West is changing
accentuate Source
LIKE OTHER crises before it, covid-19 seems destined to _______ troublesome features of the world economy. Take global imbalances
accentuate Source
Keep calm and carry on. _______ the positive. A related motivation must surely be to avoid a staple of Chinese economic warfare: consumer boycotts
accentuate Source
Those stuck inside are desperate for company. On YouTube average daily views of videos including “with me” in the title— _______ baking, studying and decluttering are all available—have increased by 600% since March 15th compared with the rest of the year. Last week DJ D-Nice, an American disc jockey, drew over 100,000 virtual partygoers to his “Club Quarantine” on Instagram Live
convivial Source
The best way to navigate disruptive change in a divided world is through a universal commitment to individual dignity, open markets and limited government. Yet a resurgent China sneers at liberalism for being selfish, _______ and unstable. At home, populists on the right and left rage at liberalism for its supposed elitism and privilege
decadent Source
THE MODERN Conservative Party has an emotional range of just two notes: hubris and panic. Before the Chesham and Amersham by-election on June 17th, it was boasting that the entire country, apart from _______ cities, would soon be painted Tory blue. After the vote, which saw a Conservative majority of more than 16,000 flip to a Liberal Democratic one of more than 8,000, it is contemplating ruin as long-time Tory voters in the shires flee horrors such as new high-speed rail links and houses, and northerners briefly attracted by Brexit return to the Labour fold
decadent Source
Thompson covered Richard Nixon’s last days at the White House. For all the excitement of her day job, she would often find herself visiting the Las Palmas newsstand in Los Angeles to pour over glossy magazines full of _______ images by photographers such as Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton. She saw parallels between the types of images they produced and the work she was doing with rock singers on tour
decadent Source
Churchill recalled with disgust the Oxford Union debate in 1933 that had carried the motion, “This House refuses to fight for King and country. ” As he noted: “It was easy to laugh off such an episode in England, but in Germany, in Russia, in Italy, in Japan, the idea of a _______ , degenerate Britain took deep root and swayed many calculations. ” This of course is precisely how China’s new breed of “wolf-warrior” diplomats and nationalist intellectuals regard America today
decadent Source
Since its publication on January 4th, 800,000 copies of the new book have been sold in the French-speaking world. The fascination with Mr Houellebecq is partly to do with the dishevelled chain-smoking figure himself, who embodies a _______ ennui that the French admire, yet who repels them at the same time. With a taste for provocation and loathing of political correctness, he once called Islam “the stupidest religion”
decadent Source
To Europeans, American superiority was ultimately fine, since it too was a capitalist democracy. _______ Europe had the option of matching American wealth and power, but preferred a life of puny armies, long holidays and fat welfare states. China offers no such comfort
decadent Source
IT IS 2030, and a Chinese university lecturer is explaining how a _______ America went the way of the British and Roman empires. Ruinous economic policies led to crippling debt, much of it owned by China
decadent Source
Nobody knows how many billions of dollars cybercrime costs businesses. But pretty much everyone has come to believe that China is the most _______ offender. America is not an innocent in the world of cyber-spying
egregious Source
Most shares are owned by professional investors who work for big fund-management groups and are well paid themselves. They have little incentive to demand big changes in pay structure, unless salaries look particularly _______ . The underlying investors—ordinary savers—have not always done so well
egregious Source
One casino tycoon with close links to Huarong was captured in Cambodia. Its former chairman, Lai Xiaomin, was put to death in January for what a Chinese court called _______ financial crimes and bigamy. Until recently the company proved much better at hiding its debt and disguising losses
egregious Source
” For years most executives of global sporting leagues, as well as athletes with high profiles in China, have strained to avoid offending Chinese officials lest they lose access to a lucrative market. But as China’s human-rights abuses have become more _______ , the reputational risk of keeping quiet has grown. In November the International Olympic Committee held a video call with Ms Peng and gave a sunny assessment of her well- being
egregious Source
Global Trade Alert (GTA), a watchdog, recorded 202 export restrictions on medical supplies and personal-protective equipment between January and September 2020. Members’ failure to alert the WTO of their actions was more _______ . Bernard Hoekman of the European University Institute calculated that over a similar period GTA recorded more than twice the number of trade measures reported to the WTO
egregious Source
“I am mindful that, having no constituency, no purse and no sword,” said the acting chief justice, Sisi Khampepe, “the judiciary must rely on moral authority to fulfil its functions. ” She went on to sentence Mr Zuma to 15 months in prison for his “ _______ ” and “aggravated” contempt of court and his “scurrilous, unfounded attacks” on judges. The former president has until July 4th to hand himself in
egregious Source
Many people wrongly assume that a red notice stems from a thorough investigation by an international body, rather than, say, a despot’s secret police. Interpol staff are trying harder to weed out the most _______ requests. Reportedly, Turkish officials attempted to upload the names of 60,000 Gulenists onto Interpol’s database, but were rebuffed
egregious Source
In practice, sunsets have morphed into a legislative device that serves almost the exact opposite purpose: a way to mask policy costs. The Build Back Better bill, Joe Biden’s signature social-spending package, is the latest and most _______ case. The headline cost of the bill, which passed the House on November 19th but faces a bumpy path in the Senate, is roughly $2trn over a decade
egregious Source
Their systems prioritise content that triggers users, not informs or unites them. Though they remove many of the most _______ accounts, their actions do not match the scale of the problem. And they are utterly ineffective at limiting person-to-person sharing once falsehoods have entered the bloodstream of their networks
egregious Source
The Steerable Electro-Evanescent Optical Refractor (SEEOR), as the company dubs its invention, sends the laser beam along a glass waveguide that has a special liquid-crystal cladding. Most of the light passes through the glass but part of it, known as the _______ wave, skims the surface of the liquid crystal. And that allows the whole beam to be manipulated
evanescent Source
A report this month by a working group drawn from America’s Treasury, the Federal Reserve and other regulatory bodies provides an example. It blames _______ liquidity for the dramatic jumps in bond yields in, for instance, March 2020 and in February this year. It puts this down to a change in market structure
evanescent Source
In Britain, Currys PC World, an electrical-goods shop, and Zoopla, a property website, have abandoned soulless styles for more characterful characters. To sell a washing machine these days, you need _______ descenders on your “g”s. The latest big name to follow suit is O2, a telecoms company
flamboyant Source
The Alibaba investigation is the first of its kind into Chinese e-commerce. Its timing—a month after authorities suddenly halted the $37bn initial public offering (IPO) of Alibaba’s fintech affiliate, Ant Group, and days before regulators told Ant to curtail lending and wealth-management activities—hints it is China’s way of chastening the two firms’ _______ co-founder, Jack Ma. That could be
flamboyant Source
He was also an extraordinarily successful spy, an agent of the French king’s personal intelligence agency, the Secret du roi. Sent to London in 1775 to negotiate a deal with a rogue French agent—a _______ transvestite chevalier called d’Eon de Beaumont—Beaumarchais reported to Louis XVI’s foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, that pessimism was in the air over the war to keep the American colonies. To hasten Britain’s defeat, Vergennes authorised Beaumarchais to set up a front company to supply arms to the American rebels
flamboyant Source
The future looked bleak. Adam Neumann, its _______ founder, was discredited and ousted shortly thereafter. It suffered a nasty falling-out with Japan’s Softbank, its deep- pocketed backer
flamboyant Source
Investors balked; the offering was shelved. WeWork’s _______ chief executive, Adam Neumann, was replaced by Sandeep Mathrani, a real-estate veteran who cut costs. Now it is trying again
flamboyant Source
Yet in a recent interview with Quartz, an online publication, he expressed scepticism about society’s ability to manage rapid automation. To _______ a social crisis, he mused, governments should consider a tax on robots; if automation slows as a result, so much the better. It is an intriguing if impracticable idea, which reveals a lot about the challenge of automation
forestall Source
After promising to maintain the value of their shares at a dollar, money-market funds blew up in 2008 in the global financial crisis. American taxpayers stepped in to _______ a fire sale of their assets and a crash in the market for commercial paper, on which the real economy depends. A collapse of stablecoins could look similar
forestall Source
At the individual level, if your company is actively lobbying against climate legislation or taxes to fund environmental goals, don’t let your ESG work be a marketing foil for irresponsible leadership. Young employees in particular must lead this charge: tell your chief executives that it’s not acceptable to feign loyalty to saving the planet while misleading the public and pressing politicians to _______ aggressive climate action. The idea of socially-responsible investing has evolved slowly over decades
forestall Source
When Fed policy seemed to be set in stone, investors’ evolving views on these puzzles were straightforwardly reflected in their expectations for growth and inflation. Now they must also weigh the possibility that the Fed may step in to _______ overheating by raising rates sooner. The Fed’s shift appears to have been prompted by the realisation that inflation next year will be higher than it had expected
forestall Source
But a strength of his analysis is his mastery of both technical details and big-picture trade-offs. He fears CBDCs may be vulnerable to hacking and bugs; they could crush private innovation and cause the instability they are meant to _______ . Meanwhile, central banks’ new responsibilities may erode their independence
forestall Source
What is more, a merely illiquid firm can quickly become a truly insolvent one as its earnings stagnate while its debt commitments expand. A rise in corporate and personal bankruptcies, long after the apparently acute phase of the pandemic, seems likely, though governments are trying to _______ them. In the past fortnight bankruptcies in China started to rise relative to last year
forestall Source
No one went to jail. Whereas explicit collusion over prices is illegal, tacit collusion is not—though trustbusters attempt to _______ it by, for instance, blocking mergers that leave markets at the mercy of a handful of suppliers. But what if the conditions that foster such tacit collusion were to become widespread? A recent book* by Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke, two experts on competition policy, argues this is all too likely
forestall Source
AFTER MONTHS of delay, what is one night more? On November 18th Democrats in America’s House of Representatives were preparing to pass the Build Back Better Act—an enormous climate and social-policy spending package that will define Joe Biden’s legacy—more than six months after it was proposed. Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House, decided to _______ the inevitable by staging a one-man, eight-and-a-half-hour stemwinder (a privilege only afforded to the two party leaders). A few hours after Mr McCarthy’s discursions on, among other things, the cost of a Tesla car, George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River and the production method for baby carrots concluded, around 5am, Democrats dutifully passed the legislation on a party-line vote
forestall Source
Some Europeans boasted that this was “strategic autonomy” in action. For all the grumbles, Mr Biden’s team does not expect the deal to _______ deeper transatlantic co- operation on China, including at the WTO. But a more focused American approach could leave Europeans with hard choices
forestall Source
Even France, long sceptical of foreign investment, has seen Chinese buyers hoover up Bordeaux vineyards. What does China want, ultimately? The supreme goal, of which its leadership never loses sight, is for China to become an advanced, modern superpower that others dare not _______ . Its idea of Europe is as a wealthy, innovative region that could help it reach that goal
gainsay Source
“WE KNOW of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality. ” Far be it from your humble correspondent to _______ the late Thomas Macaulay, but as the row about the expense claims of Britain's MPs drags on into its second month, the politicians are giving the public a run for their money. The details of the scandal are out of all proportion to its actual effects
gainsay Source
In its final report, the study group took at face value claims there was no credible evidence that live mammals were sold there in 2019. A lot of eyewitness accounts _______ that; so does a study published in Scientific Reports, a journal, this summer. One report and no more The Scientific Reports paper found that 18 species of mammal had been for sale in Wuhan between May 2017 and November 2019; gunshot wounds and trapping injuries suggested that almost a third of them were taken from the wild
gainsay Source
2 billion) across the entire range of outsourcing offerings, which also include all kinds of information-technology services. Yet given the extraordinary growth so far it is hard to _______ the Philippines' own projection that its BPO industry could add another 700,000 or so jobs by 2016 and generate revenues of $25 billion. At that point, the industry would make up nearly a tenth of GDP and be bigger in value than the remittances from the 10m Filipinos working overseas
gainsay Source
Moreover, a mastery of languages is not the only accomplishment that every child might like to have when leaving school, or even the only one that society might like to bestow upon those it tries to educate. Physics and chemistry are similarly going out of fashion in Britain, and who is to _______ the value of knowing the laws of thermodynamics and the place of polonium in the periodic table? A little knowledge of history would be enormously beneficial, especially to would-be politicians who believe they can sort out Afghanistan or the Middle East with a simple invasion or two. And media studies, too Others would benefit hugely if they left school able to carry out some basic plumbing, or to fix their computer, or merely to fill in a tax return or benefits form
gainsay Source
Mr Orban loves poking the bien-pensants of Brussels with his celebration of “illiberal” values and his vows to protect Europe from criminal Muslim hordes. But he also makes points that officials struggle to _______ . Hungary, reckons Mr Orban, is the victim of incompetence and bad decisions at both ends of Europe’s main migratory route
gainsay Source
Historians have queued up to exonerate her. She was too young to know better, let alone _______ her wicked uncle. And anyway at this time Hitler was still a bit of a Chaplinesque joke in Britain, so the family might have been mocking the newly installed Führer
gainsay Source
Third parties have been tried and failed over and over in American history; the first- past-the-post system of congressional elections ensures they never get very far. "The decay of American politics," Mr Fukuyama writes, "will probably continue until some external shock comes along to catalyze a true reform coalition and _______ it into action. " It's interesting to imagine what kind of shock could lead to the founding of a new, viable American political party, or perhaps the breakup of one of the old ones
galvanize Source
Despite differing values and their historical antagonisms, Commonwealth countries have an unparalleled depth of experience in cooperation over migration, and they have much to teach other regions where migration is now wrongly treated as a crisis. Migration is a defining issue that could _______ the energy and expertise of the Commonwealth and perhaps even demonstrate its ongoing relevance as an organisation. And so, before asking what the Commonwealth is for, it is worth reconsidering what it is
galvanize Source
At least 19 of China’s provinces, including many of its industrial heartlands, have suffered power shortages in recent weeks, with some unplanned and _______ cuts. In many parts of the country, the high price of coal is to blame
indiscriminate Source
EARLIER THIS year Microsoft found that a group of hackers, which it called Hafnium, had broken into hundreds of thousands of computer servers around the world that were running the firm’s mail and calendar software. The cyber-thieves were stealing emails, documents and other data from small businesses, NGOs and local governments in an enormous, seemingly _______ , cyber-attack. In July America, Britain, other members of NATO and the European Union all blamed China
indiscriminate Source
A bipartisan agreement now will raise the odds that the economy will get the right amount of support at the right time. ■","description":"America’s economy needs targeted relief more than _______ spending
indiscriminate Source
Most important, it would fix America’s campaign-finance laws to rid its political system of corporate capture at both state and federal level. Doing all this would achieve much more than an _______ attack on the rich—and without the associated damage. By all means, correct policy failures
indiscriminate Source
On January 8th Twitter, a social network, announced that it was “permanently suspending” President Donald Trump's account. Viewed in isolation, the two tweets that led to the ban were, by Mr Trump’s standards, fairly _______ . But Twitter said it had taken its decision in the wake of the riot at America’s Congress on January 6th, in which five people died as legislators’ offices were ransacked by a crowd of Mr Trump's supporters after Mr Trump had encouraged them to march on the Capitol
innocuous Source
During the past month YouGov, a pollster, surveyed people in five Western countries about whether a series of behaviours by men towards women constitute sexual harassment. The questions ranged from actions that are often _______ , such as asking to go for a drink, to overt demands for sex. The range of views was vast
innocuous Source
95. AS A supplier of _______ relief, the Great Depression seems an unlikely candidate. But when it turns up on page 363 of Walter Scheidel’s “The Great Leveler” it feels oddly welcome
momentary Source
He could handle the pitch-black mornings, having tried a shorter version of this experiment before. So when Winston awoke and got over the _______ panic – that, no, he had not lost his vision overnight – it was easy and agreeable to drift back into a dark- drugged second sleep. When he did get out of bed, feeling his way to the kitchenette and the fridge, breakfast took longer than usual to prepare and consume
momentary Source
The task of piloting a fully laden 44-tonne HGV on Britain’s roads comes with a huge responsibility for personal and public safety. A _______ slip in concentration can have fatal consequences. Drivers are accountable for every minute of their working day under an overbearing system of regulation and compliance
momentary Source
Why, I plead silently, should I have to do this? Why should I have to do anything ever again? We commonly use the term “burnout” to describe the state of exhaustion suffered by the likes of Steve. It occurs when we find ourselves taken over by this internal protest against all the demands assailing us from within and without, when the _______ resistance to picking up a glass becomes an ongoing state of mind. Burnout didn’t become a recognised diagnosis until 1974, when the German-American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger applied the term to the increasing number of cases he encountered of “physical or mental collapse caused by overwork or stress”
momentary Source
At such times the president's security ought not to be the overriding priority: exercising leadership, and being seen to do so, must come first. But if it is fair to call that a _______ mis-step, it was soon put right. The commander-in-chief was quickly seen to take command, and then acquitted himself with credit
momentary Source
As a modest, regular, equal payment to all individuals, regardless of income or employment, basic income is fair, non-discriminatory and comprehensive—unlike the emergency safety-net schemes that governments have scrambled to put in place. However, some converts see basic income as a strictly temporary measure; a balm for _______ pain to be placed back in the medicine cabinet when normality returns. This grossly misunderstands both the nature of the crisis and the importance of basic income
momentary Source
Their inhabitants become foreigners in their own land, often choosing to go elsewhere. The city is emptied of permanent residences and falls prey to the _______ passions of passers-by. Similar processes happen to states that turn into faint replicas of what they used to be; no wonder there is a growing desire to bring back some of the normative, economic, political, and cultural values lost in the age of hyperglobalism
momentary Source
Mr Sanders has taken his preference for speechifying to the big time. With only _______ interruptions, he has spent five years campaigning to be president—ever since he decided to play spoiler to Hillary Clinton’s coronation. America’s most famous socialist is running for the presidency on more or less the same set of problems he has emphasised for all those many years (plus a more recent focus on climate change)
momentary Source
Introduce the right two particles to each other and they pop back into it. All this seems worlds away from the _______ reality of traders tapping out buy and sell orders on their keyboards. But on a closer look finance bears a striking resemblance to the quantum world
mundane Source
One might assume that the success of these privileged protégés can be chalked up to their mentors’ innate brilliance. But the truth is more _______ . The authors emphasise the importance of pursuing the most promising ideas, spotting hidden gems in messy results and collaborating with other scientists
mundane Source
I long for the obvious things, of course – dinners in decent restaurants, the cut-and- thrust of discussion freed from the dead hand of Zoom, travel to exotic places. But I yearn for some of the more _______ warp and weft of normal life, too. I’m loth to admit it, but I miss many of the things that used to make me angry
mundane Source
The physical dominance of banks symbolises their importance. Most people interact with their banks for such _______ transactions as buying groceries. Companies pay their workers, suppliers and landlords through banks
mundane Source
Today Adobe’s two original software businesses have morphed into two subscription-based “clouds”. The smaller “Document” cloud provides services ranging from the _______ (converting a PDF into a word-processing file) to the mission-critical (managing the digital documents of government agencies). All have seen a boom during the pandemic- induced shift to remote work
mundane Source
Preaching the virtues of authenticity and leaders serving their workers may be exhilarating. But improving the quality of leadership requires careful attention to the _______ things of business life, such as getting the structure of incentives right, strengthening the corporate culture and improving the quality of boards.
mundane Source
Understandable, but still regrettable. Some reasons for that are _______ . Your columnist, a guest female Bartleby, finds that the office offers a welcome break from the never-ending duties of housekeeping and parenting
mundane Source
But King Abdullah chooses Jordan’s prime ministers—and he has picked 13 of them, since he ascended the throne in 1999. He has sidelined the opposition, from _______ Islamists to pesky unions. Elections are rigged against those inclined to criticise the government
nettlesome Source
“My public writing in support of a politics that tries to honour constitutional values of freedom and equal respect for all citizens is perceived to carry risks for the university,” he said in his resignation letter. It is not just _______ politicians that the BJP finds ways to sideline. ■
nettlesome Source
That means losses have to exceed 50% of the fund’s net asset value before investors in the third tranche suffer any harm. In a similar vein GuarantCo, which is backed by aid agencies, helps make investments in infrastructure in poor countries bankable by taking on the most _______ risks. For every dollar it invests it has attracted $13
nettlesome Source
AsiaBanyanSouth Korea's _______ historyRetweeting the scene of a crimeTwitter opens a new avenue to South Korea's hotheaded politicians. Fools rush inMay 25th 2011by D
nettlesome Source
economist. com/books-and-arts/2003/02/27/_______","displayLink":"www. economist
nettlesome Source
When Michael Moore won the 2004 prize for “Fahrenheit 9/11”, his anti-George Bush documentary, he got a 20-minute standing ovation. In recent years, the gong has often gone to films that grasp _______ subjects, such as Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (abortion) or Ken Loach’s “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” (Irish independence). Yet, judging by the near-unanimous critical approval, “Adèle” has married both political importance and artistic merit
nettlesome Source
Marshall was once horrified to see him in a Norfolk jacket with holes in both elbows: “So bad for the economics tripos!” Whatever his sartorial shortcomings, Pigou’s academic brilliance made him an obvious heir to Marshall. And as the author of “The Economics of Welfare”, he furthered Marshall’s cause by helping economists turn _______ political controversies into technical problems. Before he came along, decisions to meddle in markets were seen as helping one constituency over another, at the cost of inefficiency
nettlesome Source
Their mission has been to get the world vaccinated, save lives and resurrect the global economy. But oddly, the policies that enabled firms to produce lifesaving technologies at historic speeds are now under attack—with some organisations and countries pushing to _______ the very intellectual property protections that made the innovations possible. India and South Africa have petitioned the World Trade Organisation for a waiver that will allow countries to force the transfer of all relevant technology, intellectual property and know-how on covid-19 vaccines
nullify Source
As a helpful admiral explains, this particular ray gun “not only makes the United States invincible in war, but in so doing promises to become the greatest force for world peace ever discovered”. In 1983 the actor who starred in that film as secret agent “Brass” Bancroft, Ronald Reagan, echoed the admiral’s conflation of an indomitable America with world peace in a presidential address which called on the country’s scientists to create weapons that could _______ a nuclear attack. This time round, though, there was no need to make up a new name for the sort of ray guns required
nullify Source
When John C. Calhoun, a senator from South Carolina, was pushing the case for his home state to have the freedom to _______ federal laws that might grant African-Americans rights, he held up Poland’s liberum veto as an example to follow. Few others took the same lesson
nullify Source
By retaining control over the foundation, Vienna was “in effect perpetuating the Nazi Aryanisation programme”, says his court filing. Mr Hoguet also wants to _______ the sale in 2002 of the Maria Theresa Schlössl, a baroque palace that was one of the world’s earliest psychiatric hospitals—which, he claims, the city sold to itself at a “grossly undervalued” price. And he aims to
nullify Source
Sportswear brands such as Adidas and Puma began paying competitors to wear their goods. Western countries saw ending amateurism as a way to _______ the methods of Eastern Bloc regimes. (The Economist argued, in August 1980, that only full professionalisation would stop sport from falling “into communist hands”
nullify Source
Chief Justice Roberts had harsher words for Texas than his conservative colleagues. SB 8 “effectively chill[s] the provision of abortions in Texas” and was rigged to “ _______ this court’s rulings”. If state legislatures can “annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments”, his concurrence read, “the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery”
nullify Source
But those countries were already more democratic than Uganda. To _______ the result, Mr Wine would have to prove not only that there were flaws in the process, but also that they substantially affected the outcome. The relative quiet on voting day may lull monitors from the African Union into declaring the election free and fair
nullify Source
ENTERING TO Bruce Springsteen’s “We Take Care of Our Own”, as his friend Barack Obama used to, Joe Biden performed a dress rehearsal for his long-awaited entry to the Democratic primary in Washington, DC, earlier this month. His audience, burly delegates of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, were the sort of working-class voters the 76-year-old former vice-president is counting on to _______ the hard-left. He duly regaled them with familiar lines about Scranton, the Pennsylvanian mining-town his family fled almost seven decades ago
nullify Source
No matter how profitable and defensible, SAA has decided that trophy kill cargo is bad business. It wants to _______ a potential storm of bad publicity before it arrives. The embargo may be legally expedient too
nullify Source
They might work more efficiently together, for example. In business, trust might _______ the need for complicated contracts, and thus save on lawyers' fees. You might expect that America, which has such a successful economy, had social capital in shedloads
obviate Source
The protesters pointed fingers at a pair of multinational firms close to Mr Modi, anticipating that they would have become the greatest beneficiaries of the reforms. The farmers also reasoned that new buyers, big or small, would _______ the mandis, wiping out even the most basic protections—like keeping fraudsters off the buying lot. “When markets are imperfect,” Ms Krishnamurthy observes, “deregulation tends to exacerbate inequalities
obviate Source
To repel migrants, it favours a naval blockade. To _______ the need for immigrant labour in the future, it offers “the mightiest plan in the history of Italy for support of the family and the birth rate”. The FdI would also criminalise the spreading of Islamist ideas, ban the use of foreign terms in official documents and provide state aid for Italian goods in contravention of the spirit and possibly the letter of EU law
obviate Source
The CPS’s proposed solution is fixed-rate 25-year mortgages with a loan-to-value ratio of 95%. Fixing the rate for the whole term would _______ the need to stress-test borrowers’ ability to pay more. The government wants to make this happen
obviate Source
The Conservatives, traditionally the party of the motor car, endorsed the vision last autumn. In September Theresa Villiers, the Tory shadow transport secretary, claimed that a fast railway connecting London with Leeds by way of Birmingham and Manchester could _______ the need for the unpopular and ungreen third runway planned for Heathrow airport. Now an even more surprising change of heart has occurred within the Labour government
obviate Source
Americans’ reliance on the company and the goodwill it has generated with consumers may help it, says an antitrust expert close to Congress. An AWS spin-off, if it occurred, might _______ the need for drastic antitrust action. Mr Bezos has managed to keep Amazon from ageing beyond Day 1 for longer than most companies can dream of
obviate Source
Yet the limits of such thinking are not always recognised by its proponents. The law-and- economics framework for analysing mergers, for example, does not _______ the need for trust-busters to make educated guesses about how competition might develop in future. There is still substantial room for differences of opinion—which may explain why, while Mr Bork is advising Netscape in the Internet firm's encouragement of antitrust action against Microsoft, many other law-and-economics theorists have lined up on Microsoft's side
obviate Source
The 2012 election was fought largely over the differing prescriptions from Republicans and Democrats for how to bring down America’s budget deficit, an unsustainable 7% of GDP in 2012. Barack Obama’s re-election does not _______ the need to act, it merely tilts the nature of the action in his favour. To avoid a calamitous fiscal contraction, he and Republicans will strike a deal to step back from the cliff
obviate Source
To Westerners, the lack of liberal democracy seems to remove the grounds for activism. To the Chinese citizen, an _______ and omnipotent system leaves little room for the public to step up. But that view underestimates the power of the public and green groups in shaping China’s environmental agenda
omnipresent Source
More than 180,000 protesters (equivalent to 4. 7% of the country’s population) gathered outside the parliament to _______ President Eduard Shevardnadze, a strongman left over from the Soviet era. Protesters handed out roses to soldiers, who lowered their weapons
oust Source
In 2015 Fredrik Reinfeldt, a former prime minister and then still leader of the centre- right Moderates, described the SD’s leadership as “racists and the stiffly xenophobic”. But a year ago the Moderates used SD support to _______ Hässleholm’s centre-left local government and elect Patrik Jönsson, the SD’s regional leader, vice-chair of the new council. In November the council adopted an SD budget that would cut spending on education and social care for immigrants and build a new swimming pool for locals instead
oust Source
His diagnosis is as lacking in eloquence as he is in demeanour. In his unschooled view, those of the firm’s 650 senior partners who voted to _______ their global managing partner, Kevin Sneader, on February 24th, are in a clueless mess. Worse, they don’t get that they don’t get it
oust Source
This was almost certainly disingenuous. It was always more likely that Mr Dagalo would join forces with Mr Burhan to _______ the civilians. Mr Dagalo does not have much form as a democrat
oust Source
We examine their prospects for passage. Zambia is undertaking a pivotal election—but it seems far from a fair fight to _______ the incumbent. And our Germany-election tracker cuts through reams of data and tricky electoral politics
oust Source
IF PROTESTS ALONE could _______ a president, Nicolás Maduro would already be on a plane to Cuba. On January 23rd at least 1m Venezuelans from across the country took to the streets demanding Mr Maduro step down
oust Source
EATING LESS meat or giving up flying are _______ ways people can help mitigate climate change. But how much does personal action matter? And how should societies meet the challenge of lowering greenhouse gas emissions? Yael Parag of the Reichman University in Tel Aviv weighs the merits of individual carbon budgets
palpable Source
India’s economy is still wonky, but for most of the summer stockmarket indices have been reaching new heights. Yet this _______ sense of relief is hard to square with the recent memory of mass death, when fields of bodies were buried hastily along the Ganges. How did India manage to beat covid-19? The plain fact is that, instead, covid-19 beat India
palpable Source
Find the same regulator today and he is probably devising a ploy to resuscitate the very financial vehicle he was bemoaning five years ago. Enthusiasm for the once-reviled practice of transforming a future income stream into a lump sum today—the essence of securitisation—is _______ . In Britain Andy Haldane, a cerebral official at the Bank of England, recently described it as “a financing vehicle for all seasons” that should no longer be thought of as a “bogeyman”
palpable Source
The laws of armed conflict are fairly clear about battlefield deception. Whereas “ _______ ” (such as faking surrender to lure an enemy into an ambush, or disguising a tank as a Red Cross ambulance) is forbidden, “ruses” like decoys, feints and ambushes are fair game. But other laws can be bent or bypassed
perfidy Source
SHEREZADE, A YOUNG widow, needs cash to pay for her son’s leukaemia treatment. She accepts $150,000 in return for sleeping with her boss Onur, a balding misogynist who advises his friends not to trust women because “ _______ fills them like the weave of their beautiful garments”. Unexpectedly, the pair fall in love
perfidy Source
The largely barren rump of Jordan, ruled by Sharif Hussein’s great-great-grandson, King Abdullah II, remains their last surviving possession. In modern Arab lore, Britain’s abandonment of the Arab Revolt epitomises Albion’s _______ . The British diplomat who designed the flag of Arab independence, Mark Sykes, carved up that same Arab land with his French counterpart, François Georges-Picot, into French and British mandates
perfidy Source
Outsiders also have plenty of explanations for the anglosphere's success. Some of them are unworthy (with anti-Semitism a constant theme) but most centre on the idea that the winners relied on _______ and violence abroad and cruelty and inequality at home. In the old East Germany, officials had a list of terms to describe Britons: “paralytic sycophants, effete betrayers of humanity, carrion-eating servile imitators, arch-cowards and collaborators
perfidy Source
Poignant music by Leos Janacek, Antonin Dvorak and Bedrich Smetana recalls the struggle for nationhood that culminated in the creation in 1918 of a commendably decent country. Western _______ at Munich brought its dismemberment at Nazi hands. Stories of courage and anguish leap out from the pages of novels by Milan Kundera (“The Unbearable Lightness of Being”), Josef Skvorecky (“The Engineer of Human Souls”) and Ivan Klima (“Judge on Trial”)
perfidy Source
A parodic gibe at globalisation’s critics from an editorial in 2003 springs to mind: “Show us an economic miracle, and we will show you the failure of capitalism. ” Given its heartless _______ , it is perhaps odd that The Economist is read by anyone outside the ermined ranks of “the aristocracy of finance”, to quote Marx’s description of its audience in 1852. Yet it is
perfidy Source
The GameStop drama presents Robinhood, once a beneficiary of the wave of retail investing, with existential threats. From this point of view, the purported _______ may have been exacerbated by the role of Citadel, a hedge fund, and Citadel Securities, a marketmaker, which are both owned by Ken Griffin, a Chicago-based billionaire. To understand this role, first consider how Robinhood makes money
perfidy Source
If, as he contends in one example, the most significant change in diets as populations become Westernised, urbanised and affluent is the amount of sugar consumed, then the conventional wisdom linking fat with chronic disease does not square up. Cultures with diets that contain considerable fat, like the Inuit and the Maasai, experienced obesity, hypertension and coronary disease only when they began to eat _______ amounts of sugar. Likewise, diabetes—virtually unknown in China at the turn of the 20th century, but now endemic in 11
profuse Source
This growth has led people to suggest that in future companies will be producing for a market of one. Some car manufacturers already claim that no two vehicles that they sell are ever identical, so _______ are the options open to consumers, from the colour of the dashboard to the in-car music system. Another expression used to refer to this phenomenon is the “long tail”—derived from the fact that when the sales of a company's many products are plotted along an axis they come to look like a long tail, with the most popular at the thickest end and the many not-so-popular ones stretching the tail out to its length
profuse Source
EconomicsFree exchangeOur economics correspondents consider the fluctuations in the world economy, in theory and practiceThis counts as good newsThe labour market bleeding is slightly less _______Is there a poverty trap?Wouldn't workers keep trying to earn more?Oil and troubleWhen will high petroleum prices send output diving?Ben Bernanke, regular guyCongress quizzes the Fed on baseball, for some reasonTracking retirementEducated workers aren't anxious to call it quitsThings people sayThe bizarre theatrics of America's dollar policyLink exchangeThe best of the rest of the economics webPrepare for the worstThe future's so frightening it might not be that badNot much too muchIs China building itself into excess capacity purgatory?Chart of the dayMarkets shine on American exportersBubble fearAn irrationally exuberant pathologyWhen news isn't newsMarkets are well aware of how little oil is out therePrevious1.
profuse Source
It may be costly; it may be troublesome; if Russia be obstinate when defeated it may be longer than we expect; but we cannot pretend to entertain the smallest doubt of the triumphant success of the allied arms both on sea and land. The Czar has, no doubt, an almost unlimited command of men—the principal but not the sole raw material of armies; and we can believe that he may be _______ and reckless in the use of them. But there his only advantage in the war he has brought upon us ceases
profuse Source
Ticket-buyers sulked and claimed that they were misled. The uptown venue responded with _______ apologies and refunds. Mr Martin, a devoted art collector whose new novel considers the art world, didn't realise his public worthiness was so tethered to punchlines
profuse Source
It monitors reaction to his output, allowing him to emphasise whatever elicits the most favourable reception. Sofia Ventura, associate professor of political science at the University of Bologna, points to another characteristic of Mr Salvini’s _______ communication: he puts himself forward on the one hand as the strong man who can solve Italy’s problems, but on the other as an affectionate chap who loves children and animals. On one recent, 11-tweet day he demanded that other countries take in the rescued migrants he had refused to let enter Italy, while finding time to comment with fatherly pride on his son’s good school report
profuse Source
Often the remedies are relatively simple, if nauseating. A series of luxury brands—Versace, Coach and Givenchy—have recently offered _______ apologies for selling T-shirts that appeared to identify Hong Kong as being separate from China (see article). As a general rule, the more foreign companies prize China’s market, the more they have to fear (see article)
profuse Source
Dr Reversade's swanky office completes the lavish picture. It looks over a green belt of _______ tropical vegetation intersected by a solitary railway line. Apartment blocks, some 40 storeys or more high, loom in the background, as do ubiquitous construction cranes, all testimony to Singapore's insatiable thirst for growth
profuse Source
MALE Harris sparrows are _______ beasts. They signal their status by the darkness of their plumage, and woe-betide any male whose signal is false—for if an itinerant ethologist blackens a subordinate’s feathers, the dominant birds recognise it as a fraud and beat it up
pugnacious Source
There have been far fewer calamitous headlines in 2021. In part this is because Saudi Arabia has backed away from a foreign policy that was _______ but profitless. The blockade of Qatar led to no major concessions, while Mr Hariri’s abduction did not rearrange Lebanese politics to Saudi liking
pugnacious Source
” The only feasible coalitions signalled by the partial results were M5S pacts with the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), which was trounced at the polls, or—the nightmare scenario for markets and pro-Europeans—the League. Under the _______ leadership of Matteo Salvini, the League (he dropped the word ‘Northern’ for the campaign to widen his appeal beyond the party’s original geographical base) was on course to take about 18% of the vote—four percentage points more than Silvio Berlusconi’s more moderate Forza Italia party. Mr Berlusconi had presented himself to voters, and Italy’s European partners, as the man to tame Mr Salvini and restrain his Euroscepticism
pugnacious Source
In theory they will decide among themselves whom to elevate as their new boss—although Mr Lee is thought to have played a big part in Mr Heng’s coronation. The favourite is the _______ trade and industry minister, Chan Chun Sing, who is the second most senior leader of 4G and, at 51, has a longer runway than Mr Heng. Other contenders include Ong Ye Kung, the transport minister, Desmond Lee, the national development minister, and Lawrence Wong, the education minister
pugnacious Source
Thanks also to those hard-working behind the scenes souls who allowed all of us to communicate apparently effortlessly. Watching the votes roll in after the houses' opening statements, our house dolefully envisioned that we might have to craft a closing argument that went something like a timid “We surrender,” or a _______ “Oh yeah!” or a whiny “Mommy, Johnny hit meeeee!” But, our house cannot yield: we truly believe the evidence overwhelmingly supports the position that technology has failed to simplify our lives. Our house cannot be
pugnacious Source
Even those who say that Parliament is “in crisis” tend to worry more about its perceived irrelevance than its perceived venality. But never underestimate the capacity of a supposedly _______ institution to inflict unnecessary harm upon itself. This week, after a sequence of perverse decisions, taken in secret by one of its most obscure bodies, the House of Commons contrived to make a martyr out of a little-known official, and so to convey the impression that the institution and its members have something dirty to hide
sagacious Source
Huawei has said its survival is at stake. Markets are more _______ . The price of its bonds, which are traded in Hong Kong, barely dipped
sanguine Source
The robots are indeed coming, they reckon—just a bit more slowly and stealthily than you might have expected. Economists have, on the whole, been fairly _______ about the impact of robots and AI on workers. History is strewn with incorrect predictions of the looming irrelevance of human labour
sanguine Source
Medaria Arrandondo, Minneapolis’s police chief, complained that the ban was enacted without his “insight or feedback”, and argued that facial recognition “can be utilised in accordance with data privacy and other citizen legal protections. ” Not everyone is so _______ . The bans stem from similar worries: that facial recognition is dangerous both when it is effective and when is not
sanguine Source
China has also become unpredictable. Most executives and officials are _______ about the crisis at Evergrande, a property firm. They believe that China’s technocrats are in control and can avoid a systemic financial crisis
sanguine Source
For the most part they have ignored the implications of China’s initiative. What are those implications and is the West right to be _______ ? The project is the clearest expression so far of Mr Xi’s determination to break with Deng Xiaoping’s dictum to “hide our capabilities and bide our time; never try to take the lead”. The Belt and Road Forum (with its unfortunate acronym, BARF) is the second set-piece event this year at which Mr Xi will lay out China’s claim to global leadership
sanguine Source
“There’s a quiet functionality that people miss,” says Mr Weinstein. “Markets are _______ because Japan has a rare ability to adjust. ” With low marginal tax rates, there is also room to raise revenues
sanguine Source
5%, the same as the bonds of some provincial governments at the time. Despite these ominous portents, many Chinese bond analysts take a _______ view. The increase in issuance has been exaggerated by a debt swap: local governments are on track this year to replace about 3 trillion yuan of expensive loans with cheaper bonds
sanguine Source
intelligence facility in Halifax, Nova Scotia, thought to contain information shared by Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Good old-fashioned _______ | The EconomistOct 10, 2012 .
skullduggery Source
G. | CARACAS FOR years the barons of Venezuela's ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV) have been accusing each other of treachery, corruption, wheeler-dealing and _______. Until recently, however, they tended to keep such charges private
skullduggery Source
” He considers, then rejects the theory that human mouths seize up if not continually utilised, before concluding that if human beings “don’t keep on exercising their lips…their brains start working. ” With this observation the late Douglas Adams expressed a common high-flown opinion about small talk: it is _______ , or perhaps worse, a substitute for real speech and thought. “Should we talk about the weather?” sings Michael Stipe of REM in “Pop Song 89”
trivial Source
He noticed an uncanny similarity between the functionality of a human bureaucracy and that of the digital electronic computer. (He confessed that he could not tell whether this observation was _______ or profound. ) Both systems processed large quantities of information using a hierarchy of pre-set but adaptable rules
trivial Source
At the time, Mr Akerlof was an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley; he had only completed his PhD, at MIT, in 1966. Perhaps as a result, the American Economic Review thought his paper’s insights _______ . The Review of Economic Studies agreed
trivial Source
Sony Music Publishing announced that one of its outermost divisions would be rebranding: what had been emi Production Music since 2011 would become kpm Music once again. The change may seem _______ , but it restores a name that has wielded a wide and surprising influence over popular culture. The chances are you haven’t heard of kpm, despite its roots stretching back to 1780, when Robert Keith (the K of the name) set up a music shop in London
trivial Source
A low earnings yield implies that investors are willing, at that point in time, to accept puny returns in the future. If you think this is _______ , consider the following. Low yields might instead be a forecast of bumper corporate profits
trivial Source
Is the choice people make between two subscription options more genuine than their choice from three? Or is it sometimes a mistake to speak of a "true" preference that exists within the individual, divorced from the contingencies of a particular choice scenario? If so, this seems to have some interesting implications for democratic theory. The extraordinary malleability of our expressed preferences in the face of _______ alterations in the choice context sits uneasily with the idea that there is such a thing as "what the American people want", the job of our political system being (ideally) to discern what this is and bring it about.
trivial Source
IN THE grand scheme of things Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are normally thought of as good guys. Between them, they came up with the ethical theory known as _______ ism. The goal of this theory is encapsulated in Bentham's aphorism that “the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation
utilitarian Source
People are more likely to throw a switch that would divert the trolley on to another track where it will kill only one person. The _______ calculation is identical—but the physical and emotional distance from the killing makes throwing the switch much more popular than throwing the man. There are other ways to nudge people’s judgments, too
utilitarian Source
He wasn’t. True, in his early years Mill was a dyed-in-the-wool _______ . His mentor was Jeremy Bentham, who had argued that the principle underlying all social activity ought to be “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”
utilitarian Source
The authority figures they meet aren’t the heroic types seen in most equivalent films, either. When the two scientists take their findings to the White House, the _______ president (Meryl Streep, pictured) and her brattish chief of staff (Jonah Hill) are too busy dealing with sex scandals to think about a comet classed as a “planet killer” (the president’s political party isn’t specified). Their breezy plan is to “sit tight and assess”
vapid Source
But he is refreshingly candid about his flaws. A sense of alienation from his “postcard- perfect” surroundings as a youth bred an urge to expose the shallow, the _______ and the fake. “When I discovered there were all these frauds in China, it was a form of therapy,” he says
vapid Source
Traditional heterosexual dating apps have a fatal flaw: women get flooded with low-quality messages – at best _______ , at worst boorish – to the point where checking the inbox becomes an unappealing chore. Partly as a result, men see most of their messages ignored
vapid Source
Yet she quickly tired of being the star of a Democratic minority so small it was known in Phoenix as the “pizza caucus” (because one large pizza could feed it). She proceeded to write a _______ but semi-amusing book on coalition-building (“Let go of the bear and pick up the Buddha…to be your most fabulous political self”) and campaigned for Congress as a pragmatic problem-solver. In the House she made a small mark on veterans’ affairs, low-hanging fruit for the aspiring conservative, and backed more of Mr Trump’s bills than almost any other Democrat
vapid Source
As Johnson said (September 18th), the person who uses “like” to excess is not “stupid or thoughtless”. The problem is that peppering his speech with the word makes him sound _______ when he’s not. If he manages to strip the word from what he’s saying, he comes across as smarter and more articulate without sounding pompous or nerdy
vapid Source
Long the stars of Chinese joke-making, men are unhappy about being the butt of it. Chizi, a popular male contestant on “Rock and Roast” with a penchant for _______ jokes about women, sniffed that Ms Yang was “not performing comedy”. Guo Degang, a master of xiangsheng, a witty and often bawdy form of traditional comedy involving banter between two people, recently said he would not recruit women for his troupe (“out of respect”, he said)
boorish Source
Its finance minister, Paschal Donohoe, last week won the race to become president of the Eurogroup, the influential club of euro-zone finance ministers, despite the French and German governments backing another candidate. In June Ireland won a seat on the UN Security Council, fending off Canada, another country often flattered by comparison with a bigger, sometimes _______ , neighbour. Barely a decade after a financial crisis saw Ireland bailed out, Philip Lane, the former head of Ireland’s central bank, is the main thinker at the European Central Bank
boorish Source
Instead, with a degree of prejudice similar to those she is denouncing, she has described locals who consider mainlanders a blight on the territory as “brainwashed”. ","description":"Locals view the newcomers as _______ spongers","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
boorish Source
But in reality it was ruled by an elite caste of jocks—brainless bores who spent their lives drinking themselves senseless or wam-bam-thank-you-mamming with any co-ed they could get their hands on. And none were more _______ and brainless than the lacrosse players. Elaine Showalter, a retired Princeton professor, duly published a tut-tutting review accusing Mr Wolfe of missing the “feminist revolution” and engaging in the “grossest of stereotypes”
boorish Source
By most standards, Italians are wealthy, they live for a long time and their families stick impressively together. The _______ drunkenness that makes town centres in many other countries unpleasant is mercifully rare in Italy. The traffic may be bad, and places such as Venice and Florence are overrun by tourists, but if you go off-season—or merely off the beaten track—you can have a more enjoyable time in Italy than practically anywhere else
boorish Source
In the Czech Republic, the target was Milos Zeman, the president, who suffered protesters pelting him with eggs and holding up red cards (pictured) in a metaphorical demand that he be ejected, as in a football match. The protesters were angered by his recent statements supporting the Chinese and Russian governments, and by a series of _______ stunts, including a radio interview in which he used foul language and sexist insults in reference to the Russian activist rock group Pussy Riot. Mr Zeman appeared unmoved by the protests, and indeed the next day his office announced that he had invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Prague in January
boorish Source
Eastern Europe's remarkable political failure (see article) matters not just because of economics. Weak, deceitful, clownish, _______ , squabbling, thuggish and corrupt politicians in the east risk destroying the flagging enthusiasm of west European voters for further enlargement of the EU. Yet the “European perspective”, as the bureaucrats call the chance of membership, is the one thing tugging the bruised and battered countries of ex-Yugoslavia towards peace and co-operation
boorish Source
Such actions are common outside the climate-change arena: insolvencies are sometimes followed by shareholder claims against board members. Nigel _______ of Clyde & Co, a law firm, expects this form of climate litigation to grow. Bosses’ duty-of-care obligations will increase as more information about the impact of climate change comes to light
brook Source
Some parts of her book suggest she supports more subsidies for child care, like those proposed by President Joe Biden. But speaking to The Economist she was more _______ , pointing out that among Mr Biden’s proposals she would prioritise cash transfers to parents (a policy that makes no attempt to change households’ choices). The book is about “what happened and why”, she says, rather than solutions
circumspect Source
Consultants tend to exaggerate the likelihood of the worst outcomes, because it is a good way to showcase their insight. A true expert will be _______ , setting out scenarios and pinpointing the factors you need to monitor. In fact few geopolitical events have a lasting impact on stockmarkets
circumspect Source
That row is still being sorted out. ) The commission’s initial statement on the ruling was _______ , but many officials think the time has finally come for a firm response. It could refuse to authorise Poland’s request for money from the EU’s massive €800bn covid recovery fund, which includes a clause requiring the commission to certify that recipient countries respect the rule of law
circumspect Source
“He’s very intelligent, he’s switched on, he’s not ideologically driven,” says Steve Turner, an assistant general secretary at Unite. Ms O’Grady is more _______ . “The jury’s still out for me—I’ve been around the block a few times
circumspect Source
Celebratory gunfire echoed around the city. But Mr Mujahid was _______ in victory: “We want to have good relations with the US and the world. ” The US and the world, though, are playing it cool
circumspect Source
If the supply tap is not turned back on, 2019 will be rather less rosy. Farther removed from American jurisdiction, Huawei’s Asian suppliers have been more _______ . TSMC, the Taiwanese company which makes the semiconductors on which Huawei’s entire business (and that of most other technology companies) depends, is still supplying the firm, but says that it is examining its export-control systems to make sure that it is in compliance with American law
circumspect Source
And, as our briefing explains, the EU is pioneering a distinct tech doctrine that aims to give individuals control over their own information and the profits from it, and to prise open tech firms to competition. If the doctrine works, it could benefit millions of users, boost the economy and constrain tech giants that have gathered immense power without a _______ sense of responsibility. Western regulators have had showdowns over antitrust with tech firms before, including IBM in the 1960s and Microsoft in the 1990s
commensurate Source
How to combat, limit and overcome terrorism enhanced and supported by countries with a self-magnifying and ever more sophisticated technology will remain a global challenge. It must be resisted by national strategic interests together with whatever international structure we are able to create by a _______ diplomacy. We must recognise that no dramatic strategic move is available in the immediate future to offset this self-inflicted setback, such as by making new formal commitments in other regions
commensurate Source
IF THERE is one thing that people on both the left and right can agree, it is that expressions of our political and social differences have become markedly less _______ —and that this makes it harder to find common ground and solve common problems. The good news is that science is on the case
cordial Source
In winter they can be turned into wonderful jams, chutneys and sauces. But _______ is perhaps the best known use for elderberries. Pour over ice cream or Panna Cotta, or mix it with elderflower syrup to make a sorbet that’s almost tropical in its headiness
cordial Source
Now, fears Borje Ekholm, Ericsson’s boss, those bonds are in jeopardy, as a result of the Swedish government’s anti-Chinese turn. After centuries of _______ relations—from the Swedish East India Company’s ships sailing between Gothenburg and Guangzhou in the 18th century to Sweden’s early recognition of the People’s Republic in 1950 and its blessing in 2010 of the Chinese takeover of Volvo, a much-loved carmaker—the mood has changed. Last October the Swedish telecoms regulator barred Huawei, Ericsson’s Chinese rival, from the country’s speedy 5G mobile networks, citing “theft of technology” by China
cordial Source
“There’s a quiet functionality that people miss,” says Mr Weinstein. “Markets are _______ because Japan has a rare ability to adjust. ” With low marginal tax rates, there is also room to raise revenues
deleterious Source
IN WEALTHY and well-vaccinated countries, year three of the pandemic will be better than year two. But in countries that are poorer, less well vaccinated or both, the _______ effects of the virus will linger. A disparity of outcomes between rich and poor countries will emerge
deleterious Source
Vaccines have weakened the link between cases and deaths in countries such as Britain and Israel (see chart). But in countries that are poorer, less well vaccinated or both, the _______ effects of the virus will linger. A disparity of outcomes between rich and poor countries will emerge
deleterious Source
“Religious practice is precisely varied and everything else is left in place. ” In a study published last year in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Messrs Campante and Yanagizawa- Drott looked at data from nearly every country over the past 60 years and found that longer fasting times had a _______ effect on economic growth in predominantly Muslim countries—not just during Ramadan, but throughout the year. If, say, the average Ramadan fast were to increase from 12 hours to 13 hours, output growth in that country for the year would decline by about 0
deleterious Source
How, then, to think about a new technology that will make driving a species to extinction far easier? That technology is known as a gene drive, so called because it uses genetic engineering to drive certain traits through a population. Those characteristics need not be _______ : they might include greater resilience to disease among crops or, perhaps, greater tolerance to warming waters on the part of corals. But if the desired trait were harmful, gene drives could in theory make a species extinct
deleterious Source
Even the most brilliant of economists can be blind to their own biases. In 1960 George Stigler, a late Nobel laureate and dogged empiricist, bemoaned the “ _______ ” effects of economists’ policy desires on their theory, but maintained that overall, as a positive science, economics was ethically and politically neutral. Yet some of his own views fell short of this ideal
deleterious Source
She examines online wellness gurus spouting pseudoscientific terminology such as “quantum transformation” and “upgrading your DNA”. Most of these ministrations are harmless, but some of them suggest _______ treatments. In the end Ms Montell’s net is so broad that it may leave many readers wondering if a group they belong to is manipulating them somehow
deleterious Source
However, as Mr Leroi points out, the statistics of mutation rates and gene numbers suggest that everyone is a mutant many times over. The average adult, according to his calculations, carries 295 _______ mutations. Moralists have long pointed out that nobody is perfect
deleterious Source
People have also turned to popular vices to cope with the pandemic. Despite its _______ effect on the immune system, alcohol has been in high demand, causing prices to rise. Smokers are paying more, too—all five Australian cities in the index saw double-digit percentage increases in tobacco prices
deleterious Source
And I do have quite a lot of sympathy with the group's ambitions. It isn't only pink, but it seems to me there are a whole range of related stereotypes that surround little girls, in part through aggressive marketing, that potentially have a _______ impact: through miniature housework kits, make-up marketed to very young children, ballerinas and, yes, pink. Cumulatively they convey the message that a little girl's job is to look dainty and pretty, one that risks circumscribing some girls' ambitions and chances
deleterious Source
IT IS COMMON, in the minds of economists, academics and most regular folk, to think of the real economy and the financial economy as separate but interlinked spheres. This is the essence of the “classical _______ ” at the heart of the neoclassical school of economics, which considers money “a mere veil” obscuring real underlying activities. Those labouring in the real economy grow wheat, write articles and build houses
dichotomy Source
Democracy’s normative goal must be to deliver satisfaction to a vast majority of people over a long period. What good are elections if they keep producing poor leaders with the public stuck in perpetual cycles of “elect and regret”? What good is an independent judiciary if it only protects the rich? What good is separation of powers if it is captured by special interests to block necessary reforms? What good is freedom of the press, or freedom of speech for that matter, if it corrodes societies with division and dysfunction? What good are individual rights if they result in millions of avoidable deaths, as has happened in many liberal democracies during the pandemic? In its attempt to challenge a rising China, America’s president, Joe Biden, frames this competition as a starkly ideological _______ of democracy versus autocracy. With that in mind, the administration is hosting a gathering of democracies on December 9th and 10th, to which some 110 countries or regions invited
dichotomy Source
In the 1930s, KEYNES challenged this theory, which was orthodoxy until then. Increases in the money supply seemed to lead to a fall in the velocity of circulation and to increases in real INCOME, contradicting the classical _______ (see MONETARY NEUTRALITY). Later, monetarists such as Friedman conceded that V could changein response to variations in M, but did so only in stable, predictable ways that did not challenge the thrust of the theory
dichotomy Source
It seems reasonable to bet that although China will continue to narrow the gap in most dimensions of power in the coming two decades, it will ultimately fail to surpass America. This may _______ a sigh of relief in some quarters of Washington. But a China that has reached near-parity will nevertheless be a formidable geopolitical adversary
elicit Source
ASK MEMBERS of China’s elite—from senior officials to academics at leading universities, well-known commentators or bosses at big companies—to explain the beliefs of the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, and their replies are surprisingly unhelpful. Even simple questions _______ waffly answers. Take an ongoing campaign to clip the wings of some of China’s largest firms, notably technology giants
elicit Source
IN MOST corners of the world, the name of Mickey Mouse will _______ at least a glimmer of recognition. Walt Disney's most famous creation was one of the first stars with a global name
elicit Source
Many of the world’s fisheries run on slave labour. Depleted soils are chemically tarted up into a _______ semblance of health with nutrients straight from the factory. Fertiliser and animal-waste runoff create algal blooms that strip the oxygen from ever more, ever larger dead zones in littoral seas
fecund Source
Stark discrepancies in fertility rates between states also carry dangers. In future more Indians from the crowded north will seek jobs in the richer and less _______ south. Politicians will also face the hot issue of how to allot parliamentary constituencies
fecund Source
And South-East Asia is home to the world’s third-biggest patch of it, behind the Amazon and Congo basins. Even though humans release carbon from these forests through logging, clear-felling for agriculture and other disruptions, some are so vast and _______ that the growth of the plants within them absorbs even more from the atmosphere. The Congo basin, for instance, locks up 600m tonnes of carbon a year more than it releases, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI), an international NGO that is equivalent to about a third of emissions from all American transport
fecund Source
Afterwards they needed only ambition and willing investors. The result was the most _______ business environment of all time. In the early 20th century some bosses rediscovered politics, using their companies’ wealth to buy cronies in government
fecund Source
As tongues began to loosen, Daniel Combs, an American researcher, was listening in. He travelled the length and breadth of Myanmar, from the sweltering, _______ lowlands to remote mountains brimming with jade, meeting a wide array of characters who include a punk-rocker, a monk and a photojournalist. In “Until the World Shatters” he explores a country that was, at last, beginning to find its voice
fecund Source
In her quest to make it larger still, Dr Abe exposed batches of the animals to ion beams of various strengths and compositions, and then put the survivors through three rounds of proliferation and selection of the largest of their offspring, to try to come up with the Godzillas of the rotifer world. The upshot, out of more than 3,000 mutant strains that were larger than normal, was three promising lines which, at 350-370 microns long, nicely plug the size gap, and which are also more _______ than their ancestors. Both of these characteristics make the new strains ideal for use as fish food, and three subsequent years of study have shown them to be stable
fecund Source
The failure by France or Germany to build big new firms is regrettable, they concede, but America has merely stolen a march in the consumer-internet realm. Silicon Valley was the right place to be at the right time to build this new generation of firms: a _______ nexus of universities and research institutes, venture capital and America’s consumer- first reflexes. When that bubble bursts, new business models will emerge that Europe will be ready to seize
felicitous Source
THE GRAND HOTEL on Vienna’s Ringstrasse, the city’s elegant main boulevard, is a _______ spot for nuclear diplomacy. It is not just the opulent surroundings or the unlimited coffee
felicitous Source
Presenting his marriage as an elusive example of liberalism fused with tradition looks like a promising alternative strategy. To understand why, recall how gay marriage proved such a _______ exception to the culture wars. Liberals and conservatives alike felt their values were vindicated by the reform
felicitous Source
His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or _______ because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise
forbear Source
The second is overbearing assertion of power. He asks that “the German elites and public _______ national introversion” because there is no alternative to German leadership. Only a complete political union in Europe (as in such federal countries as Switzerland or the United States) would obviate the need for one member to be a hegemon, he thinks; but that is in the realm of “science fiction”
forbear Source
Of course, it is not surprising that such countries are suppressing freedom of expression. They need little enough excuse to do it, and the only connection between their censorship and the war on terror is that their Western friends might be more inclined than usual to _______ from criticism in case they offend an ally in the war. But none of that applies to America
forbear Source
Pellets for ancient slings were strewn on top of a television set. There were brooches, ceramics and breastplates—around 4,000 antiquities in total, kept in _______ fashion. But, remarked the prosecutors who ordered the raid, there was no sign of weapons or helmets which, they wrote, “may already have been sold to third parties”
haphazard Source
COINFLIPS operates under the aegis of Brad Aimone, a theoretical neuroscientist at Sandia National Laboratories (originally one of America’s nuclear-weapons laboratories, but which has now branched out into other areas, too). Dr Aimone’s starting-point is the observation that, unlike the circuits of digital computers, which will, if fed a given input, respond with a precise and predictable output, the link between input to and output from a nerve cell is more _______ —or, in the jargon, “stochastic”. He wants to imitate this stochastic behaviour in something less squishy than a nerve cell
haphazard Source
Cool in London is a village affair. Uniquely, London is a _______ conglomeration of villages. And the villages were shaped into a city more by the accidents of history than by the imperatives of town-planning
haphazard Source
The others—S. Narayan, a former finance secretary, and Jean Drèze, a welfare economist and activist—have positioned themselves against Mr Modi’s _______ decision-making. The appointments are designed to highlight the difference between Mr Stalin and the PR- obsessed prime minister
haphazard Source
No two interactions with a Belgian official are the same. In this way, a surplus of bureaucracy leads to anarchy rather than conformity, points out David Helbich, the artist behind Belgian Solutions, a bestselling book on the _______ fixes that dot the country. The book, in its sixth edition, takes the readers through the strange compromises of Belgian design, which has led to bollards in the middle of bike paths and has left Brussels as possibly the only European capital with a urinal on the side of a church
haphazard Source
But once you look at market intelligence through the eyes of computer science, it provokes disquieting thoughts of a different kind. It gives a sense of just how creaky and _______ the old-school, analogue business of intelligence-gathering has been. Analysts have used text data to try to predict changes in asset prices for a century or more
haphazard Source
In the decade after the second world war, though, Arabs finally assumed control of their nation-states. Some borders may have been _______ , but they were sovereign, for the first time in centuries, and their citizens were eager for growth and development—and representative government. What followed was a decades-long effort to create an expansive, transnational Arab identity
haphazard Source
This creates an incentive to use addresses repeatedly, which facilitates the work of cyber-detectives. Under military oversight, China’s cyber-attacks often seemed _______ . Hackers were given lists of targets at the beginning of each month, but there appeared to be little supervision or co-ordination of their efforts
haphazard Source
If a more dirigiste Europe is inevitable, then the EU should at least focus its efforts on industries with a bright future, rather than helping older ones cling on. Much like the _______ launch of “Cyberpunk 2077”, Europe’s video-game sector is still a success, but it has the potential to be a lot better. Unfortunately, in the minds of Europe’s lawmakers, 20th-century industries on which the continent built its wealth—cars, chemicals, banks—are still king
haphazard Source
It is a portrait of a celebrated actor whose films are mostly terrible. “Susan Lenox” is a “ _______ of nonsense”, says Mr Gottlieb; “Two-Faced Woman” is “a ghastly mess”. Only “Camille” and “Ninotchka” receive enthusiastic praise—but even Garbo’s best films now come across as gauzy melodramas at best, camp spectacles at worst
hodgepodge Source
But it is not clear how work on this is proceeding, if it is at all. For now, China’s digital monitoring methods for covid-19 are a _______ of disjointed efforts by city and provincial governments, as well as the technology giants Alibaba and Tencent. Witness the self-assessment system that ensnared Ms Sun
hodgepodge Source
According to SEB, a Swedish bank, the issuance of green bonds, the proceeds of which are invested in environmental projects, reached $163bn in 2017, up from less than $500m in 2008. Yet standards are a _______ . Many certification and evaluation tools cover just one asset class; competing methodologies abound
hodgepodge Source
San Antonio is already mostly non-Anglo. An exotic, bilingual _______ , with a handsome centre, shaded riverside walks, vast military bases and ugly, sun-baked suburbs, it offers pointers to the future of many American cities. Strictly speaking, the Hispanic identity is a bureaucratic creation: the term appeared four decades ago as a box to tick on federal government forms
hodgepodge Source
In September Mr Haftar captured several oil facilities along the coast. Now a _______ of militias, most of them Islamist, are readying to fight Mr Haftar there and in cities such as Derna and Benghazi. The GNA’s defence ministry is said to be co-ordinating with the anti-Haftar forces, but most of the militias that support the government, many hailing from Misrata, do not plan to take part in the fight
hodgepodge Source
There is a lot to be said for asset allocation rules. First of all, retail investors have a terrible tendency to acquire a _______ of hot funds, technology from the late 1990s, international funds from 2005/2006, emerging market funds today and so on. Second, if investors do actively allocate assets, it is easy for them to be caught in a bubble
hodgepodge Source
IS AMERICA finally going to re-examine the _______ of laws governing its oceans? The United States controls 4. 5m square miles of them (11
hodgepodge Source
But the creation of civil status was a watershed too. It took the question of identity away from a _______ of vouching for one another, parish records and the like. It changed the state’s attitude from that of previous censuses, such as the one called for in the constitution of the United States, which required only enumeration, not identification
hodgepodge Source
Pour yourself a cup of ambition The extent to which home-working remains popular long after the pandemic has passed will depend on a bargain between companies and workers. But it will also depend on whether companies embrace or reject the controversial theory that working from an office might actually _______ productivity. Since the 1970s researchers who have studied physical proximity (ie, the distance employees need to travel to engage in a face-to-face interaction) have disagreed on the question of whether it facilitates or inhibits collaboration
impede Source
Some of these handouts will involve grubby choices: Boeing, embroiled in the 737 MAX crashes, might get billions of taxpayer dollars. Broad rescue schemes could also leave a legacy of indebted, ossified firms that _______ the eventual recovery. Speed is essential, but governments also need a clearer framework to organise the jumble of schemes, protect taxpayers and preserve the economy’s dynamism
impede Source
It has no safety-net worth the name and this year had to focus its stimulus on firms and infrastructure investment rather than shoring up household incomes. And in the long run its system of surveillance and state control, which made brutal lockdowns possible, is likely to _______ the diffuse decision-making and free movement of people and ideas that sustain innovation and raise living standards. Europe is the laggard
impede Source
Economists studying CSR spending posit three possible incentives for it: genuine altruism; private interests of managers who enhance their own position with corporate cash; and improved performance and valuations as a consequence of a burnished reputation among customers and better morale among employees. If the first two were at work, Mr Rajgopal and Ms Tantri speculate, India’s biggest spenders would not have cut back: setting a minimum payment would _______ neither altruism nor benefits to managers. Instead, the reduced payments suggest that past spending was mostly about “signalling value”
impede Source
He promised to overhaul the political system. “I have been _______ in my drive for change, but I am not the kind of person who starts off with an exit strategy,” he says. For all his good intentions, however, he came into office lacking political experience or even a coherent plan
impetuous Source
So it has been jarring to watch the country’s ruling junta praise Thais for approving an army-backed constitution in a heavily-controlled “referendum”, which took place on August 7th. Prayuth Chan-ocha, an _______ former army chief who became prime minister after a military takeover in 2014, insists the new charter will end a decade of political instability and allow for fresh elections next year. In fact it will not heal Thailand’s deep divisions but make them worse
irascible Source
In “The Shining”, the horror stems from the eerie lack of other people, but in “Fawlty Towers”, the opposite is true as Basil, the curmudgeonly proprietor, finds the presence of other people horrifying. John Cleese has said that producers weren’t that keen on the setting at first, but that he convinced them it was the only suitable venue for the _______ protagonist: “It’s in the hotel that the whole pressure cooker builds up. ” “The White Lotus” creates a mood of claustrophobia
irascible Source
But the atmosphere has been worsened by his personality, variously described as “tightly wound”, “controlling” and “cold”. Some officials have taken to calling him “five i’s”, a double reference to the “five eyes” arrangement that sees Britain share intelligence with America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and what they see as his attributes: insular, imperious, idle, _______ and ignorant. He has handled this hostile environment by sidelining ambassadors and surrounding himself with special advisers
irascible Source
ON THE 150th anniversary of the death of Charles Babbage, we retrace the footsteps of the brilliant but _______ British inventor, mathematician and engineer. Host Kenneth Cukier investigates why Babbage is hailed by some as the grandfather of the computer, while others argue his contribution is overblown
irascible Source
WITH a tiny majority and what could prove fleeting co-operation from _______ backbenchers, David Cameron is anxious to move quickly in his second term. Among the priorities for his first 100 days is the abolition of the Human Rights Act (HRA)
irascible Source
It also placed bets on firms with unconventional business models and maverick founders that put other investors off. That does not mean that the route to future success lies in finding more privately owned companies run by _______ bosses. The SMIT’s outperformance in fact came from its early recognition of trends, such as the growing dominance of internet retailers and the increasing importance of electric vehicles
irascible Source
Jacques the ladIn that decade, when central and eastern Europe were still part of the Soviet block, Europe suffered low growth and high unemployment caused by two oil shocks. “Eurosclerosis”, as it was called, led, under the European Commission presidency of Jacques Delors, a brilliant and _______ French politician, to the single market in 1992 and to a rejuvenation of Europe's institutions. Those reforms laid the ground for one of the most dynamic periods in EU history
irascible Source
INDEPENDENT voices in Ethiopia are finding it ever harder to be heard. Suffocated by an _______ government, the country's newspapers are now the least informative in east Africa. Journalists deemed critical of the prime minister, Meles Zenawi, are pilloried
irascible Source
More recently Simon Mann, a former officer in Britain’s special forces, tried to overthrow the dictator of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in 2004, but ended up in jail. Western governments have in the past winked at _______ activity that served their commercial interests. But nowadays Russia is seen as the leading country egging on mercenaries to help it wield influence
mercenary Source
These exploits made them, and him, world-famous. He was “Mad Mike” to Fleet Street, and in 1978, in “The Wild Geese”, Richard Burton played a _______ heavily based on him. All that certainly beat totting up sums every day
mercenary Source
The book’s main character, named Hiro Protagonist, delivers pizza for the Mafia, which now controls territory in what used to be the United States. When not working, Mr Protagonist plugs into the Metaverse: a networked virtual reality in which people appear as self- designed “avatars” and engage in activities both mundane (conversation, flirting) and extraordinary (sword fights, _______ espionage). Like the internet, Mr Stephenson’s Metaverse is a collective, interactive endeavour that is always on and is beyond the control of any one person
mercenary Source
Mr McFate’s background is as original as his thinking. A bookish student and violinist at an Ivy League university, he chose to become a paratrooper in the American army, and later worked as a _______ in Africa. Noticing that careers in that trade tend to end early, he earned a few more degrees and now teaches strategy at Georgetown University and the National Defense University in Washington, DC—when he is not writing novels or zealously attending opera
mercenary Source
Yet the Russian defence ministry denied that any of its soldiers had gone missing. Friends and relatives told Russian media that the men had gone to Syria not with the Russian army, but as part of a shadowy _______ force known as “Wagner”. The group has come to play a key role in Russian operations in Syria
mercenary Source
The French courts never worked it out, and in 1999 acquitted Mr Denard for lack of evidence. His long dark history as a _______ in Africa, from 1961 onwards, had blurred everything about him. His name was Bob Denard, or Gilbert Bourgeaud, or Colonel Bako, or Mustafa M'hadjou
mercenary Source
Covid-19 has scrambled these stereotypes. Denmark implemented a _______ lockdown. Sweden has taken a uniquely laid-back approach, keeping schools and restaurants open
meticulous Source
These are components, from tray tables to door parts, for aircraft made by companies including Boeing, Cessna and Lockheed Martin. BAP applies surface treatments to the pieces, from submerging them in big vats of chemicals to _______ work done by hand, before shipping them north. Mexico has long been a hub for manufacturing
meticulous Source
“The French Dispatch” Everything you’d expect from Wes Anderson has been turned up to dix—or even onze—in his buoyant anthology comedy, a whimsical homage to the New Yorker and to the lifestyles of American expatriates in mid-20th-century France. Leaving nothing to chance, the director appears to have laboured over every last frame to ensure that the symmetrical compositions, sweet-shop colours, _______ design, deadpan jokes and ornate dialogue are quintessentially Andersonian. “The Green Knight” A dissolute would-be knight, Gawain (Dev Patel), decapitates a tree-faced stranger at King Arthur’s court, only for the stranger to pick up his head and ride away
meticulous Source
A question of degree First, the way it was assembled. Although the report presents no new science of its own, its survey of more than 6,000 studies is _______ . With every passing year scientists amass more data about how the climate has already changed
meticulous Source
But for most of 2020 life in Australia carried on as usual, with schools, restaurants and theatres open—and no masks in sight. When a covid-19 case slipped through the quarantine wall, _______ contact-tracing prevented big outbreaks. By August 25th Australia had registered 39 covid-19 deaths per million people, compared with about 1,700 per million in Europe
meticulous Source
Now a Portuguese wit suggests rebranding the whole country as Poortugal. Amid furious protests and thundering editorials, such _______ humour was a restrained response to the draft 2013 budget that Vítor Gaspar, the finance minister, presented on October 15th. To meet the targets agreed to by the “troika” of the European Union, European Central Bank and IMF, he wants “enormous” tax increases, including the raising of average income-tax rates by as much as a third
mordant Source
Street-facing laundries in ancient Rome had pissoirs attached to them, to encourage passers-by in need of relief to provide, free of charge, a raw material which was then fermented into a degreasing agent. Urine also found employment as a _______ , to assist in the dying of cloth—Scottish tweed was once notorious for smelling of the stuff when it got wet. And urine was, too, a source of potassium nitrate, one of the ingredients of gunpowder
mordant Source
Only during the first and second world wars did rates of return drop much below growth rates. And in recent decades, the “great compression” in incomes and wealth that followed the world wars has come undone, as asset returns persistently _______ the growth of the economy. In such ways does the painstaking collection of data fundamentally reshape understanding of the way economies work
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Few question those figures because much of the growth is already baked into what demographers term “population momentum”—that is, Africa has so many women of childbearing age that even if most decided to have fewer babies today, the population would keep expanding. As a result, some doomsayers are dusting off the theories of Thomas Malthus, who argued in 1798 that a growing human population would starve because it would _______ the supply of food. Among these is Malcolm Potts, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who argued in a paper in 2013 that “the Sahel could become the first part of planet Earth that suffers large-scale starvation and escalating conflict as a growing human population outruns diminishing natural resources
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Demand for lithium doubled between 2015 and 2020 to around 360,000 tonnes per year. Benchmark predicts it will soon _______ supply by some 240,000 tonnes. The lithium market is highly speculative; past predictions of shortages have proven wrong, in part because people were slow to start buying electric cars
outstrip Source
In 2012 Larry Summers, a former American treasury secretary, and Brad DeLong, an economist, suggested a large Keynesian stimulus based on borrowing. Thanks to low interest rates, the gains it would provide by boosting the growth rate of GDP might _______ the cost of financing the debt taken on. In the following year Mr Summers followed some 1930s Keynesians, notably Alvin Hansen, in suggesting that borrowing in order to stimulate might be needed not just as an occasional pick-me-up, but as a permanent part of the economy
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Getty Images THOMAS MALTHUS first published his “Essay on the Principle of Population”, in which he forecast that population growth would _______ the world's food supply, in 1798. His timing was unfortunate, for something started happening around then which made nonsense of his ideas
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WHY do economies grow, and why might growth _______ the natural world’s capacity to sustain it? The answers to such questions have long eluded economists. But the profession’s progress towards cracking them is in large part because of this year’s recipients of the Nobel prize for economic sciences, Paul Romer (pictured, right) and William Nordhaus (pictured, left)
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This is part of a plan to send Chinese astronauts to the moon by the end of the decade. There is little doubt it will have the propaganda value intended, showing that China can not only match but _______ the West in matters technological. Another Chinese institution that aims to beat the gweilo at their own game is the BGI
outstrip Source
It invites the same problems that were seen at the outset of lockdowns in March, when different authorities scrambled for personal protective equipment like face-masks, gowns and sanitiser. Once new vaccines, drugs and tests become available, demand will vastly _______ supply and things will get much worse. A covid-19 vaccine will be a precious resource
outstrip Source
Pundits decry the disappearance of the steady positions of yesteryear, where people did a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. “Where have all the good jobs gone?”, wonders one recent book, while another talks about “the rise of polarised and _______ employment systems”. President Joe Biden takes after Donald Trump in promising to bring good jobs “back”
precarious Source
Together, the researchers developed methods to make the conclusions from natural experiments more useful. Economists refer to the _______ factor used in natural experiments (like the birth month of a student) as an “instrument”. Messrs Angrist and Imbens explained the assumptions that need to hold for an instrument’s use to be valid: it must, for instance, influence only the outcome being studied (earnings, in this case) through its effect on the treatment (years of schooling), and not other channels
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In his view, “Economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers but a serious shortage of interesting questions,” as Stephen Dubner, a journalist, once put it. In pursuit of more compelling questions, he roamed freely, carrying his tools into unconventional and even _______ areas of research (penalty kicks, sumo and “The Weakest Link”, a game show). The result was “Freakonomics”, a bestseller written with Mr Dubner, and a phalanx of imitators
quirky Source
The biggest threat to that comes from Mr Trump, who used his election-night party to claim falsely that he had already won, and to fire up his supporters by warning that victory was being stolen from him. Coming from a man sworn to safeguard America’s constitution, such incitement was a reminder why many, including this newspaper, had called for voters to _______ Mr Trump wholesale. With Mr Biden’s victory they would take a crucial first step in that direction
repudiate Source
IT HAS BECOME a cliché of liberal editorialising to demand that voters _______ Donald Trump’s populist platform as well as the president himself. Wherever the final vote tallies land, it will be hard to argue that they have
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“But so too does the statute of limitations. ” Sovereign debtors are usually keen to repay or restructure debt rather than _______ it, in order to retain access to capital markets. Last year Russia repaid the last of its outstanding $70bn Soviet-era debt
repudiate Source
The army despises the PT for its role in corruption and for creating a truth commission to investigate human-rights abuses under the dictatorship. In 2018, before the supreme court rejected an appeal to save Lula from prison, the army commander tweeted that his institution was “on the alert” and “shares the desire of all good citizens to _______ impunity”. It was perceived by many as a warning
repudiate Source
Finally, when the monuments were torn down, statues of Karl Marx were defaced as contemptuously as those of Lenin and Stalin. Communism was _______ d as theory and as practice; its champions were cast aside, intellectual founders and sociopathic rulers alike. People in the West, their judgment not impaired by having lived in the system Marx inspired, mostly came to a more dispassionate view
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It inspired a resentful backlash, exemplified by America’s Tea Party. That crisis at least had the _______ to spread financial pain across the rich as well as the poor, however. The share of global wealth held by the top “one percent” actually fell in 2008
tact Source
Luca D’Urbino — The case for a second referendum Regularly illustrating stories about Brexit in fresh and entertaining ways proved a real challenge, yet Luca excelled at this throughout 2018. Andrea Ucini — Rape as a weapon of war Visually representing such a sensitive topic with _______ is not easy. Andrea struck the balance perfectly in creating a powerful but tasteful image
tact Source
When a reviewer for the Toronto Star, writing about the black characters in the film “Moonlight”, described their “coat-switching”, he arguably improved it. So if you chuckle when you read “the point is mute”, “in one foul swoop” or “to change _______ ”, ask yourself whether you could give precise definitions of “moot”, “fell” or “tack”. The speakers replacing them with more common words are in a way the opposite of Mrs Malaprop; rather than trying to show off, they are often making opaque expressions simpler
tact Source
But nor has he lambasted America, points out Jeremy Hunt, a former British health secretary. Such _______ is crucial. UN bodies work by consensus, he says: “That is the price you pay for getting all the countries in the world around the table
tact Source
The ensuing exchanges occur within well-understood parameters—including a sense that social categories are resilient and pleasantries will not change them. But _______ allows people from antagonistic camps to have amicable encounters and transactions. All three authors are inclined to overstate the ability of brief interactions to stave off conflict
tact Source
THE late Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration's envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, had many virtues as a diplomat, but _______ was not among them. His description of his theatre of operations as “AfPak” infuriated the Pakistanis, who wanted the Americans to regard their country as a sophisticated, powerful ally worthy of attention in itself, not just as a suffix to the feuding tribesmen next door
tact Source
America is even worse: there, productivity in construction has plunged by half since the late 1960s. This is no _______ matter. The building trade is worth $10trn each year, or 13% of world output
trifling Source
In 2004 even the egalitarian Swedes decided that their inheritance tax should be abolished. Yet this trend towards _______ or zero estate taxes ought to give pause. Such levies pit two vital liberal principles against each other
trifling Source
But nor has he lambasted America, points out Jeremy Hunt, a former British health secretary. Such _______ is crucial. UN bodies work by consensus, he says: “That is the price you pay for getting all the countries in the world around the table
trifling Source
The industry, however, is under a cloud. It is suspected of commercialising and _______ with rights and privileges that patriots regard as sacred; and of making life easier for crooks and terrorists. For the European Union in particular, the issue is delicate
trifling Source
The managers, in other words, worked out how to game the system and to short-change the workers in the process. Of course, the paper describes a laboratory experiment in which the gains were _______ ; participants received just over $15 on average. But it lends weight to the idea that managerial incentives can have distorting effects on business performance
trifling Source
They are supporting Fiji. The question of who leads the council may seem _______ . After all, it is the body’s 47 members, not its president, who set the agenda
trifling Source
Being a function of politics rather than physics, transition risks are less certain than physical ones. The costs are currently _______ ; governments raise perhaps $30bn a year worldwide in carbon levies, a fraction of the $2trn in profits that America Inc generated last year. But if they lived up to the Paris deal’s aim of keeping warming within 2°C of pre-industrial levels, 15% of global stockmarket value might be on the line
trifling Source
In a paper published on June 17th, Mike Brewer and Claudia Samano-Robles of Essex University paint an unusually detailed portrait of Britain’s very highest earners. Using data from the tax office up until 2015-16, they focus on the incomes of not just the top 1%—who earned a _______ £129,000 ($164,000) or more in that year—but the top 0. 01%
trifling Source
In the midst of the global financial crisis in 2009, leaders at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh decided that the chaotic world of derivatives needed to be made safer by ensuring that they were centrally cleared. A decade later the notional value of all derivatives outstanding globally stands at a _______ $639trn, of which 68% are centrally cleared through a handful of clearing houses. Collectively these institutions contain one of the biggest concentrations of financial risk on the planet
trifling Source
It is now at a two-year low, having fallen by 5% against the dollar since April—and 1% in the past month, the worst performance of any big currency (see chart). Many Britons _______ any movement in the pound to the twists and turns of the Brexit saga. The cause of its recent slide is, however, more complicated
ascribe Source
The growth of official statistics gave wonks more data to work with. More powerful computers made it easier to spot patterns and _______ causality (this year’s Nobel prize was awarded for the practice of identifying cause and effect). The average number of authors per paper rose, as the complexity of the analysis increased (see chart 2)
ascribe Source
But although the farm-bill fiasco is only the latest link in a long chain of embarrassments under Mr Modi, the prime minister remains largely unscathed. Admirers _______ his staying power to personal charisma. They say he projects the strength and dignity Indian voters crave in their own lives
ascribe Source
When the firm shifted to remote work last year average hours rose but output fell slightly. The authors _______ part of the decline in productivity to “higher communication and co-ordination costs”. For instance, managers who had once popped their head round someone’s door may have found it harder to convey precisely what they needed when everyone was working remotely
ascribe Source
A new report, led by Diane Coyle, an economist at the University of Cambridge, attempts to address this by understanding the value of data and who stands to benefit from it. She says market prices often do not _______ full value to data because, in many cases, trading is too thin. Moreover, while much of society’s emphasis is on the dangers of misuse of personal data, the report chooses to highlight data’s contribution to “the broad economic well-being of all of society
ascribe Source
But Mr Mokyr recognises that acquired social codes also influence individual choices, and thus broader economic activity. Culture is not immutable, as those who _______ countries’ diverging fates to deep-rooted cultural attributes often suggest. It evolves as the ideas and influence of different groups shift
ascribe Source
In contrast, “Europe is secular; it is not seeking to convert China to a multiparty system or a free press,” he asserts, approvingly. European sources in Beijing _______ China’s willingness to cut a deal, after much foot-dragging, to two factors. First, to the belief of Liu He, a deputy prime minister in charge of economic policy, that some European competition is good for state-owned firms
ascribe Source
Mr Saavedra convincingly denied knowledge of these problems and responsibility for them. So why is Popular Force, the main opposition party, so hostile to him? Many commentators _______ this to the links several of its legislators have to universities that are lucrative businesses but offer poor value to students and face new scrutiny under the law regulating them (though that also applies to some pro-government lawmakers). The congressional hearing was remarkable for its mixture of ignorance and bad faith
ascribe Source
Mr Johnson may possess a unique ability to build a bridge between conservative climate sceptics such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Australia’s Scott Morrison and establishment environmentalists such as America’s Joe Biden. Why did Mr Johnson go green? And will his conversion stick when the going gets tough? It is tempting to _______ the shift to his wife, Carrie Johnson, whose arrival on the scene certainly fits the timing. Mrs Johnson, a former director of communications for the Conservative Party, devotes much of her time to campaigning for green causes, particularly marine life and animal rights
ascribe Source
Businesses are bewildered. Border officers are _______ . Even the government’s scientists are stumped: they note that few countries’ infection rates are higher than Britain’s
befuddled Source
THE WORLD championships of slot-car racing are a microcosm of mayhem. Tiny remote- controlled models of cars fly up, down and off a convoluted circuit faster than _______ spectators can follow. Forecasting winners is impossible
befuddled Source
They are permitted by every one of the City’s rivals. But Britain’s _______ legacy fund managers oppose them at home even though they are willing to buy them abroad. Reform of the asset-management industry is overdue
befuddled Source
Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub IN THE EARLY days of the covid-19 pandemic doctors were _______ by a peculiar phenomenon: some patients ill enough to be admitted to hospital seemed at first to respond well to treatment, recovering almost enough to be discharged, before suddenly deteriorating again. Europe is now recapitulating that sad trajectory on a continental scale
befuddled Source
On a recent visit Banyan faced tighter security getting into his hotel than into the offices of members of parliament. He was also slightly _______ to be told by Audrey Tang, the minister in charge of digital outreach, that she practised a policy of “radical transparency” and that transcripts of all her meetings, including any interviews, are published online ten working days after the event (she leaves the room when the cabinet starts talking about national security). Then there is the law on referendums, which was amended in 2017 to make it easier to get them on the ballot
befuddled Source
Dictators depend on projecting an image of omnipotence. In the television footage, Mr Maduro looked _______ ; the massed ranks of the National Guard broke discipline and ran off in panic. And Mr Maduro has rarely required an excuse to crack down
befuddled Source
In the present economic environment our policymakers must be able to understand complex financial issues, rather than behave in such a way that is “panicky and confused”. Sally Muggeridge Chief executive Industry and Parliament Trust London SIR – Without defending government ministers for their lack of understanding, it appears that most professions are _______ by the economic situation, particularly economists. Harry Whitbread London A liberal president SIR – Your review of Alan Wolfe's “The Future of Liberalism” stated that “Barack Obama shuns the L-word” (“Anatomy of an idea”, February 7th)
befuddled Source
By 1900 (admittedly after several revolutions and wars) they were 11 times larger. But growing inequality in developing countries leaves Ricardo’s disciples _______ and suggests the theory needs updating. Eric Maskin of Harvard University has attempted just this at the Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences, a get-together of economists in a Bavarian lakeside town featuring many Nobel laureates
befuddled Source
Using 2019 survey data from the Federal Reserve, the authors found that, in addition to being younger and mostly male, crypto investors are roughly 75% more likely than those who do not invest in crypto to hold a university degree, and twice as likely to earn more than $100,000 per year. Another recent study by Helmut Stix of the Central Bank of Austria also found that crypto investors were more financially literate on average than those who _______ digital currencies. The researchers found that characteristics vary across different cryptocurrencies
eschew Source
Many crossover investors tend to take a data-driven approach, building portfolios of startups that resemble an index of top performers in each sector. They _______ playing large roles in their portfolio companies. To contrast with this, some VCs are emphasising their personal touch
eschew Source
Many of the world’s fisheries run on slave labour. Depleted soils are chemically tarted up into a _______ semblance of health with nutrients straight from the factory. Fertiliser and animal-waste runoff create algal blooms that strip the oxygen from ever more, ever larger dead zones in littoral seas
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What is more, it has a vital role to play in the fight for a stable climate. The lesson of Fukushima is not to _______ nuclear power, it is to use it wisely. ■ Dig deeper The Fukushima disaster was not the turning point many had hoped (Mar 2021) 1843: After the tsunami: what happened to the girl from Fukushima? (Mar 2021) Economist Films: Why is nuclear power so unpopular? (Mar 2021) For more coverage of climate change, register for The Climate Issue, our fortnightly newsletter, or visit our climate-change hub
eschew Source
Inflation was tamed, and spendthrift local and federal governments were required by law to rein in their debts. The Central Bank was granted autonomy, charged with keeping inflation low and ensuring that banks _______ the adventurism that has damaged Britain and America. The economy was thrown open to foreign trade and investment, and many state industries were privatised
eschew Source
But now tech companies are wading into trickier waters. In 2020 Google’s internal style guide was updated, encouraging developers to _______ “unnecessarily gendered language” in their documentation. Rather than referring to “man hours”, for example, a coder might discuss the “person hours” involved in a project
eschew Source
Afghans are frightened, with good reason. While the Taliban have said that they will _______ revenge and respect women’s rights, they made—and swiftly failed to keep—similar promises when they took power in 1996. What’s next for the country and its people? On this page you’ll find The Economist’s latest coverage of the conflict, what it means for America and the ensuing humanitarian crisis
eschew Source
ANYBODY trying to explain the meaning of conservatism is immediately confronted by a paradox. Most conservatives _______ grand theories in favour of practice. Marxists may devote their lives to producing definitions of Marxism; conservatives prefer to get on with the business of government
eschew Source
Its budget is vastly larger than most, though, and it saves several billion dollars a year for more general topics like this one. The subjects at hand often sound _______ , if not silly, but the questions may prove more than merely academic. The invisible fish make that, at least, easier to see
esoteric Source
But these, as with much news, had a shorter shelf-life than more evergreen pieces. The ten most-read explainers of the year were more _______ . As the foundations of the liberal world order shake, it may be a relief to contemplate freemasonry and happy Finns: 1
esoteric Source
Now, thankfully, there are many. It might seem quixotic to insist on _______ preparedness when there are greater threats staring the world in the face, including catastrophic climate change and nuclear war. But this is not an either/or
esoteric Source
But the reverse—factorising that product back into its constituent primes without knowing in advance what those primes are—is hard, and becomes rapidly harder as the number to be factorised gets bigger. Factorising numbers into their constituent primes may sound _______ , but the one-way nature of the problem—and of some other, closely related mathematical tasks—is the foundation on which much modern encryption rests. Such encryption has plenty of uses
esoteric Source
Google’s diversity reports use the even more inclusive “LatinX+”. A term once championed by _______ academics has gone mainstream. The espousal of new vocabulary is one sign of a social mobilisation that is affecting ever more areas of American life
esoteric Source
APWHO is to blame? The simple answer—the suicide attackers, and those behind them—is hardly adequate, just as it would hardly be adequate simply to blame Hitler and his henchmen for the second world war, without mentioning the Treaty of Versailles or Weimar inflation. But that does not _______ the perpetrators of last week's onslaught, just as the Versailles treaty does not excuse Auschwitz: whatever their grievances, nothing could excuse an attack of such ferocity and size. So what explains it? A surprising number of people, and not just gullible fanatics looking for someone to hold responsible for the hopelessness of their lives, believe that to a greater or lesser extent America has reaped as it sowed
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What does Mr Opper, after careful mulling of all the evidence, make of that? He accepts the charge of matricide but thinks it was perpetrated under pressure from rival power- brokers, “for political rather than personal reasons”. Many of the empire’s most powerful women suffered the same fate, he adds: “This is not to _______ Nero, but the jubilant reaction in the Senate to Agrippina’s death is the key point to be stressed. ” At the heart of the show’s semi-revisionist view are two arguments
exculpate Source
The correct response to the problem is to push harder, such that other channels can contribute more and pick up the slack. We shouldn't allow the spending story to _______ the Fed.
exculpate Source
What does Mr Opper, after careful mulling of all the evidence, make of that? He accepts the charge of matricide but thinks it was perpetrated under pressure from rival power- brokers, “for political rather than personal reasons”. Many of the empire’s most powerful women suffered the same fate, he adds: “This is not to _______ Nero, but the jubilant reaction in the Senate to Agrippina’s death is the key point to be stressed. ” At the heart of the show’s semi-revisionist view are two arguments
exculpate Source
This is an entertaining book, enriched by the insights of an experienced practitioner. But there is a troubling subtext: the author's attempts to _______ himself.
exculpate Source
More claims for damages are kicking around. If secret courts are used in dealing with them, the government can attempt to _______ itself without revealing confidential information. Will these bits of the Justice and Security bill be adopted? For many, secret courts are a perversion of justice, and extending them unthinkable
exculpate Source
Some critics are casting him in the same mould as his father, who crushed the last major domestic uprising, staged by the Muslim Brotherhood, with a massacre in Hama in 1982 in which perhaps 20,000 died. Other figures, including the main presidential adviser, have tried to _______ Mr Assad. This has in turn led to rumours that Bashar is being countermanded within the regime, possibly by his brother Maher
exculpate Source
Print Pages … See full article The causes: The roots of hatred - Sep 20th 2001 AP WHO is to blame? The simple answer—the suicide attackers, and those behind them—is hardly adequate, just as it would hardly be adequate simply to blame Hitler and his henchmen for the second world war, without mentioning the Treaty of Versailles or Weimar inflation. But that does not _______ the perpetrators of last week's onslaught, just as the Versailles treaty does not excuse Auschwitz: whatever their grievances, nothing could excuse an attack of such ferocity and size. So what explains it? A surprising number of people, and not just gullible fanatics looking for someone to hold responsible for the hopelessness of their lives, believe that to a greater or lesser extent America has reaped as it sowed
exculpate Source
That won’t be fun for anyone. It is true that China has been _______ in capping its external liabilities (it is a net creditor). Its dangers are home-made
fastidious Source
One of the city's hottest new restaurants, Brawn (the name is a bit of a giveaway) serves head of veal, pigs' trotters and, yes, the jellified meat dish known as brawn. Even in _______ New York, Chris Leahy has lured the brave to his restaurant Lyon with veal- tongue salad and an entrée of beef tripe. Read more
fastidious Source
The picture that emerges is of a difficult, brilliant man. In Mr Stach’s view, Kafka was “a neurotic, hypochondriac, _______ individual who was complex and sensitive in every regard, who always circled around himself and who made a problem out of absolutely everything”. A decision to visit a married woman, soon to be his lover, takes him three weeks and 20 letters
fastidious Source
The second set is financial. Some small platforms rely on other firms for payment and tech support that might be more _______ about the presence of extreme views and the absence of moderation. Gab has been banned from both the Apple and Google app stores
fastidious Source
Not necessarily “like” the subject—he did not set much store by likeness, just as he hated commissions and hackwork—but somehow being the person, alive in the paint. Sittings for him took months and years, interspersed with witty conversations and dinners at the Wolseley in which he would keep on observing, translating each tic and expression into a single muttering brush-stroke—“Yes, a little,” “Slightly,” “More yellow,” until, in laboriously _______ layers, the person appeared. He was a beady-eyed prober, like the foxes he loved or his favourite whippet, Pluto, whose long-legged grace often appeared in his paintings as counterpoint to some fatter, redder human shape
fastidious Source
The Factories Act of 1948, for example, aims to safeguard workers’ health, safety and comfort in any plant with ten or more employees. It is quaintly _______ . In some states, the rules prescribe the frequency of whitewashing latrines (every four months) and the size of bucket required to fight fires (nine litres)
fastidious Source
The essence of autonomy, writes Mr Scharre, is software rather than hardware, making transparency very difficult. Liberal democracies may insist on “meaningful” human oversight, but will every country be as _______ ? And given the ubiquity of AI, what use might terrorists, devoid of compunction, make of it?
fastidious Source
Ms Mantel’s Cromwell is much more decorous than Mr Cummings. Over the course of “The Mirror & the Light” he becomes a baron and then an earl; always conscious of his humble roots, he is _______ about being addressed correctly. But the basic conditions of his employment are those of the modern courtier
fastidious Source
THE president’s dearest supporters and bitterest opponents are united in their wish that less attention be paid to his social-media habit. Stephen Miller, a policy adviser, and Sarah Sanders, the press secretary, have tried valiant defences, but many Republicans prefer to _______ ignorance. Some of Mr Trump’s critics detect a more insidious motive, “a weapon to control the news cycle”, as George Lakoff, a professor emeritus at Berkeley, puts it
feign Source
At the individual level, if your company is actively lobbying against climate legislation or taxes to fund environmental goals, don’t let your ESG work be a marketing foil for irresponsible leadership. Young employees in particular must lead this charge: tell your chief executives that it’s not acceptable to _______ loyalty to saving the planet while misleading the public and pressing politicians to forestall aggressive climate action. The idea of socially-responsible investing has evolved slowly over decades
feign Source
When YouTube was launched in 2005, commentators wondered why anyone would want to watch spotty teenagers filming themselves in their bedrooms when the delights of cable TV were a button-push away. In two decades, online dating has gone from being _______ and embarrassing to take its place as a perfectly normal way to meet people. Smartphones are some of the bestselling devices ever built
furtive Source
They bow to China’s mix of market power, geopolitical importance and ruthlessness. Lately, bullying others into _______ submission has not been enough for Communist Party chiefs. Increasingly, they seem bent on humiliating countries that show defiance, notably small or mid-sized allies of America
furtive Source
Ordering goods using Alexa, a voice-activated assistant, is as easy as saying its name. Tech firms are working on gesture-controlled devices that could enable payments with just a _______ glance of desire. But the great curse of facile externality is value-erosion
furtive Source
QAnon’s version has echoes of Robert Welch, a sweetmaker who founded the anti-communist John Birch Society in 1958. He claimed a “ _______ conspiratorial cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians” wanted America to be run by a socialist United Nations. It also shares some characteristics of the “satanic panic” of the 1980s, when rumours suggested devil-worshippers ran kindergartens and abused children
furtive Source
But such a defence of nepotism breaks down when America has a bad president. When ordinary aides find themselves in that unhappy situation, a sense of duty to their country, to their office or to the rule of law may prompt them to question _______ actions and poor decisions, or to resign. Other aides may be more strongly moved by self- interest, and a desire to keep their good name from being soiled by an unfit boss
furtive Source
“We chat online, but if we want to meet face-to-face we come here,” says a man in his early 20s. The kingdom's larger cities are brimming with social friction and _______ action of this kind. Much of it is not explicitly political, but it hints at the strength of discontent bubbling below the surface
furtive Source
In a distinctly unrobotic bout of magical thinking, she begs the sun—the source of her energy—to cure Josie, vowing in return to combat air pollution. Keeping her bargain requires a _______ and quixotic quest and help from Josie’s loyal friend, Rick. Unlike Josie, Rick has not been “lifted”, one of many points of slow-burn conflict
furtive Source
School bullies already use illicit snaps from mobile phones to embarrass their victims. The web throngs with _______ photos of women, snapped in public places. Wearable cameras will make such surreptitious photography easier
furtive Source
OVER THE weekend wonks flocked to Seattle for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. Among other things, they discussed how political divisions _______ the fight against covid-19. America now lags behind much of the rich world in its vaccine rollout, in part because of the reluctance of some on the right to get jabbed
hamper Source
The threat of export controls that looms over drugmakers and countries alike would not only choke the global supply of vaccines but the sense of hope and co-operation that goes with it. ","description":"Europe’s threat to withhold vaccine exports until it has its share could _______ progress against the virus
hamper Source
“The central government is running behind the times,” laments Yanai Tadashi, the founder and head of Fast Retailing, and Japan’s second-richest person. Those weaknesses will _______ Japan in the Reiwa era. Nonetheless, its ability to cope should not be underestimated
hamper Source
In the depth of the Iraq war many Europeans thought better of the superpower than they do now. The crisis will also _______ Mr Biden’s ability to repair the damage, by ensuring he is largely consumed by fighting fires at home. The second problem, what to do about China, is more daunting
hamper Source
But an indicator related to paying tax survives: it is based on the proportion of profits that firms have to fork over, as well as the number of taxes levied and the time taken to prepare tax returns. High taxation may _______ the incentive to invest, but a low tax take can also hurt the business climate if it means governments do not have enough revenue to pay for essential infrastructure, education and health care. In a recent paper, Tim Besley of the London School of Economics found that the average rank of countries with a value-added tax in 2006 was 23 places lower than that of countries without one
hamper Source
Any doubt about the change of tone was snuffed out two days later when James Bullard, head of the St Louis Fed, told CNBC that the first rate rise could arrive in late 2022. The Fed had seemed _______ even as signs of overheating in the American economy became harder to ignore. The central bank’s target measure of inflation, “core PCE”, jumped to 3%, year on year, at the end of April
nonchalant Source
The hawks say that America must not be distracted from the only task that counts: standing up to China. Either of these two visions would entail a _______ , destabilising American retreat, leaving the world more dangerous and uncertain. Mr Biden’s debacle in withdrawing from Afghanistan led some to doubt America’s willingness to defend its friends or deter its foes, and many to worry about the competence of its planning
partial Source
It awarded a small, new firm called Moderna $25m to develop the idea. Eight years, and more than 175m doses later, Moderna’s covid-19 vaccine sits alongside weather satellites, GPS, drones, stealth technology, voice interfaces, the personal computer and the internet on the list of innovations for which DARPA can claim at least _______ credit. It is the agency that shaped the modern world, and this success has spurred imitators
partial Source
During his election campaign, Mr Biden promised to restore and improve the nuclear deal with Iran signed by Mr Obama in 2015 and repudiated by Mr Trump three years later. The pact limited Iran’s nuclear programme for a decade or more and subjected it to strong inspections thereafter, in return for a _______ lifting of sanctions. Mr Biden has maintained sanctions that Mr Trump imposed to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran
partial Source
And it agreed to the most stringent inspections regime anywhere in the world. In return, the most onerous sanctions were lifted, providing _______ relief for Iran’s battered economy. The deal’s proponents argued that the restrictions left Iran more than a year away from being able to produce a bomb’s worth of fuel, up from a harrowing few months
partial Source
As their use has increased, so has their scope. Where once they tended to be fairly straightforward country-wide trade embargoes, they have grown into a dizzying array of measures covering whole countries, whole or _______ sectors, individuals, or groups of officials or cronies. The tools, in short, have been sharpened
partial Source
We know nothing about the lives of these people, whether they identified as heterosexual or gay or lesbian or something in between. Studying their _______ half-smiles or impassive stares, you wonder at the dreams and desires that lie behind the pictures. You leave the exhibition uplifted, in a celebratory mood and full of gratitude for the people who refused to do what society expected of them
pensive Source
“I’m a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist,” she is forced to yell at her editor, in case we had forgotten. After a _______ first act, Mr Snyder replaces plot with brute force, leaving the final act far too long and combative. The film's heavy reliance on CGI wizardry means it is visually stunning (cities crumble, trains fly through the air), but also it turns what began as a complex drama into a sensory assault
pensive Source
“Wonderwall” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger” are the most famous tracks on Oasis’s second album, but the gentle harmonies of “Cast No Shadow” and the gradual building of “Champagne Supernova” are more impressive. By this stage, Noel had already composed the string- accompanied anthem “Whatever”, the striving horn sections of “The Masterplan” and the _______ acoustic piece “Half the World Away”—none of which even made it onto a studio album. Future records would feature the plaintive “Don’t Go Away”, the moody “Where Did It All Go Wrong” and the existential “Little by Little”: “why am I really here?” asks a man who once told listeners to “wipe the shit from your shoes”
pensive Source
7% of all votes for the two major parties—precisely the share of the popular vote that they won in 2020. This would _______ good fortune for the Democrats if it were November 2022, but unfortunately for America’s liberals, there is a tendency for the ruling party to lose ground in the year before the actual election. The ruling party’s share of the two-party vote has shrunk by an average of 3
portend Source
The world has only recently recovered from a bout of robophobia. In the early 2010s advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), described ominously in countless papers and books, seemed to _______ a wave of job destruction. High unemployment after the global financial crisis of 2007-09 added to fears of a job scarcity
portend Source
And a close relationship exists between the swing against the incumbent party in those gubernatorial contests and in the House vote nationally. With Mr Biden’s net approval rating underwater and a trend against the Democrats in congressional generic-ballot polling, even a five- or six-point margin for Mr McAuliffe on November 2nd would _______ defeat in the mid-terms.
portend Source
One possibility is that the UAE and some other countries are allowed a temporary increase in output and the thorny issue of quota revision is kicked down the road. Even if a deal is struck, however, the spat may _______ further disagreements—and more price volatility. OPEC+ members are using divergent strategies when it comes to the energy transition and the oil markets, argues Francesco Martoccia of Citigroup, a bank
portend Source
Everything suggests that in the real thing in October the Peronists will return to power in the form of Alberto Fernández, a social democrat, and his running-mate, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who ruled as a leftist populist from 2007 to 2015. Will Argentina once again _______ a broader shift in the region’s political weather? Some analysts think so. Noting that leftists had lost in the recent past because they were incumbents rather than because voters had become more conservative, Christopher Garman of Eurasia Group, a consultancy, wrote that “anti-establishment, or change” elections risk ending market-friendly policies in several South American countries over the next three years
portend Source
But even in the scenario Mr Biden or some other Democrat were to lose in 2024 and Democrats regain control of Congress in 2026, that would still leave them without legislative power for two cycles after next year’s mid-terms. If the results on November 3rd stem largely from the typical patterns of American politics, they _______ a dark decade ahead for the Democrats, notwithstanding Mr Biden’s plummeting approval ratings. And this week’s shellacking suggests that the party has no sound strategy for how to combat such trends
portend Source
The cabinet, formed in September after a year of deadlock, has not met in over a month owing to political disputes. Elections scheduled for spring _______ more paralysis. As for the Cedars, they trail the UAE in the race for a spot in the play-offs
portend Source
Many people, particularly young people, are dissatisfied with the one country, two systems policy, do not trust either the Hong Kong government or the Chinese government, identify themselves as Hong Kongers rather than Chinese citizens, and even consider the People’s Republic of China and mainland Chinese to be an alien “other”. How did we get to this situation, and what does it _______ for the future? On the surface, the trigger was a proposed law on extradition of criminal suspects. Protesters and their sympathisers worried that if the bill were passed, innocent Hong Kongers would be at risk of being framed or falsely accused and then extradited to mainland China to face trial
portend Source
Herbal supplements, yoga and faddy diets—to which some turn in the absence of medical help—may alleviate the unpleasantness of menopause but do not offer the long-term health benefits of HRT. Moreover, the symptoms can _______ serious health problems in the future. Doctors could usefully prescribe HRT far more widely than they do today
portend Source
But this is also New York’s snare, as he also knew. You can get so _______ that the next thing you know you’re thinking anybody who would live elsewhere must have something wrong with him. Saul loved New York, but he loved Elsewhere just as much
myopic Source
“I think we’re very aware of what’s going on around us, more so than other generations have been,” she said. “But, at the same time, we’re teen-agers, so we can be very _______. ” She described the increasing prevalence of what she called “main-character syndrome,” in which teens behave in a way that causes their peers to say, “You’re not the main character
myopic Source
The latest contender is “The Big Short,” directed by Adam McKay, and in this case the title, swaying on the verge of an oxymoron, is a perfect fit for the theme. There was nothing small about the disaster that struck the economy in 2008, and, as for shortness, the movie is peopled, from first to last, with the morally _______ and the emotionally stunted. Some characters are invented and some are all too real
myopic Source
His research illuminates how and why the “privileged poor,” whose experiences at competitive private schools have primed them for academic success, outperform their “doubly disadvantaged” peers, who have languished in underfunded public schools. Recent debates over privilege and adversity in higher education have evinced a _______ obsession with the question of access: who gets in, and why? (The publication of Jack’s book, in March, happened to coincide with revelations of a brazen nationwide college-admissions scandal, in which more than fifty adults were indicted for scheming to channel the children of wealthy parents into top schools. ) Jack’s investigation redirects attention from the matter of access to the matter of inclusion
myopic Source
..Something woke me at three. Groggy and _______, I caught a promising green blur overhead and grabbed my glasses. The color of an aurora depends on which atmospheric gases are being pelted by solar particles
myopic Source
In the early years of the first century, the philosopher Seneca supposedly read all the books in Rome by viewing them through a glass globe of water that enlarged the lettering on the pages. According to Pliny the Elder, the Emperor Nero used to watch gladiatorial games by holding an emerald to his eye, either because the gem filtered the sunlight or because he was _______, or maybe because Nero was pulling Pliny’s leg. Who had the bright idea of riveting together two quartz “reading stones” with a bridge, thereby inventing the pince-nez? It’s a mystery, although some historians trace the inspiration to Pisa, based on a reference to “*occhiali*” in a sermon written by a Pisan monk in 1306
myopic Source
The book’s final essay, by Hannah-Jones, argues in favor of reparations so that America may “finally live up to the magnificent ideals upon which we were founded. ” By “we” here she is referring to the nation as a whole, but embedded in Hannah-Jones’s vision is a more _______ collective identity. The convoluted apparatuses of anti-Black racism don’t spare individuals based on the specifics of their family trees
provincial Source
Conservation North, a community group in British Columbia working to protect primary forests, has taken aerial photographs of thousands of hectares of forests in British Columbia that the _______ government has licensed to the Drax subsidiary Pinnacle Renewable Energy. These forests were recently shorn clean of their spruce, birch, and pine trees
provincial Source
A blockchain contract may say you own a house but only the police can enforce an eviction. Governance and accountability in DeFi-land are _______ . A sequence of large irrevocable transactions that humans cannot override could be dangerous, especially as coding errors are inevitable
rudimentary Source
The pandemic has led governments and central banks to experiment, from monitoring restaurant bookings to tracking card payments. The results are still _______ , but as digital devices, sensors and fast payments become ubiquitous, the ability to observe the economy accurately and speedily will improve. That holds open the promise of better public-sector decision-making—as well as the temptation for governments to meddle
rudimentary Source
We found that as long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance. But when we included a task that required even _______ cognitive skill, the outcome was the same as in the India study: the offer of a higher bonus led to poorer performance. If our tests mimic the real world, then higher bonuses may not only cost employers more but also discourage executives from working to the best of their ability
rudimentary Source
In a recent blog post, Alexander Tabarrok of George Mason University described the effect as “astoundingly large”. A study by Mr Tabarrok published in 2007 concluded that the threat of an additional 20 years of prison made criminals 17% less likely to reoffend; the prospect of fatherhood, it seems, is more _______ than that of two decades of incarceration. Alas, the two economists also reach other, less encouraging, conclusions
salutary Source
He was criticising those who write automatically, stitching platitudes together without reflection. His advice to avoid clichés is always _______ ; his injunction to think about what the words you use really mean is an even better one. But his judgment here was a little too harsh
salutary Source
The disappointing final chapter is merely a recapitulation of the first. Despite these faults, “The Age of AI” is a _______ warning to handle this technology with care and build institutions to control it. Human values and peace must not be taken for granted, the book urges
salutary Source
If you want radical fixes, there are better ways to correct the incentive problems at the core of the industry. You could _______ the link between auditors and their clients by requiring securities regulators to pick firms’ auditors. Or you could introduce mandatory insurance of accounts, whereby companies must buy coverage for losses from accounting errors and the insurers would therefore appoint auditors to assess their risk
sever Source
“The Body Artist” could scarcely be more different. Though billed as a novel, it is really just a short story, and _______ as a blade of grass. The story opens in the kitchen of a country house, somewhere outside New York
slight Source
They are more likely to be university-educated than the Hong Kongers who plan to stay, and more likely to be full-time employees. A _______ majority are women. Those planning or pondering a move are disgruntled about the governance of Hong Kong
slight Source
TRADERS are now back at their desks, and markets are getting active again, after a _______ August. Friday saw the first significant sell-off (in both bonds and equities) for a while and the trend continued on Monday morning
somnolent Source
BRONZED travellers gaze out over their cocktails as surfers carve up the left-hand breaks on offer in Máncora, Peru. Decades ago Máncora was little more than a _______ fishing village surrounded by desert. Today it’s a staple of the surfer circuit with a recent swell of luxury retreats
somnolent Source
That engages listeners’ imagination and, in so doing, allows them to escape what psychologists call “the cycle of rumination” on anxious thoughts that keeps people tossing and turning at night. Phoebe Smith is one of many writers on Calm’s books and she adapts her own travel journalism to fit the _______ format. She estimates that she has written between 20 and 30 sleep stories, including “Morocco’s Hidden Forest”, “Crossing Australia by Train” and “Wild Ponies of Chincoteague”
somnolent Source
But this is an unusual election. Continue reading » Markets The age of stagfusion Sep 12th 2016, 14:12 by Buttonwood TRADERS are now back at their desks, and markets are getting active again, after a _______ August. Friday saw the first significant sell-off (in both bonds and equities) for a while and the trend continued on Monday morning
somnolent Source
IN 1971, AN unemployed salesman named Shep Glazer upended the typically _______ hearings of the House Ways and Means Committee by giving a live demonstration of dialysis before aghast congressmen. The shock seemed to pay off
somnolent Source
99 This breezy but comprehensive paean argues that Germany’s culture of consensus and stability has bred a resilience unusual among crisis-prone democracies. Despite the teasing title—a jab at the author’s native Britain—it acknowledges Germany’s problems, from creaking infrastructure to _______ foreign policy. Twilight of Democracy
somnolent Source
Before 2008, many fell for the sales pitch of the whizzes who hatched CDOs, ABSs and the like. Reassured by _______ credit-rating agencies, which backed the bankers’ vision of handsome returns at virtually no risk, investors piled in with no due diligence to speak of. Aware of the reputational risks of messing up again, they now spend more time dissecting three-letter assets than just about anything else in their portfolio
somnolent Source
The answer is more targeted staff interactions, with groups gathering at specific times to refresh friendships and swap information. New technologies that “gamify” online interactions to prompt spontaneity may eventually _______ the stilted world of Zoom. As they retool their cultures firms will need to rejig their property: sober investors expect a reduction of at least 10% in the stock of office space in big cities
supersede Source
But the tech giants are hard on their heels. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s boss, believes its Oculus Quest headsets will be part of a virtual- and augmented-reality future that could _______ the smartphone. In August Facebook introduced Horizon Workrooms to its headsets, enabling workers to attend virtual meetings as avatars
supersede Source
With America readier than ever to close the liquidity taps on rivals, China is investing time and money in building a private track. It has rolled out its own messaging system to complement SWIFT, which may one day _______ it. Meanwhile Alibaba and Tencent, two giant tech firms, have already built what Paco Ybarra of Citigroup, an American bank, calls “parallel banking systems”
supersede Source
Critical race theory informs the claim that the aim of journalism is not “objectivity” but “moral clarity”. More than words can ever say Yet as critical race theory has grown, a focus on discourse and power has tended to _______ the practicalities. That has made it illiberal, even revolutionary
supersede Source
Mr Mankiw objects that this approach would also probably lead people to choose a society with mandatory organ donation, since they wouldn't know whether or not they'd need an organ. He thinks this a serious flaw in Rawls's argument: If imagining a hypothetical social insurance contract signed in an original position does not _______ the right of a person to his own organs, why should it
supersede Source
Unfortunately American policy towards Cuba resembles a 50-year tantrum, rather than a coherent plan for encouraging a transition to democracy. The hurt suffered by the exiles was indeed great, but it should not _______ the national interest of the United States. The 50-year-old economic embargo of the island, which this newspaper has long opposed, has done more than anything else to keep the Castros in power
supersede Source
But either way, it will not be long until thrusters on the most expensive object ever made push the whole caboodle to fiery doom over the Pacific Ocean. No other intergovernmental habitat will _______ it. But NASA is encouraging commercial replacements instead
supersede Source
As in many professions in 2015 and beyond, it is the primitive skill of understanding people, perceptions and relationships that will increasingly matter. ","description":"There is no technology that will _______ humankind’s willingness to believe in magic
supersede Source
The new code starts with some advantages. It will _______ the national codes, and provide a single global set of principles, with adherence closely monitored by a newly formed committee of central bankers and trading institutions. It is also designed to reflect current market practice, with clear guidelines on communication between participants and on trade-execution practices—two areas of weakness highlighted by the scandal
supersede Source
During his election campaign, Mr Biden promised to restore and improve the nuclear deal with Iran signed by Mr Obama in 2015 and repudiated by Mr Trump three years later. The pact limited Iran’s nuclear programme for a decade or more and subjected it to strong inspections thereafter, in return for a _______ lifting of sanctions. Mr Biden has maintained sanctions that Mr Trump imposed to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran
tout Source
IF DINNER PARTIES were permitted in locked-down France, it is not hard to guess what would set le _______ Paris aflutter. For months bankers, politicians and other pre-covid canapé-scoffers have taken sides in a corporate battle royale pitting two century-old firms against each other
tout Source
IF YOU WANT an obituary in the New York Times, there is one sure-fire way: coin a famous word. People have found their way into those pages under headlines that _______ their minting of “workaholic”, “burnout” and “homophobia”, even over other big achievements. There is something immortal about adding to the lexicon
tout Source
” Their marriage was “not really mine” but also “that of my father with his best friend”, who united two intellectual clans. _______ Paris attended their wedding. The marriage lasted “Four years
tout Source
TODAY'S global economy is a colourful landscape. Brands are ubiquitous, sprouting from billboards, television and magazine advertisements that relentlessly _______ the virtues of products. Humans themselves are not immune: American business gurus advise aspiring executives to style themselves as a product, “Brand You”
tout Source
Barely half a year ago the European Union’s (EU’s) trade policy was a mess. A much- _______ ed trade and investment partnership (TTIP) with the United States was on life support, trashed by NGOs and consumer groups, and disowned by some of the politicians who had asked for it in the first place. A deal with cuddly Canada (CETA) barely survived an encounter with a preening regional parliament in Belgium
tout Source
Today, for those in Israel and abroad who find the idea of a state where everybody has to share ethnicity or religion antiquated, a single state sounds enticing. Those Israelis who _______ the idea of giving up any territory to the Palestinians, meanwhile, like the idea because it sounds as though they get to hold on to what they have. And to some outsiders, the one-state solution is appealing because the negotiation that might lead to separate states is so hard and has made so little progress
abhor Source
If he retains his staff for two years, the $161,200 loan turns into a grant. Voters _______ bail-outs when they involve airlines and Wall Street, but seem altogether happier to provide succour to the likes of Mr Hathcock and Main Street. Politicians in America and Europe have all the more reason to help: small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) have been clobbered by the pandemic, even more so than their larger peers
abhor Source
IF ALL GOES to plan for China’s Communist Party, 2022 will offer a study in contrasts that humiliates America. China’s leaders _______ free elections but they can read opinion polls. They see headlines predicting a drubbing for the Democratic Party in America’s mid-term congressional elections in November, condemning the country to the uncertainties of divided government, if not outright gridlock
abhor Source
Many Colombians, led by Álvaro Uribe, Mr Santos’s predecessor, are outraged that FARC commanders who ordered kidnaps and bombings will not be jailed. They _______ the idea that for legal purposes the army will be bracketed with the FARC. They are right: the deal is hard to stomach
abhor Source
In the days after the Santa Fe massacre Dan Patrick, the Republican lieutenant-governor of Texas, made two suggestions. One was to echo President Donald Trump’s call to arm teachers with concealed weapons (many teachers _______ the idea of being armed). The other way he suggested to make schools safer was by reducing the number of entrances to one or two (how children might flee such a place was not apparently a major consideration)
abhor Source
This newspaper has argued steadfastly for the right of Israel to exist. We _______ the creeping delegitimisation and demonisation of Israel. But we also believe that the Palestinians deserve a state of their own
abhor Source
” Yet that does seem unlikely. The opposition stems from a belief that Mr Pompeo launched the commission to promote religious liberty—with which evangelical Christians, the Trump administration’s most important constituency, are obsessed—at the expense of reproductive and gay rights, which they _______ . This is a fair deduction
abhor Source
Despite this inauspicious start, Nigeria is now a powerhouse. Home to one in six sub- Saharan Africans, it is the continent’s most _______ democracy. Its economy, the largest, generates a quarter of Africa’s GDP
boisterous Source
PERHAPS THE most remarkable characteristic of General Electric (GE) over its 129-year history has been how thoroughly it reflected the dominant characteristics of big American business. Most of its history was a chronicle of _______ expansion, then globalisation—followed by painful restructuring away from the now-unloved conglomerate model. On November 9th Lawrence Culp, its chief executive, announced that GE would split its remaining operations into three public companies
boisterous Source
Another is Mr Johnson himself. His _______ willingness to outrage liberal sensibilities goes down well outside the cities, and his finely tuned political instincts have led him to espouse a combination of cultural conservatism and statist economics that has more in common with Gaullism or Eisenhower’s “modern Republicanism” than it has with Thatcherism or Cameron-style conservatism. Some of the intervention that the government promises is welcome
boisterous Source
“You see the best of the working class of the north away from their factories and workshops,” The Spectator informed its readers in 1880. “Their loud provincial tones are heard in _______ merriment. ” Since the Costa del Sol destroyed the island’s tourist trade, there is much less merriment, provincial or otherwise
boisterous Source
Young party members go to Yan’an to tour the caves that Mao plotted in. They end with renewed communist pledges or a _______ rendition of “The East is Red”. Students complete compulsory courses on party history and ideology that may involve a night in a cave
boisterous Source
Before long, they were producing memory chips, laptops and equity derivatives. In the process they also spawned a _______ academic debate about the source of their success. Some attributed it to the anvil of government direction; others to the furnace of competitive markets
boisterous Source
Drawn in by the earthy smell, punters from a local campsite happily pay 395kr ($40) a pop, double the price for fresh eel. A more _______ sideline is the eel party. Three nights a week, paying guests visit Hånsa’s cottage and its hotch-potch of nets, hulls and rusting anchors
boisterous Source
The middle class that was the bulwark of the post-war world is on the retreat across the West. The new tech oligarchy resembles the medieval aristocracy, “the _______ class without the chivalry”, as Joel Kotkin wrote in a recent book, “The Coming of Neo- Feudalism”. Its members live in gated communities or isolated enclaves protected from the rest of society
chivalrous Source
Only a few years ago economists were bemoaning weak wage growth. So it may seem _______ not to pop the champagne now that the opposite is happening. But pay can rise for a variety of reasons, some more benign than others
churlish Source
Start with the positives. Had a Polish film studio put out a film that grossed the best part of $1bn in just a few weeks, as “Cyberpunk 2077” managed to do, it would be _______ to complain if some of the acting was clunky and the plot had holes. CD Projekt is far from alone
churlish Source
By early 1777, while he was rehearsing a production in Le Havre, Beaumarchais managed to send nine shiploads of weapons to George Washington’s army. Remarkably, his fame was not an impediment to his _______ activities, and may even have helped him avoid suspicion. The CIA’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence concluded that his efforts had helped bring “the infant United States through the most critical period of its birth”
clandestine Source
Khan, a metallurgist who made Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, circulated his designs. The latest kit As the technologies to unearth work on _______ nuclear weapons become more diverse and more powerful, however, the odds of being detected are improving. Innovation is benefiting detection capabilities, says Ramesh Thakur, a former UN assistant secretary- general
clandestine Source
They range from obscure chemicals with names like IGF-1 LR3 and AOD-9604 to insulin (to boost muscle size), amphetamines (for their stimulating effects) and even diuretics (used to mask the presence of other drugs). The _______ nature of doping means that, for most drugs, there is little hard evidence for their effect on performance. Athletes are forced to rely instead on locker-room rumours and “street knowledge”, says Chris Cooper, a sports scientist at the University of Essex, much of which will probably be exaggerated
clandestine Source
Stripped of his leadership of a giant conglomerate, he was smuggled out of Japan on another private jet, this time hidden in a box. Because of that _______ escape, “Collision Course” by Hans Greimel and William Sposato, two Tokyo-based journalists, at times reads like a spy thriller. But their main aim and achievement is to give the clearest account yet of the deep-rooted causes of Mr Ghosn’s predicament
clandestine Source
And it happened again. Seventy years after her war-work, after long stints as a producer at both RAI, Italian state television, and the BBC, a friend who had been in the British army discovered that three medals existed, awarded by Britain but not yet delivered, for _______ service in the war. And they were hers
clandestine Source
American spies are also reported to have paid RSA, a security company, $10m to use a flawed technique that made it easier to break a widely used form of encryption (the company denies this). Such _______ suborning is even simpler for dictators. The KGB would occasionally divert flights by Aeroflot, the Soviet national airline, to collect intelligence from the air
clandestine Source
In the new shop, Brazilians without bank accounts—plumbers, salesmen, maids—flock to buy on instalment credit. In a country with no credit histories, the system is _______ : the staff interview customers about their qualifications and get them to sign stacks of promissory notes, like post-dated cheques, before allowing them to take their purchases home. But it works, more or less
cumbersome Source
Many investors would add to that list special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). They are an alternative way of taking firms public that bypasses the _______ initial public offering (IPO) process. The pace of deals has been furious
cumbersome Source
Another round came after the Kobe earthquake in 1995, which killed 6,500 and left more than 300,000 homeless. The government now has pre-arranged contracts for repairing infrastructure, allowing post-disaster reconstruction to begin fast without going through _______ procurement precesses, says Sameh Wahba, of the World Bank’s disaster-management programme. Local governments stockpile essential goods in schools and community centres
cumbersome Source
One is cleaning up radioactive waste, particularly when it is inside a nuclear power station—and especially if the power station in question has suffered a recent accident. Those who do handle radioactive material must first don protective suits that are inherently _______ and are further encumbered by the air hoses needed to allow the wearer to breathe. Even then their working hours are strictly limited, in order to avoid prolonged exposure to radiation and because operating in the suits is exhausting
cumbersome Source
The concept has its roots in the idea of “lean management”, developed by Toyota in car manufacturing, and in the “Agile manifesto” drawn up by a group of software developers back in 2001. Big software-development projects were (and are) notorious for producing costly, late and _______ results. The idea of agility was to focus on small, innovative and multi-disciplinary teams
cumbersome Source
Instagram has exploded in popularity since 2016. One reason is that people are tiring of Facebook’s cluttered interface and _______ privacy controls. Instagram offers pretty pictures and is easy to use
cumbersome Source
5trn. Yet compared with other industries and other countries, buying and selling property in America is _______ —and extraordinarily expensive. In an industry crying out for technological disruption, the only revolutionary change over the past decade has been the rise of celebrity estate agents who star in reality TV shows including “Million Dollar Listing” and “Flip or Flop”
cumbersome Source
Discoveries are expected in three main areas. The first is mapping the biological pathways for the most _______ long-covid symptoms, such as breathlessness and brain fog. Some studies are looking, for example, at changes in brain volume and structure
debilitating Source
A survey of almost 3,800 people around the world reported 205. A sufferer typically has several at a time, with the most _______ usually being one of three: severe breathlessness, fatigue or “brain fog”. Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that 14% of people who have tested positive for covid-19 have symptoms which subsequently linger for more than three months (see chart 1)
debilitating Source
This is the prevalence of “long covid”, the drawn-out form of the disease, which lasts for months or years. Long covid is poorly understood, often _______ and is a looming burden on health-care systems even in countries where vaccination is slowing the rate of new infections. How many people with covid-19 go on to develop the long version? The answer is complicated by the difficulty of diagnosing the condition, which is now formally called post-covid syndrome
debilitating Source
As prime minister, I had two options: either drag Israel into yet another set of lockdowns and further harm our economy and society, or to double down on vaccines as the central strategy, together with less restrictive measures such as a face-mask mandate in closed spaces and the “Green Pass” scheme that requires people to carry proof of being vaccinated or negative test results in order to participate in various activities. Besides avoiding the _______ damage of another lockdown, there was a further reason for going ahead with the booster doses. As the Delta wave was rising, we had more cases among vaccinated people than among people who hadn't received a jab
debilitating Source
SUFFERING from claustrophobia, the irrational fear of confined spaces, can be _______ . Taking the underground becomes an onerous task; locking the door in a cubicle can be agony; MRI scans are out of the question
debilitating Source
“LONG COVID”, a collection of _______ symptoms born of the coronavirus, is a chronic form of the illness, dreaded by patients. The term may also come to describe the progression of the pandemic in Europe
debilitating Source
As many as 80% of American workers suffer from high levels of stress in their job, according to a survey entitled “Attitudes in the American Workplace”. Nearly half say it is so _______ that they need help. Firms are at least aware of the issue
debilitating Source
In other ways she is like everyone else. Although few people have a defect as _______ , everyone’s health, and ill-health, is tied to the contents of their genomes. All genomes contain arrangements of genes that make psychological disorders, cancers, dementias or circulatory diseases either more of a problem or less of one
debilitating Source
Now one has been found for Parkinson’s disease. Frequently causing tremors, rigidity and dementia, Parkinson’s is both _______ and substantially shortens life expectancy. The rate at which these symptoms appear and worsen cannot be stopped or slowed yet but its most harmful effects can be staved off with drugs
debilitating Source
Virtual happy hours and a “cameras on” policy for conference calls may seem like pandemic- induced workarounds to boost morale and encourage engagement, but they are in fact crucial components of post-covid corporate culture. Tools to support remote working abound, but successfully building a distributed team demands _______ changes in the way people work. That requires a shift in the way companies train, empower and support people to work in new ways
deliberate Source
Strictly, devaluation refers only to sharp falls in a currency within a fixed EXCHANGE RATE system. Also it usually refers to a _______ act of GOVERNMENT policy, although in recent years reluctant devaluers have blamed financial SPECULATION. Most studies of devaluation suggest that its beneficial effects on COMPETITIVENESS are only temporary; over time they are eroded by higher PRICES (see J-CURVE)
deliberate Source
After that, not even the factions' weekly ritual, the Thursday lunch, would have much point. ","description":"Debating issues in Japanese politics? What a _______ idea","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
droll Source
The series’ protagonist is Arthur Dent, a denizen of a small West Country town who narrowly escapes the Earth's destruction and is fated to wander the universe, bewildered, in a dressing gown as improbable events take place around him. This _______ application of the quotidian to the wonders of the universe is at the heart of Adams’s appeal. He strips away sci-fi’s more portentous attributes without depriving it of either its sweep or its potential profundity
droll Source
The first is of a nation in decline, with a shrinking and ageing population, sapped of its vitality. The second is of an alluring, hyper-functional, somewhat _______ society—a nice place to eat sushi or explore strange subcultures, but of little wider relevance to the outside world. Both tales lead people to dismiss Japan
eccentric Source
Some hope that all this has given Tamil Nadu a self-sustaining momentum and that its politics are but a side show, as relevant to progress as Broadway is to Wall Street. But decades of _______ governance are catching up with Tamil Nadu. Graft is endemic
eccentric Source
But she was also a philosophy don at Oxford for 15 years, having decided to become one after hearing Jean-Paul Sartre lecture. Anscombe was the most _______ . Monocled, cigar-smoking and renowned for removing her trousers when a restaurant informed her that women could not wear them, she was mistaken for a cleaning lady when she arrived to take up the Cambridge chair of philosophy once occupied by her friend, Ludwig Wittgenstein
eccentric Source
Readers who suspect that economic progress cures most ills will be more sympathetic. But even they may view Mr Posner and Mr Weyl in the way radicals are often perceived: as somewhat _______ . Still, liberals must find some antidote to populism and protectionism
eccentric Source
The electric-car maker’s record net profit of $438m in the first quarter, the seventh straight in the black, came as an afterthought. Such is the allure of Tesla’s whirring money machine that many now give the benefit of the doubt to Mr Musk’s more _______ claims. His latest involves artificial intelligence (AI)
eccentric Source
window. env = {"ENV":"production"}; The _______ middle | The Economist {"@context":"http://schema. org","@type":"NewsArticle","url":"https://www
fractious Source
France is losing its factories and jobs, squeezing incomes and small businesses, destroying its landscapes and language, neglecting its borders and squandering its global stature. Its people are _______ and divided, if not on the verge of a civil war, as a public letter from retired army officers suggested earlier this year. At the second presidential primary debate for the centre-right Republicans party, on November 14th, the five candidates competed with each other to chronicle French disaster
fractious Source
The extreme right is making good use of the pandemic. A _______ movement by nature, its followers have responded to covid-19 in many ways besides displays of brash shirts and guns. They have carried out Zoom-bombings (ie, interrupting video-conference meetings), encouraged others to infect police officers and Jews and sought to disrupt government activities, including New York City’s 311 line for non-emergency information and National Guard operations
fractious Source
The benefits of AR may be even greater inside tanks, from which crew typically peer at the world through periscopes. That, says Daniel Covzhun, chief technologist at _______ Armor, an AR firm in Kiev, Ukraine, is like viewing the world “through a length of metal pipe”.
limpid Source
99 SICILY BEGUILES. It offers coves with _______ water; Greek temples, such as those at Agrigento and Segesta, that are among the best preserved in the Mediterranean; a Roman amphitheatre at Taormina still used for its original dramatic purpose; grandiose Baroque palazzi; bustling street markets; some of the best food to be had in Italy; an expanding range of fine wines at reasonable prices; and a cathedral in Palermo that is a riot of eclecticism. Etna on a spring morning, still capped with snow and belching smoke, is among Europe’s greatest sights
limpid Source
If only every author could be so lucky. Standing out as a book writer today requires more than a bright idea and _______ prose. Authors need to become businesspeople as well, thinking strategically about their brand, and marketing themselves and their products
limpid Source
By one account Diderot's conversation was “enlivened by absolute sincerity, subtle without obscurity, varied in its forms, dazzling in its flights of imagination, fertile in ideas and in its capacity to inspire ideas in others. One let oneself drift along with it for hours at a time, as if one were gliding down a fresh and _______ river, whose banks were adorned with rich estates and beautiful houses. ” Churchill was another magnificent talker, perhaps the greatest of the 20th century, but often a poor listener
limpid Source
The money raised by the electoral trusts is only 2. 2% of the total reported by the parties; a drop in the bucket—but a _______ drop, with its donors and recipients clearly labelled. In America the game of raising and spending billions in pursuit of maximising vote share is called “campaign finance”
limpid Source
It is a repository of peculiar characters, settings and situations, flights of idiosyncratic language and jags of startling perception. By contrast, as their titles suggest, “Conversations with Friends” and “Normal People”, Sally Rooney’s first two books, focused on everyday aspects of life—friendship, romance, growing up—which they chronicled in _______ but unflashy prose. Both were acclaimed by critics, became bestsellers and have been adapted for television
limpid Source
Straddling joy and melancholy, “Chris” is driven by its infectious melodies. You don’t need to have a lyric sheet to enjoy “Make Some Sense”, a gorgeous, _______ electronic ballad that is the clearest expression of the album’s debt to Eighties pop. In fact, it’s easiest to ignore the lyrics – Letissier’s phrasing, combined with the fact that the lyrics are English rewrites of the French originals, can make them a tad confusing
limpid Source
The atmosphere in the bars ranges from mellow to raucous depending on the location, time and tastes (though pandemic-induced restrictions have made melancholy the dominant mood). Many requests are on the _______ side. Kim Kwang-seok, a South Korean folk-rock singer of the Nineties, is particularly popular, says Mr Kim; so is “Hotel California”
mawkish Source
But a surprising one, at least—and that’s what the Golden Globes are for. ","description":"The _______ “Green Book” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” prevailed over “A Star Is Born”","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
mawkish Source
She reveres Margaret Thatcher’s memory, but her account lays bare the inherent contradictions of Thatcherism—an appeal to preserve old mores and communities combined with economic change that wrecked them. Once the EU was identified as the enemy, she suggests, the _______ nostalgia felt by her former friends could let rip. But newcomers like her had no place in that fiercely sentimental world
mawkish Source
He showed no remorse; his half-apology was largely another justification for the murders. He hand-copied a _______ 19th-century poem “Invictus” for his final statement but did not, in the end, read it. For his last meal he ate two pints of mint chocolate-chip ice cream
mawkish Source
Broadcast across several television stations and online platforms in the run up to Valentine’s Day, the commercial shows an elderly woman incessantly asking her beautiful granddaughter over the years, “Have you married yet?” Responding with textbook filial piety, the granddaughter resolves to “stop being so picky” and returns with a wedding dress and new husband in tow as granny waits on her deathbed. Clearly designed to pull at the heartstrings, the 30-second clip is accompanied by _______ music. A popular matchmaking website behind the ad, Baihe
mawkish Source
Perhaps that is because the brightest stars in the evangelical firmament are these days in the political, not the religious business. They include Mike Huckabee, a former presidential candidate and ordained Southern Baptist minister, who is prepping for the 2012 election by doing commentary for Fox News and ABC Radio; and of course Sarah Palin, now equipped with a new book and starring in a _______ TV reality show/travelogue called “Sarah Palin's Alaska”. This drew 5m viewers to the first episode in November
mawkish Source
There are echoes of Bourne in Hirst's quest for his own truth, but, in his fourth book, Mr Wignall forgoes the Ludlumesque technology and fancy fireworks in favour of richer characterisation. Hirst's letters to a former girlfriend are _______ in places, and he proves oddly unprofessional when faced with a pretty woman. But even hit-men have libidos
mawkish Source
From 1941 until Hammerstein’s death in 1960 his partnership with Rodgers yielded an anthology of musical theatre’s greatest hits: “Oklahoma!”, “Carousel”, “South Pacific”, “The King and I” and “The Sound of Music”. These days the duo’s popularity is sometimes held against them, as if they were merely purveyors of _______ schlock. “Something Wonderful”, Todd Purdum’s skilful dual biography, strips away the accretions of time and reputation to retrieve the craft and dynamism with which his subjects created a new kind of musical
mawkish Source
Raised in the New Jersey suburbs and trained as a painter, he once believed that his artistic genius would make him famous. Now in his 40s, with the slovenly build of a “half-melted block of Muenster cheese”, he is embittered, occasionally _______ and complacent; a “man with many privileges and zero skills. What used to be called an American
mawkish Source
Democrats favour more spending, while most Republicans favour permanent tax cuts (and either spending cuts, or limited spending focused on defence). As Mr Cowen says, this dynamic seems to reflect increased Republican _______ to the party's donors. What I'm wondering is why we don't see this mirrored on the Democratic side—why aren't we seeing big sops to labour and manufacturing (the sops so far have been unfortunate but rather weak by historical standards)? Why, in other words, is the bill so good? One might have expected the worst of all worlds, an Iron and Rye coalition full of bad policies that benefit Democratic interest groups, balanced by bad policies that benefit conservative interest groups in order to get past 60 votes in the Senate
obeisance Source
At a temple in his honour, visitors take turns to bow and prostrate themselves before a large statue of Confucius seated on a throne. For each _______ , a master of ceremonies chants a wish, such as for “success in exams” or “peace of the country”. On the other side of the city the tomb of Confucius is the scene of similar adoration—flowers adorn it as if he were a loved one recently lost
obeisance Source
Surprisingly, perhaps, these demands have elicited a willing, not to say avid, response in enlightened boardrooms everywhere. Companies at every opportunity now pay elaborate _______ to the principles of corporate social responsibility. They have CSR officers, CSR consultants, CSR departments, and CSR initiatives coming out of their ears
obeisance Source
By contrast, manufacturers and farmers face price controls and risk sporadic official harassment. The result has been the rise of what is known, in _______ to Bolívar, as the “Boli-bourgeoisie”. Thanks to economic growth and social programmes, the government claims that only 30% of Venezuelan families now live in poverty, down from 55% at the peak in 2003
obeisance Source
Instead, Hamas—avowed enemy of the peace process—has basked in glory since Israel released its spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in order to get its own agents out of Jordanian custody. Mr Arafat can only make _______ and hope that something useful emerges from the coming talks between his men and the sheikh's. Mr Netanyahu's easy eloquence and optimistic approach win him friends abroad, particularly in the American Congress and among members of the Republican Party
obeisance Source
But not all the obstacles that badly off Egyptians confront on that climb are transitional. Some are structural, and have nothing to do with Egypt's _______ to the IMF. Poverty numbers are, inevitably, disputed
obeisance Source
He has written more than 3,000 judicial opinions, hundreds of articles and dozens of books, including “The Federal Judiciary: Strengths and Weaknesses”, a scathing 2017 portrait in which readers are hard-pressed to discover many “strengths”. Mr Posner thinks most judges are lousy writers who rely unduly on their clerks and are “stuck in the past”, paying _______ to fusty traditions. He does not spare the Supreme Court
obeisance Source
ONE WOULD never guess, reading the Global New Light of Myanmar, a state newspaper, that more than 500 people have been killed by the army amid protests against a military coup on February 1st. Its pages are filled with pictures of generals shaking hands with foreign dignitaries, attending meetings and making _______ to Buddhist monks. Whereas monks were prominent in the previous bout of protests against military rule, in 2007, their role has been much more ambiguous this time
obeisance Source
Like Mr Morales, he has support among coca farmers. He is proof, the argument goes, that the Andean countries will fall, like dominoes, into the grasp of anti-yanqui radical populists owing cash and _______ to the drug trade and to Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. Yet Mr Humala is a very Peruvian phenomenon
obeisance Source
The “American clothing” involved native techniques and materials, such as silver, feathers, dyes and woods, and skilled artists. Spanish America developed a visual culture that lasts to this day, featuring popular religiosity (especially the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who revealed herself to an indigenous shepherd), _______ public display and jubilation in the fiesta, and a celebration of the abundance of the land. This distinct cultural tradition eventually assumed political form in the movement for independence from Spain
ostentatious Source
AFTER acrimonious debates over Barack Obama’s appointments to head the Treasury, the Department of State and the Department of Defence, there was little energy left in the Senate this week for a fight over who should head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the agency that oversees America’s securities markets. A confirmation hearing on March 12th for Mary Jo White, the appointee, was _______ . It still revealed the scale of the task in front of her
perfunctory Source
“Speaking frankly, it’s a lie,” says Liang Yong, a gruff villager. The official investigation of Ziyun’s economy was, he says, _______ . Provincial leaders popped into his village, rendered their verdict that it had left poverty behind and then sped off
perfunctory Source
The police said they wanted to ask the two about their links with Cheng Lei, an Australian journalist working for Chinese state television who was detained in August under China’s national-security law. But during the interviews, the police raised only _______ questions about Ms Cheng. “It was about harassing us,” says Mr Birtles
perfunctory Source
Even after that dubious victory, it continued to persecute the charismatic opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, who in February was sentenced to five years on trumped-up charges of sodomy. American criticism was _______ . In the past year growing numbers of activists and opposition figures have been arrested under the Sedition Act, another colonial law aimed originally at advocates of independence
perfunctory Source
Its leader, Mr Benkirane, lives at home with two guards at his door, not in a government- issued palace with liveried servants. At his swearing-in he gave the king a _______ peck on the shoulder, not a full bow-and-kiss on the hand. Mr Benkirane speaks the street dialect of his people rather than the formal Arabic that many Moroccans struggle to grasp
perfunctory Source
But there has long been a second Berlin, this one a blank slate and haven for young Europeans, Americans, Antipodeans and other free spirits seeking cheap rent, like-minded souls and perhaps a second adolescence. This is a metropolis of edgy galleries, smoky bars, empty streets and casual liaisons; of _______ efforts to learn German, 30-somethings serving out internships, and soul-sapping battles with the paper-pushers of the Ausländerbehörde (immigration offices). This version of Berlin offers almost unlimited creative, recreational and sexual possibilities—albeit usually within a handful of gentrifying neighbourhoods in the city’s east—and is the backdrop for two new books by young Anglophone writers
perfunctory Source
Mr Gandhi and his mother, Sonia, gracelessly failed to congratulate Mr Modi. Their _______ offers to quit party posts on May 19th were refused by Congress sycophants. None of that suggests a party ready to learn from failure
perfunctory Source
co. uk WHEN China sent swift condolences to Pakistan after the slaughter of over 130 schoolchildren in a terror attack in Peshawar last month, it was more than a _______ gesture. The two countries have such a long-standing and harmonious relationship that both sides sometimes come close to believing the official mantra that the ties that bind them really are higher than the highest mountains
perfunctory Source
Fewer are at level three (equivalent to the school-leaving exams taken at 18) and hardly any are level four—equivalent to degrees. So _______ are many apprenticeships that they not only fall short of the government’s Teutonic aspirations but are of little use at all, says Lee Elliot Major of the Sutton Trust, an education charity. They waste public money, do not encourage firms to invest in training and do nothing to plug a yawning skills gap
perfunctory Source
economist. com/printedition/2021-11-13","name":"Nov 13th 2021 edition"}}]} Science & technologyNov 13th 2021 edition_______ plasticMicroplastics in household dust could promote antibiotic resistancePolyester and nylon seem to be common sourcesNov 10th 2021FacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppPLASTICS ARE man-made materials that are unnatural to this world, but that does not stop the natural world from interacting with them. Indeed, dozens of studies show that when plastics get into the sea many ocean-dwelling microorganisms aggressively colonise them
perilous Source
The technologies they harness are powerful but energy-efficient new processors, the communications standards of the Internet and a looming explosion in bandwidth. The result will be _______ computing—computing any time, anywhere. The doubling of processing power every 18 months, predicted by Intel's co-founder, Gordon Moore, will continue relentlessly for at least the next five years
pervasive Source
It is unduly influenced by profit-driven companies with inordinate power over our economic and political structures, education and media. Their _______ impact is manifested in society’s value judgments, aesthetic education and philosophy. The cultural landscape is also shaped by the framework of Western capitalism and its associated concepts of democracy, freedom and a partial dose of socialism
pervasive Source
The course will equip you with an understanding of the implications of ongoing global change so as to ensure you lead effectively. Duration6 weeksLocationOnlineTime commitment6 to 8 hours per weekStart Date2nd February 2022Price£1,475Learn moreAbout the programmeOur course will consider shifts in international alliances, developments in trade and the _______power of technology. The curriculum comprises a fresh blend of conceptual and practical insights, combined with our senior editors’ and global correspondents’ on-the- ground experience
pervasive Source
“From my perspective, it means nothing,” he says. This view is _______ throughout much of the oil industry. In Europe, listed oil companies are under pressure from investors, primarily on environmental grounds, to stop drilling new wells
pervasive Source
The currency’s “money supply” will eventually be capped at 21m units. To Bitcoin’s libertarian disciples, that is a neat way to _______ the inflationary central-bank meddling to which most currencies are prone. Yet modern central banks favour low but positive inflation for good reason
preclude Source
Some insist that Europe risked irrelevance if it had waited for a new American president. They add that this modest accord does not _______ co-ordinated action later. Others regret the decision to hand China a political win at Mr Biden’s expense
preclude Source
Raclette, an Alpine melted-cheese dish, was rejected as too obscure. Unicode says approximations _______ the need for certain additions. A squirrel, it insists, can be represented by a chipmunk emoji
preclude Source
Jay Alix, the founder of AlixPartners, a veteran of the bankruptcy business, has sought to drag McKinsey through the courts. He claims that its alleged lack of disclosure should _______ it from working on bankruptcies. Judges have so far dismissed four out of five cases on the grounds that Mr Alix lacked standing to pursue them in the first place
preclude Source
As to the specifics of Dr Zarate’s study, Husseini Manji, the head of neuroscience at Johnson & Johnson, says it is possible that this work identified an additional way to generate antidepressive effects. Even if ketamine is found to work via another receptor, this does not _______ it working via NMDA. Armin Szegedi, who runs clinical development of the drug rapastinel at Allergan, makes the same argument
preclude Source
All he is trying to do, he says, is make the world see how much there is that can't be seen. Why, he asks, do we take absence of proof to be proof of absence? Why do we base the study of chance on the world of games? Casinos, after all, have rules that _______ the truly shocking. And why do we attach such importance to statistics when they tell us so little about what is to come? A single set of data can lead you down two very different paths
preclude Source
. Like Woody Allen, with whom he shares a _______for irreverent, dialogue-heavy humour, he has had as many flops as successes. “She's Funny That Way”,
predilection Source
Or, strictly speaking, "fairness", for it concerns not so much the substance of what is or isn't fair but rather how the word is abused in contemporary British political parlance. For example, the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government seems to have developed a sudden _______ for it, presumably because both parties can readily agree to do the "fair" thing (who wouldn't?) while diverging on what precisely the "fair" thing is. In this sense, "fair" has become a bit like "right": a general term of commendation devoid of substantive meaning
predilection Source
But that is an evolutionary eye-blink. So Katherine Amato, an anthropologist at Northwestern University in Illinois, found herself wondering just how far back in time a _______ for the fermented goes. As she reports in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, she discovered that several other primate species also feed on fermented foods
predilection Source
THIS week we decided to put a figure-skating Vladimir Putin on the cover of The Economist (click the image for a hi-res version). What better way to depict the Russian president’s _______ for self-promotional stunts, of which the winter Olympics in Sochi is merely the most prominent example? Like most journalists, we like to think that our ideas are uniquely brilliant (and they are). But before we went to press, with our cover already in hand, we discovered that the perceptive New Yorker had reached the same conclusion: its cover drawing this week depicts an ice-dancing Mr Putin in front of a panel of judges, all of whom are in fact Mr Putin himself
predilection Source
This was the nation that turned its nose up at republicanism, fascism and communism; that has typically advanced not through revolutions but by tweaks and fiddles; and that tolerates the ensuing tensions and contradictions like wrinkles on an old face. Whence does this _______ for muddling through come? Some point to the English civil war and the short-lived but tyrannical republic that ensued. This, the argument goes, put the country off purisms of all sorts
predilection Source
ITH his thick-rimmed spectacles, impeccable manners and _______ for long disquisitions on epistemology, Ikujiro Nonaka hardly seems like a normal management guru. It is impossible to imagine him rigging best-seller lists, dreaming up buzzwords, or doing any of the other things that have become associated with that most dubious of professions
predilection Source
Each tooth in an animal’s mouth is almost identical to its neighbours—as befits a group of that feed on a mixture of fish and the occasional careless beast that strays too close to the shore, or even into the water itself. This _______ for pointed fangs is not, however, how it has always been. During the days of the dinosaurs, the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, crocodile-clan members showed extraordinary dental diversity
predilection Source
Even now, it is fiercely alive—a one man serio-comic farrago of sexual transgression, psychic pain, metaphysical horror and cultural lament. It contains all the seeds that were to germinate in the two dozen novels that followed, not least Mr Roth’s _______ for provocation and a kind of burnished, resplendent blasphemy. “Do me a favour, my people,” Mr Roth wrote in “Portnoy”, “and stick your suffering heritage up your suffering ass—I happen also to be a human being!” That last phrase is the key to the man and to his work
predilection Source
The future, in other words, is stuck in traffic. Partly that reflects the tech industry’s _______ for grandiose promises. But self-driving cars were also meant to be a flagship for the power of AI
predilection Source
NO ONE KNOWS why President Donald Trump is so fond of autocrats—including his “friend” Muhammad bin Salman, “highly respected” Viktor Orban, beloved Kim Jong Un and of course Vladimir “so highly respected” Putin. But there is little doubt his _______ has turned out better for the strongmen than for America. Compared with subjugating a country, handling Mr Trump is not hard
predilection Source
Mr McAfee’s focus on corporate use of resources is refreshing. Too often, businesses are caricatured as _______ predators of Earth’s bounty. In fact, since the dawn of capitalism, they have produced products that become lighter on the ground and on the wallet because profit-hungry bosses see advantage in thrift
rapacious Source
WANDER THROUGH central and east London, and you find traces of the East India Company. In its 274-year history, the _______ colonial-era trader tore down poor houses, replacing them with sprawling depots to store tea, silk, spices and other exotic wares. Today those same sites are occupied by offices, restaurants and flats
rapacious Source
Gabon has more than anywhere else. Many researchers now think of natural resources as a “curse” that erodes competitiveness and breeds corruption—economies which are heavily dependent on exporting raw materials are often dominated by small, _______ elites. For example, Congo, which relies on mining, has about 25% more natural capital per person than the global average, but remains desperately poor
rapacious Source
“VULTURE” funds, which chase distressed borrowers for payment of outstanding debt, have few friends outside finance. Occasionally, though, their hunt for profit aligns neatly with calls for greater financial openness by campaigners, winning the _______ funds unlikely admirers. So it has proved as Elliott Management looks to enforce court rulings demanding that Argentina cough up $2 billion it owes to the hedge fund
rapacious Source
Since 2005 blood-plasma collections have nearly quadrupled. To critics, this is evidence of a _______ industry coercing the poor to auction bits of themselves to make ends meet. In fact, plasma, 90% of which is water, is quickly replenished
rapacious Source
MY FAVOURITE headline of the day comes from the Huffington Post and concerns Britain's _______ home secretary, Jacqui Smith: "British Minister promises to pay for porn she expensed". Britain's New Labour apparatchiks have spent the past twelve years padding their expense accounts while heaping ever higher taxes, rates, dues and fees on everyone else
rapacious Source
So recreating a communal society may be difficult. When the pandemic ends, people may _______ the chance to be with their neighbours and colleagues for a while. But the trend is clear
relish Source
But they have found ingenious proxies for this kind of random variation. Economists, like many others, _______ the chance to display their cleverness. New facts and clever techniques help shift economic opinion
relish Source
MOCKING MIRTHLESS despots may be funny, but it comes at a price. At the softer end, Hong Kong’s government-run broadcaster closed “Headliner”, a popular _______ show that had run for 31 years; its hosts left for Taiwan and Britain. In Singapore, whose government is dominated by an elite from the ethnic-Chinese majority, a rapper and comedian known as Preetipls sent up an excruciating government advertisement in which an ethnic-Chinese actor wore brownface to represent Malay and Indian minorities
satirical Source
But more traditional forms still provoke official wrath, recently that of autocrats of the left. In 2011 Hugo Chávez’s regime in Venezuela shut down a _______ magazine and arrested its staff. The government has repeatedly fined TalCual, a newspaper, for its lampoons
satirical Source
“A new mixture of cultures and races, a world made up of cyclists and vegetarians, who only use renewable energy and who battle all signs of religion. ” And it’s not just politicians who have been showing _______ form: in a subtle dig at post-Soviet democracy, the Azerbaijani election commission published the election results the day before voting took place. Italy’s transport minister, Danilo Toninelli, has shown promise with his witty commentary on political hypocrisy
satirical Source
Since then dissident humour has migrated—and flourished—online. There is a booming industry of political memes and what Engdawork Endrias, an Ethiopian literary scholar, calls “informal essays”: writings, often posted on Facebook, which can be savagely _______ . YouTube offers a platform for risqué sketch shows such as “Fugera News” (though that programme, now discontinued, was made abroad and its presenter hid his identity)
satirical Source
Zung is not a real cop. Dressed in his plastic regalia, he is lampooning the city’s police force as “rubbish” in “Headliner”, Hong Kong’s leading _______ television programme. “Headliner” has been ridiculing Hong Kong’s political elite for the past 30 years
satirical Source
Several cities have followed suit. Still, landlords can _______ around these protections by failing inspections or setting rent just above market rates. “No one has paid any attention to landlords since the 1970s,” says Ms DeLuca
skirt Source
But it does not reflect Americans’ true financial stakes. In order to _______ the controls, Chinese companies set up “variable-interest entities”, which attempt to replicate the benefits of raising equity capital without falling foul of the rules. After the authors’ adjustments, Americans’ stake in Chinese equities rises to $700bn
skirt Source
After years of trade tensions, the flow of cross-border investment by companies has fallen by more than half relative to world GDP since 2015. All this might seem eerily reminiscent of the 1970s, when many places faced petrol-pump queues, double-digit price rises and _______ growth. But the comparison gets you only so far
sluggish Source
Elsewhere things are running less hot. China’s GDP growth is _______ . In Europe a wave of covid-19 infections has led to some restrictions on business activities
sluggish Source
It has been nearly half a year since China started easing its monetary policy, and there is still little sign of a rebound in growth. For anyone thinking that the economy would surge back to full throttle, the _______ response to the stimulus is disappointing. There was, though, also a glimmer of good news
sluggish Source
ACROSS THE West, capitalism is not working as well as it should. Jobs are plentiful, but growth is _______ , inequality is too high and the environment is suffering. You might hope that governments would enact reforms to deal with this, but politics in many places is gridlocked or unstable
sluggish Source
Its voting system resembles an elite Athenian democracy. The more trouble it is in, the more it needs a _______ leader, backed by a strong risk-control apparatus, to keep it on the straight and narrow. McKinsey’s 30-person “shareholder council”, its board of directors, may be too steeped in the firm’s cult-like culture to realise how pressing is the need for change
spartan Source
“You can call it reassurance design,” he says. Wealthier Indians decorate their own homes with “slightly old furniture, hand looms, that sort of thing”, not _______ brick and stripped-down wood, says Mr Pai. But they seek out hipster design in the bars and cafés of places such as Delhi and Mumbai because it signals their membership of a global elite
spartan Source
They may have been doing America’s bidding. Donald Trump’s administration wanted the _______ prime minister out of the way in order to claim peace in Kosovo as a (rare) foreign-policy success in the run-up to America’s presidential election. Its friends have provided
truculent Source
He shuns multilateral organisations, treats alliances as unwanted baggage and openly admires the authoritarian leaders of America’s adversaries. It is as if Mr Trump wants America to give up defending the system it created and to join Russia and China as just another _______ revisionist power instead. America needs to accept that it is a prime beneficiary of the international system and that it is the only power with the ability and the resources to protect it from sustained attack
truculent Source
Integrated global positioning and digital wireless technology allow parents to locate their child instantly using any web-connected computer and simple software. The device also locks on to the child so a kidnapper—or a _______ tot—cannot take it off. It can be unlocked remotely by the parents
truculent Source
Some (such as reducing maternal and child mortality) will be missed by miles. But others, such as cutting by half the share of people who live in _______ poverty, have been reached. The MDGs themselves do not always deserve the credit: the plunge in the global poverty rate has far more to do with growth in China than anything agreed on at the UN
abject Source
The debacle in Afghanistan, which hit Mr Biden’s ratings hard, was a blot, yet one that received blanket coverage in part because of how uncharacteristic of the administration it was. Such incompetence, which was expected of the Trump administration, is atypical of Mr Biden’s—save in one respect, its ability to sell its aims and accomplishments, at which he and his party are _______ . Hardly any non-lobbyist in the Arlington crowd could name a significant thing the administration had done
abject Source
Strictly, devaluation refers only to sharp falls in a currency within a fixed EXCHANGE RATE system. Also it usually refers to a _______ act of GOVERNMENT policy, although in recent years reluctant devaluers have blamed financial SPECULATION. Most studies of devaluation suggest that its beneficial effects on COMPETITIVENESS are only temporary; over time they are eroded by higher PRICES (see J-CURVE)
abject Source
The ensuing exchanges occur within well-understood parameters—including a sense that social categories are resilient and pleasantries will not change them. But tact allows people from antagonistic camps to have _______ encounters and transactions. All three authors are inclined to overstate the ability of brief interactions to stave off conflict
amicable Source
Mr Abiy’s Oromo faction in the ethnic coalition lacks the baggage of the Tigrayan wing (the TPLF), which dominated Ethiopia’s government for the past quarter-century and has especially close (and bitter) ties with Eritrea’s ruling party, a former rebel movement once known as the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). The two groups spent much of the 1970s and 1980s fighting alongside each other against Ethiopia’s then Marxist dictatorship, but relations were rarely _______ . “The Eritrean-Ethiopian war of 1998-2000 was in effect a conflict between the EPLF and TPLF over ideology and hegemony,” explains Kjetil Tronvoll of Bjorknes University College
amicable Source
The danger is that this will prompt Poland to bring the EU’s workings to a halt in protest. _______ divorce or poisonous marriage Bad behaviour outside the club is less of a problem. After doing things by the book as a member, Britain has discovered a rebellious streak, trying to renege on the terms of its deal with the EU
amicable Source
LIFE insurance is among the oldest financial products. The _______ Society, founded in London in 1706, charged members a set contribution and paid out annually to widows and children of those who had died in the previous 12 months. Today it is a vast industry: life and health insurers employ over 800,000 people in America alone
amicable Source
The “Velvet Divorce”, the name given to the splitting of Czechoslovakia on January 1st 1993, echoed the bloodless Velvet Revolution that overthrew the country’s communists in 1989. It suggests the partition was _______ . In fact, only a minority of citizens on both sides—just 37% of Slovaks and 36% of Czechs—supported breaking up
amicable Source
Meanwhile the pandemic is forcing governments to find ways to plug their fiscal deficits, not least the Biden administration, which wants to increase multinationals’ tax rate. The best hope for an _______ outcome lies in a forum run by the OECD, a club of mainly rich countries, where this summer 139 countries hope to agree on new tax principles. Success would represent the most important overhaul to the international architecture in a century
amicable Source
Mrs Bezos will retain a 4% stake in the tech giant, worth nearly $36bn, which is likely to make her the third-richest woman alive when the divorce is finalised. The announcement, which came via simultaneous tweets from each spouse’s Twitter account, is remarkably _______ given allegations of Mr Bezos’s philandering. Mrs Bezos handed over her interests in the Post and Blue Origin plus full voting control of her Amazon shares, “to support his continued contributions with the teams of these incredible companies
amicable Source
Meanwhile he will have to manage the tense transatlantic relationship. If the job was not daunting enough, he will help negotiate what he hopes will be an “ _______ ” trade deal with Britain. Mr Hogan’s reputation as a canny politician willing to make tough decisions—his nickname in Irish politics was “the enforcer”— suggests that he may be right for the job
amicable Source
Virtually all prominent politicians across the spectrum say that all four of the main alliances—Mr Allawi's Iraqiya, Mr Maliki's State of Law group, the Iraqi National Alliance in which Mr Sadr's people predominate, and the Kurds—should come together, each well represented in a grand coalition. But the _______ between Sunni and Shia Arabs means it is still uncertain that Mr Allawi will get a senior job, let alone the prime minister's. Iraqi Shias still feel, after a millennium of being treated as lowlier than the Sunnis despite being a majority, that they deserve the political cake unshared
animosity Source
He poached Mr Bertarelli's skipper, among other incendiary tactics. Silicon Valley is an incubator of _______ for the same reason it is a wellspring of innovation: it is a small world populated by people who want to prove how clever they are. The boundaries between markets are vague and transitory
animosity Source
It covers a brewing scandal over the provision of irreversible treatments, whether surgical or pharmaceutical, to teenagers. Predictably controversial—yet there is not a drop of _______ in the book. Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot
animosity Source
Washo, a native language of Nevada, has four past and three future tenses, depending on how distant an event is in time. Tariana, from Brazil, has “evidentiality”: speakers choose one of five verb-endings to show how they know what they _______ to be true. Jarawara, also from Brazil, distinguishes “we (including you)” and “we (without you)”
aver Source
Networks and studios can be reluctant to commission a topic they see as depressing, divisive or boring, fearing that audiences will be turned off too. But climate stories do not have to be preachy or dull, the NRDC _______ . They can draw inspiration from real events and be “as high stakes as saving an Appalachian community destroyed by the coal industry abandoning it,” says Ms Slean
aver Source
It will require huge changes in how energy is generated and used. And it will also require a sustained _______ of innovations to improve how steel or cement are made, say, or how buildings are designed and managed. The world’s green-innovation machine likes to make a big noise about its successes
barrage Source
Another possibility is comets, which are basically dirty snowballs that arrive from the outer solar system. A _______ of these a few hundred million years after Earth’s formation would have done the job nicely. But samples returned from comets by spacecraft suggest their isotopic fingerprint is even less Earthlike than that of C-type asteroids
barrage Source
1 by those who experienced it. ) Furthermore, the pain was, indeed, _______ . Those who had been primed to feel guilty and who were subjected to the ice bucket showed initial and follow-up guilt scores averaging 2
cathartic Source
Those polls turned out to be off—maybe even more so than they were in 2016. The result is tight enough that even though Mr Biden seems likely to win enough electoral-college votes to make him the next president, there will be legal challenges, and the _______ moment when one candidate wins and the other concedes still looks far off. If this is a repudiation of the president, the mechanics of the electoral college meant it is a marginal, equivocal one, which shows the grip of partisanship on the country
cathartic Source
Thompson it was as a mescaline-gobbling adrenaline junkie in the 1998 screen adaptation of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. Directed by Terry Gilliam, the film swiftly became a cult hit for its _______ scenes of rampant drug-use, reckless driving and zealous hotel- trashing. It also confirmed Thompson's place as a countercultural hero, and an eccentric pioneer of so-called “Gonzo” journalism, whereby reporters compromise objectivity for the sake of a good story
cathartic Source
But there has been no in-person gallery experience yet. There would be something _______ about seeing the hard copies of these paintings, thus experiencing virtual life translated into physical form. But there is also something poignant about the way this project captures movement across spheres and media: physical rooms transmuted to Zoom screens, interpreted on a painted canvas, and then photographed and transferred back to screens
cathartic Source
The hapless Hillary Clinton might have won the popular vote, but she stood for everything angry voters despise. The hope is that this election will prove _______ . Perhaps, in office, Mr Trump will be pragmatic and magnanimous—as he was in his acceptance speech
cathartic Source
” She began work on the film in 2014 in pursuit of “some fantastical justice”; it was released just as Harvey Weinstein’s depredations began to be exposed. “For anyone who’s felt outraged at being treated unfairly,” says Ms Pollard, the academic, “it can be _______ to cheer on a fictional surrogate who’s licensed to act out our grievances. ” But like the #MeToo movement with which the genre has coincided, these feminist revenge dramas are less interested in vanquishing a single bad guy than in purging a rotten system
cathartic Source
From attending three churches in a day with his devout mother, to hustling pirated CDs on street corners, to the terrifying violence of his stepfather, Noah’s experiences explain the chameleon identity that has helped him become a perceptive observer (and wicked mimic) as host of the satirical “Daily Show”. To South Africans, though, Noah reveals raw truths about the absurdities of apartheid in stories that are funny, painful and _______ . The unkindest cut Astrid Holleeder’s “Judas” ends on a chilling note: “That Sonja, Sandra and I must pay for our testimony against you with death, you know and we know
cathartic Source
Corus, they estimate, is worth a third or less of the $13 billion Tata paid for it, meaning the impairment should be many times bigger. So this is no _______ moment, of the kind that HP and Rio sought. Instead of admitting total defeat, Mr Mistry probably hopes to sell all or part of Corus, or allow it to partially default on its huge debts (which are ring-fenced and not guaranteed by the Tata group)
cathartic Source
Apple was berated for demanding that workers return to the office three days a week, but at least its rules were clear. Many employers promise that workers can work flexibly, but leave them to _______ unwritten rules. Such pledges are understandable in today’s hot labour market, but ring hollow without clarity
decipher Source
Android, Apple’s iOS and other mobile platforms adopted similar forms of encryption a few years ago but the protection has only recently become complete. The new level of security builds on efforts by hardware- and software-makers to divorce themselves from the ability to _______ or recover users’ data from mobile devices. As Tim Cook, Apple’s boss, said recently: “If the government laid a subpoena to get iMessages, we can’t provide it
decipher Source
For Margaret Thatcher, it meant the moral and economic discipline of the free market; for David Cameron, liberal centrism and the embrace of globalisation. Boris Johnson’s interpretation has been hard to _______ , partly because it has been obscured by the chaos of covid-19 and partly because he has never shown any commitment to a set of political ideas. So the Queen’s Speech, delivered on May 11th, in which the government presents its programme for the next session of parliament, was of particular interest
decipher Source
Other types of supplements, including herbal products and homeopathy, are even more controversial. It is hard to be confident of supplements' quality and even more difficult to _______ their promised benefits. Companies such as GNC, which sells health products, say they have thorough measures to assure safety and quality
decipher Source
Instead, what may become clear is that urban settlement emerged quite independently in India’s far south at more or less the same time as it re-emerged in the north: a lesser historical boast for Tamil nationalists, but still a prize worth having. Partly because no Rosetta Stone has yet been found to help _______ IVC scripts, the biggest mysteries of Indian history are why it died and what happened next. Archaeology, genetics and linguistics all suggest that what followed in north India was a prolonged interregnum
decipher Source
economist. com/printedition/2021-11-13","name":"Nov 13th 2021 edition"}}]} BusinessNov 13th 2021 editionThe flywheel _______Uber, DoorDash and similar firms can’t defy the laws of capitalism after allThe mania over ride-sharing and delivery companies has at times been absurdNov 9th 2021FacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppIN THE REAL world a flywheel is a mechanical contraption that stores rotational energy. In Silicon Valley it has come to mean something else: a perpetual-motion business that not only runs forever but is self- reinforcing
delusion Source
It is striking that there is no comparably zealous campaign to abandon the word “men” in favour of “prostate-havers”, “ejaculators” or “bodies with testicles”. It is almost always women who are being ordered to _______ with a useful word they have used all their lives. Furthermore, understanding could suffer
dispense Source
Though conspiracy theories have always existed, they note that today something is different and dangerous: “Conspiracy without the theory. ” “Its proponents _______ with evidence and explanation. Their charges take the form of bare assertion,” they explain in an interview
dispense Source
Note: this list is based on British release dates “Another Round” The winner of the Academy Award for Best International Feature, Thomas Vinterberg’s bittersweet comedy-drama has a teacher (Mads Mikkelsen) and his three best friends addressing their midlife crises by staying drunk throughout the working day. At first they are more engaged and energised under the influence, as so many historical figures have been, but are they liberating themselves from their inhibitions or merely anaesthetising deep, ongoing pain? Bravely, “Another Round” (“Druk” in Danish) is just as _______ on the pleasures of alcohol as it is on the dangers, but it is probably best watched while sipping nothing stronger than coffee. “Drive My Car” “Drive My Car” is adapted from a short story by Haruki Murakami, but watching Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s three-hour film, in which every character has their own history and inner life, is like immersing yourself in a grand novel
eloquent Source
IN 403BC Athens decided to overhaul its institutions. A disastrous war with Sparta had shown that direct democracy, whereby adult male citizens voted on laws, was not enough to stop _______ demagogues from getting what they wanted, and indeed from subverting democracy altogether. So a new body, chosen by lot, was set up to scrutinise the decisions of voters
eloquent Source
This is probably why a vast majority of Chinese people tell pollsters that they are generally satisfied with how the country is being governed. Can we at least now entertain the idea that China is generating more productive and democratic outcomes for its people and, measured by these concrete results, its political system is more democratic than that of the United States, albeit different, at the moment? Abraham Lincoln characterised democracy in the most _______ layman’s term: government of the people, by the people, for the people. I dare say that the current Chinese government outperforms America on all three
eloquent Source
Contemporary candy and snack producers now tap into the seasonal mindset to great effect, peddling cherry-flavoured goods during cherry blossom season and sweet potato-flavoured snacks in the autumn. Chocominto is only the latest limited-edition snack fad to _______ Japanese consumers. “The Japanese market moves with the season,” says Jérôme Chouchan, the boss of Godiva Japan, which uses ingredients and packaging to send seasonal signals, as with chestnut macaroons and brown or red packaging in the autumn
enthrall Source
START with this truth of American society: disparaging remarks about white people as a whole that would be simply impermissible for other sets of people are largely permissible and carry few repercussions. This fact seems to _______ the left and enrage the right. Sarah Jeong, a newly hired editorial writer for the New York Times, found herself embroiled in a controversy of this sort after critics dredged up her old tweets on white people
enthrall Source
FORGET all the fuss about building an “Internet in the sky” or a global mobile-telephone network carried on hundreds of orbiting “low-earth” satellites. Such schemes _______ the likes of Motorola, Microsoft and now Boeing, which announced on April 29th that it was putting up to $100m into Teledesic, one of these projects. They are for the next century—if at all
enthrall Source
The three-storey shop was—still is—more like Toyland or Santa’s workshop than a place of business. Life-size Lego figures of Star Wars characters, giant cuddly snow-leopards and a nursery full of baby dolls seem designed to _______ , not sell. Children of all ages are encouraged to play with the stock
enthrall Source
Successful flight in Mars’s thin atmosphere would earn the country that invented aeroplanes the additional honour of being first to fly an extraterrestrial aircraft. Its imagery will also surely _______ . The European Space Agency (ESA) has yet to land on Mars
enthrall Source
Once invisibility had been secured, “no one was particularly surprised or impressed” by it. People today can show a similar lack of curiosity at the invisible forces that surround them: how many readers will know exactly how mobile phones work or how books can appear on their e-reader? It is the benefits that such forces bring that _______ . Invisibility is a good subject for Mr Ball, a British science writer
enthrall Source
The biggest risk, indeed, is not of too much hype, but that the latest Potter book will lack the magical appeal of its predecessors. If Ms Rowling loses her power to _______ , not even Hollywood's marketing wand will be able to save the day.
enthrall Source
At 11, he dazzled the Russian tsar, Alexander I, with his own piano music. His poetic performances continued to _______ ; at 22, he was at the pinnacle of Parisian society. By the time he died at 39 he had written music of sublime beauty that “revolutionised the art form and opened the way for all modern music”, thought Camille Saint-Saëns
enthrall Source
As recently as 2000, malaria killed around 850,000 people a year; likewise, since 2000 deaths from measles have fallen by 75%, to around 150,000. These successes are to be celebrated, but an even greater prize exists: to go beyond controlling infections and infestations and instead to _______ some of them completely, by exterminating the pathogens and parasites that cause them. That has been accomplished a couple of times in the past, for smallpox (a human disease) and rinderpest (a cattle disease similar to measles)
eradicate Source
EARLY IN DECEMBER China announced that it had _______ d extreme poverty within its territory. This achievement is breathtaking in scale
eradicate Source
But that is still talk. As extreme poverty disappears everywhere except in Africa and in Asian countries with weak welfare systems, the campaign to _______ it is likely to slow down. The World Bank reckons that about 4% of the world’s population will still be poor in 2030 if economies continue to grow as quickly as they have in the past ten years and poor people’s incomes grow at the same rate as everyone else’s
eradicate Source
CORRUPTION, AUTOCRACY, overbearing government—these were the perils many hoped eastern Europe was escaping when its _______ democracies joined the European Union in the early 2000s. Instead, the rest of Europe now worries, the eastern members have simply smuggled these vices into the EU
fledgling Source
Companies with “dual-class” shares that grant directors outsized voting rights will now be able to join the premium segment of the London Stock Exchange (LSE). Dual-class listings will be permissible if designed to protect _______ firms from hostile takeovers. The extra voting rights must concern only the removal of a director or change of control, and expire after at most five years
fledgling Source
The Royal Amphitheatre was overflowing. John Bright, a newly elected MP, spoke eloquently on the merits of abolishing duties on imported food, echoing arguments made in The Economist, a _______ newspaper. Mr Bright told his audience that when canvassing, he had explained “how stonemasons, shoemakers, carpenters and every kind of artisan suffered if the trade of the country was restricted
fledgling Source
ROUSING MUSIC accompanies the H-6K, a hulking Chinese bomber, as it sweeps up into a pink sky. Moments later, its pilot presses a red button, with the panache and _______ that only a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer could muster, and a missile streaks towards the island of Guam. The ground ripples and a fiery explosion consumes America’s Andersen air force base
fortitude Source
She does gladiatorial battle for hours at a time, at an intensity most people couldn’t stand for five minutes. On court, she’s all _______ and keeps her demons at bay. Yet for whatever reason, when it comes to public speaking, her psychological equation reverses
fortitude Source
Undeterred, he rebooted it. Mr Siebel’s _______ has paid off. The firm, now called C3
fortitude Source
Or we might choose a nation that has endured economic trials and lived to tell the tale. Ireland has come through its bail-out and cuts with exemplary _______ and calm; Estonia has the lowest level of debt in the European Union. But we worry that this econometric method would confirm the worst caricatures of us as flint-hearted number-crunchers; and not every triumph shows up in a country’s balance of payments
fortitude Source
Spare a thought for his underlings, whose iPhones buzz at 4am every morning. Some subordinates may have the _______ to sleep through it all; many will be guilt-tripped into answering the boss. Highly effective people often inflict all their idiosyncrasies upon their hapless juniors
fortitude Source
A turn for the worse in one country could sour investor sentiment towards other places. Emerging markets have handled the economic strains of the past 18 months with _______ . But a break in the heat cannot come soon enough
fortitude Source
ABOUT 370m years ago, in the latter part of the Devonian period, the ancestor of all land vertebrates stepped out of the ocean and began to take advantage of the untapped riches found ashore. This was a big step, both literally and metaphorically, and evolutionary biologists have long assumed that bringing about the anatomical shift from functional fin to proto-leg which enabled it to happen required a _______ coincidence of several genetic mutations. This, though, may not be the case
fortuitous Source
In “Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan” (1978), a reflection on the urban design and architecture of the city, the architect Rem Koolhaas discussed the importance of hotels in Hollywood. A hotel relieves “the scriptwriter of the obligation of inventing a plot”; it is its own “cybernetic universe with its own laws generating random but _______ collisions between human beings who would never have met elsewhere. ” Will Wiles, who wrote “The Way Inn”, a dark novel set in a bland motel, has echoed that sentiment
fortuitous Source
** What is known about insider trading tends to come from prosecutions. But these require _______ tip-offs and extensive, expensive investigations, involving the examination of complex evidence from phone calls, e-mails or informants wired with recorders. The resulting haze of numbers may befuddle a jury unless they are leavened with a few spicy details—exotic code words, say, or (even better) suitcases filled with cash
fortuitous Source
If a fairly prosperous, robust country cannot stand up to China, then poorer, weaker nations certainly won’t be able to. This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Belt and _______"Reuse this contentThe Trust Project. css-1hnead5{padding-bottom:1
goad Source
In August the Saudi defence minister signed a military-co-operation deal with his Russian counterpart. Expect more of that—but relations with Russia are complex, useful mostly as a way to _______ America. Ties with China, both military and economic, will become more important
goad Source
From human suffering to perceptions of corruption, from freedom to children’s happiness, nowadays no social problem or public policy lacks one (see article). Governments, think- tanks and campaigners love an index’s simplicity and clarity; when well done, it can illuminate failures, suggest solutions and _______ the complacent into action. But there are problems
goad Source
Either option would permit the direct deployment of China’s armed forces in Hong Kong. Yet even though Hong Kong’s police have been severely stretched, and deliberate acts of humiliation of national dignity had been staged by the protesters, as if to _______ the mainland into action, stern warnings by officials in Beijing are more likely to be intended as a shot across the bow than a prelude to direct intervention. Deliberate acts of humiliation of national dignity had been staged by the protesters, as if to forcibly
goad Source
It was also a matter of conviction. Erasmus loathed the certitude of ideologues and worried about the tendency of extremists to _______ one another into greater acts of fanaticism. In place of revolutionary certainty, he preached the Middle Way
goad Source
The schism is likely to become more apparent as the Communist Party prepares for a sweeping change of leadership in 2012. Liberals will try to _______ incoming leaders into making their views clear. Mr Qin, who retired on September 21st after nine years as chairman of China Merchants, the country's sixth-largest bank, said recognition of universal values was at the heart of big issues facing China's development, from urbanisation to the provision of public services and the ownership of state assets
goad Source
With many more firms involved, cars are more politically sensitive than smartphones. Initially countries like China and Germany threw down the welcome mat for Tesla’s gigafactories, partly to _______ local firms into producing better EVs. Now that this is happening, the pressure to keep Tesla down is increasing
goad Source
Local courts operate effectively as arms of local government. But Shen Kui, one of the Peking University scholars whose letter apparently helped _______ the government into action, calls the regulations a “Normandy landing”. It is the start, he says, of a long campaign towards establishing grassroots democracy
goad Source
Inflation rose above 5% in America and 3% in Britain, and roared much higher in many emerging markets. Some economists warned of the _______ return of the chronically high inflation of the 1970s. Developments in 2022 will put such fears to rest—but not before making central bankers sweat a bit
imminent Source
In fact it masked two defeats. While Mr Trump’s supporters were breaking and entering, Congress was certifying the results of the president’s _______ loss in November. While the mob was smashing windows, Democrats were celebrating a pair of unlikely victories in Georgia that will give them control of the Senate (see article)
incontrovertible Source
“Board refreshment is necessary due to the long-term financial underperformance at ExxonMobil,” says Anne Simpson of CalPERS. Last summer, as ExxonMobil’s share price headed to a two-decade low and the company was knocked out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average after nearly a century in the blue-chip index, Ms Simpson’s argument would have sounded _______ . To many it remains compelling
incontrovertible Source
This is a guest contribution to our debate: Should the West worry about the threat to liberal values posed by China's rise? MINXIN PEI and Kishore Mahbubani’s separate statements are elegant summaries of opposing attitudes. Taken together, however, along with the fact they are appearing as part of a debate organised by one of the great proponents of liberal values, The Economist, there is one _______ conclusion to be drawn from them: China has rattled the outside world in ways which were never expected before. And it has managed to do this at a time when the travails of democracies in Europe, and the painful changes occurring in the US under Trump, fill even the most fervent believers in multiparty democratic values with doubt
incontrovertible Source
Yet the author highlights a dizzying burst of new research that draws on advanced genetics, linguistics and, not least, a revival of voyaging itself by indigenous navigators. Some lineaments of the past are now _______ . Whereas the ancestors of the Chamorro people settled western Micronesia from the Philippines, today’s Polynesians are descended from the Lapita people, named after their distinctive pottery
incontrovertible Source
Men in their 20s and 30s make up the remaining 98%, or almost 90,000 adoptees in 2008 (up from fewer than 80,000 in 2000). Why are so many adults adopted in Japan? The reason is more mercantile than _______ . Business acumen and skill are not reliably hereditary
magnanimous Source
A new Maidan revolution could happen at any time—the smell of burnt tyres is in the air. Western leaders, the story goes, have realised their mistake and are flocking to make amends with Vladimir Putin, the _______ Russian leader who tried to warn them against supporting Ukraine. First it was Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who sought an audience with Mr Putin
magnanimous Source
This inflection in the concept of rights involved a corresponding change in the use of the word “liberal. ” While it had previously been employed to designate the generous and freedom-loving concessions of a sovereign to his subjects, or the _______ and tolerant behavior of an aristocratic elite, it was now used to describe the generous and free constitution of a people who legislated themselves. […] A liberal country was not a democratic one
magnanimous Source
Mrs Bezos will retain a 4% stake in the tech giant, worth nearly $36bn, which is likely to make her the third-richest woman alive when the divorce is finalised. The announcement, which came via simultaneous tweets from each spouse’s Twitter account, is remarkably _______ given allegations of Mr Bezos’s philandering. Mrs Bezos handed over her interests in the Post and Blue Origin plus full voting control of her Amazon shares, “to support his continued contributions with the teams of these incredible companies
magnanimous Source
Lincoln’s assassination 41 days later replaced his policy with a “reconstruction” anchored in revenge. Thus perished a president who, for many Americans, was an almost divine political presence; his _______ vision of the nation’s future died with him. Lincoln’s last days have been the subject of more extensive hagiography than for any other president, so it is tempting to dismiss Mr Achorn’s book, which focuses on the inauguration, as redundant
magnanimous Source
It was “Man’s noblest venture”, declared Ralph Abernathy, a civil-rights leader, as he demonstrated outside the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida—but moving and heroic as it was, he went on, it threw into sharp relief the priorities of a nation which badly needed to improve the lot of its poorest people. Others were less _______ about what they saw as a distraction. “Was all that money I made last year”, asked the poet Gil Scott-Heron, “for Whitey on the Moon?” On May 30th, in the most eagerly anticipated space mission for a decade or more, a Falcon 9 rocket launched a new space capsule, the Crew Dragon, from the same Florida launch pad that saw those Apollo missions blast off to the Moon
magnanimous Source
A lantern-jawed naval commander launches missiles to save the day only when a radio operator shouts news from the Chinese ambassador: “Sir, we have received authorisation from the United Nations!” The film ends with a giant passport filling the screen, and a promise that China will use its strength to protect citizens in danger abroad. Some Chinese audiences so liked this _______ , self-confident vision of their country that they sang the national anthem in their cinema seats. The real-world China of 2020 is not
magnanimous Source
In order to take part in any international arena it needed a name acceptable to the PRC. “Chinese Taipei” enabled Beijing to look _______ in allowing ethnic Chinese brothers to compete, while not allowing any recognition of Taiwan as a separate political entity. Taiwan swallows that indignity in order to get the international participation it desires
magnanimous Source
Autocrats R Us Handled more wisely, the failure of the coup might have been the dying kick of Turkey’s militarists. Mr Erdogan could have become the _______ unifier of a divided nation, unmuzzling the press, restarting peace talks with Kurds and building lasting, independent institutions. Instead he is falling into paranoid intolerance: more like the Arab despots he claims to despise than the democratic statesman he might have become
magnanimous Source
AS AN early test for the government of Sheikh Hasina, the new prime minister, it was brutal. In February 2009, less than two months after she took office, a bloody _______ broke out at the headquarters of (what was then called) the Bangladesh Rifles, a paramilitary organisation in charge of border security. Men turned on officers and their families with murderous rage: 74 were killed, their bodies dumped in sewers and makeshift graves
mutiny Source
Alassane Ouattara, the president, sacked the army and police chiefs. However, many Ivorians found the timing of the _______ suspicious. It came a few days before Mr Ouattara dissolved his government in anticipation of implementing a new constitution
mutiny Source
Mr King casts an unsparing light on the rather less heroic reality, of collaboration and denunciation. He also gives a neat account of the city's greatest cinematographic appearance: in Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 film of the _______ on the Potemkin. A naval rebellion indeed took place—but almost every other bit of the film is invented or exaggerated, including the memorable scene of a pram bouncing down those famous steps
mutiny Source
MARS IS AWASH with alien technology. On February 18th NASA’s _______ rover landed in a crater called Jezero, near the planet’s equator, after travelling 470m kilometres over seven months. The United Arab Emirates’ Hope orbiter has been circling since February 9th
perseverance Source
This demonstrates, to most people’s satisfaction, that the planet did once play host to bodies of liquid water. NASA’s next Mars rover, _______ , scheduled to arrive there on February 18th, will look in some of the rocks it encounters for fossilised remnants of microbial mats called stromatolites. It will also, by collecting and bottling for future retrieval the most interesting samples it finds, be the first step in a decade-long multi- agency mission to bring samples of Martian rock back to Earth
perseverance Source
Lack of publicity has not been an issue for the third member of the flotilla. On July 30th NASA, America’s space agency, hopes to launch _______ , a one-tonne, six-wheeled rover, from the country’s principal spaceport at Cape Canaveral, in Florida. It will have cost $2
perseverance Source
Specifically, they are in Jezero crater, which was once, when Mars had liquid water, a lake that had rivers flowing into it. The photograph was taken by _______ , NASA’s latest Mars rover, which landed in February, and adds to understanding of Mars’s watery past. The three groups of rocks—the gently inclined bottomset, with a more steeply sloping foreset above and a horizontal topset capping the lot—show, as might be expected, that Martian river deltas were similar to terrestrial ones
perseverance Source
EXPERTS warn that “the substitution of machinery for human labour” may “ _______ the population redundant”. They worry that “the discovery of this mighty power” has come “before we knew how to employ it rightly”
render Source
And before embracing invasive procedures such as those undergone by Ms Bell, the medical profession needs to gather evidence to establish the balance of benefits and harm they bring. ■","description":"The high court ruled that children cannot give informed consent to treatment that may _______ them sterile","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
render Source
The decline in sperm counts, were it to deteriorate further, could have dire consequences. Alarmingly, if the rich-world trend observed by Dr Swan in her 2017 study continued until 2045, it might _______ half the men of Europe and North America impotent. That looks unlikely for two reasons
render Source
Such vaccine inequality is not simply unjust. Given the potential for dangerous mutations that could _______ vaccines less effective, it is epidemiologically irresponsible. And delays in vaccinating the global population have an economic cost as well
render Source
Climate change is not yet a big issue in the presidential-election campaign, and the next government may not feel the need to keep up pressure on the conglomerates. That means that many of South Korea’s industrial centres could end up looking more like Gunsan, as investment in green tech yields results in other countries and higher emissions _______ some of South Korea’s industries obsolete. Government efforts to get Gunsan’s laid-off workers into new employment have progressed only sluggishly
render Source
1m) for 24 concerts plus rehearsals, which the city is forking out for James Levine, the American star who has become the new chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic. Long in the doldrums, the Munich band vastly improved in its 17 years (1979-96) under a legendary Romanian-born maestro, Sergiu Celibidache; so much so that in some _______, Bruckner for instance, it was reckoned at least a match for the best on offer in Berlin or Vienna. Now Mr Levine is drawing a more lithe, more brilliant sound from the players and is starting to conquer even the notoriously conservative, Celi-worshipping Munich public
repertoire Source
When it came to programmes, he did not impose himself. His favourite symphonic _______ was heavy on Mozart, Beethoven and 19th-century romantics, but also on Stravinsky and Britten, and he championed contemporaries. Opera productions often struck him as odd, but he raised objections only once, when Wagner’s “Ring” at Covent Garden featured Rhine maidens in latex fat-suits and Wotan and Fricka in a battered limousine
repertoire Source
And although the fastidiously eccentric Shura Cherkassky, an American pianist with a virtuoso technique, named Mr Hough as his natural successor, the Englishman’s style is far more complex. What sets him apart is the exceptional breadth of his _______ , as well as the technical finesse and idiomatic authority he brings to every piece he plays. None of the heavily promoted younger pianists playing today can match this combination; among the older ones, Evgeny Kissin—now a 44-year-old eminence grise—is the only one who does
repertoire Source
Many cherished heroines of the lyric stage have a thankless time, from Purcell’s Dido to Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Berg’s Lulu. Given that the _______ is already over- loaded with doomed leading ladies, it was a surprise to many when, in 2016, one of the most gifted young women in American music chose as the basis for her third opera a gruelling film about an apparently submissive and victimised wife: Lars von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves” (1996). Working with her regular librettist, Royce Vavrek, Missy Mazzoli (pictured) chose to adapt a bleakly shocking plot about a married heroine who takes other lovers
repertoire Source
By arranging and remixing birdsong in this way, Mr Sheldrake has produced a whimsical, surprisingly nuanced sound. Through exploring each bird’s vocal _______ , the album reveals the different textures of what many register only as day-to-day background noise. The polyphonic songs are tributes to what stands to be lost, charting the swelling and subsiding of the feathered orchestra before it is too late
repertoire Source
In Turkey, Eid al-Fitr, the feast to celebrate the end of Ramadan, is known as Seker Bayrami, the feast of sweets. Preparing this festive sweet is part of the standard _______ of a professional baker. It’s possible to make it at home, too
repertoire Source
Faber & Faber; £18. 99 The lead violinist of the Takacs Quartet recounts its members’ musical lives, interweaving into the group’s autobiography the story of Beethoven’s 16 string quartets, which are now regarded as the apogee of the chamber-music _______ . How to Listen to Jazz
repertoire Source
China’s censors tolerate no such speculation. State media report only on the party’s _______ response, the results of which are clear. The country has had few cases for months and most of these were attributable to imported infections
resolute Source
Over 8m trips are made yearly to the tiny islet in Zhoushan city, about a four-hour drive from Shanghai (11m visited Shanghai Disneyland in its first year, after it opened in 2016). When it comes to temple fundraising, the monk is _______ . “The traditional way is the best way,” he says
resolute Source
ON THE MORNING of election day, The Economist’s election-forecasting model gave Joe Biden a 19-in-20 chance of winning the presidency. Once all the votes are tallied, Mr Biden will probably be sitting behind the _______ Desk next year. But it will be by a much closer margin than we forecast
resolute Source
Increasingly, they are being backed up by international forces. Earlier this year, Barack Obama reluctantly relaxed the rules of engagement for NATO’s 13,000-strong “train, advise and assist” mission, known as _______ Support (previously allowed only to intervene if a catastrophe was imminent). Air support has increased and NATO advisers are now more often found with Afghans at the sharp end
resolute Source
But he sees closer collaboration with like-minded countries in the region, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. As an early sign of this, Australia’s defence minister will attend the meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels next week—the first participation in a general meeting of this type, unrelated to discussion of a specific mission, such as the NATO-led _______ Support mission in Afghanistan. It is still early days for NATO’s thinking on the challenge of China’s growing power
resolute Source
Mr Xi, however, has been signalling that his “Chinese dream” is of a conservative society: Xi Jinping Thought is suffused with references to ancient Chinese philosophies stressing conformity. In its edict this month, the broadcasting regulator also called for a “ _______ end” to shows featuring “perverse tastes”, such as for effeminate men. It banned publication of celebrity rankings: officials want to tame their boisterous fan clubs
resolute Source
economist. com/printedition/2020-05-16","name":"May 16th 2020 edition"}}]} BriefingMay 16th 2020 edition_______ suppliesBusinesses are proving quite resilient to the pandemicBut that does not make up for a lack of demandMay 16th 2020FacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppEditor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here
supple Source
It’s like I can’t even concentrate enough to do my homework. ” So the grousing about like (that it shows uncertainty or fear of commitment) misses the breadth of this _______ word’s uses. The point of a discourse particle is to give the listener some idea of the speaker’s attitude about what they are saying
supple Source
But the sudden arrival of the coronavirus pandemic this year meant he faced an unexpected challenge. Together with another pilot, Brian Steorts, Mr Shamess had founded Flags of _______ , a company that focused on employing veterans to make products such as flags and gifts for employee-recognition programmes. When the pandemic hit, the company quickly lost two-thirds of its revenue
valor Source
But provocation like that from Iraq is only likely to hasten Saddam's demise. ","description":"Amid _______splits between America and some of its allies, the drums of war are beating louder.
acrimonious Source
THE MOST ardent romances result in the most _______ divorces. In the case of Tiffany and LVMH, rancour preceded the nuptials
acrimonious Source
APGoodbye sonic bang, hallo property boomThe matter is unlikely to stay shelved. President Roh went on television a few days after the deal in _______ mood to say that “Japan's present claim to Dokdo is an act of negating the complete liberation and independence of Korea.
belligerent Source
For the past year Mr Trump has stood by as Iran and its proxies attacked merchant shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, two American drones, oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and military bases in Iraq. Because it had concluded that there was no price to pay, Iran was becoming more brazen and _______ . The beneficial effect of the drone strike on January 3rd is to re-establish the idea that America is willing to hit back
belligerent Source
Whatever France, America, and England agree upon regarding them will be conclusive for all other States, and will take rank among the acknowledged statutes of the law of nations. It is high time that some modifications, consonant with the more humane and enlightened spirit of the age, should he introduced into those extreme rights of _______ s which formed much of the opprobrium and caused many of the perplexities of the last war; and no moment could be so opportune for introducing them as one in which a new, and to a great extent a maritime, contest is about to be entered upon; nor could any Power so fitly set a noble and generous example as the two most mighty
belligerent Source
As the students who have embraced this messy body of theory leave university, they enter into jobs and positions of influence. The question is whether, outside the ivory tower, the ideology will retain its intolerant and _______ zeal, or whether it will mellow into a benign urge for society to be a little fairer. Newspapers are a prime example
belligerent Source
Freshly won democracy and peace do not always last, as Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar (The Economist’s country of the year in 2015) ended up reminding the world when she appeared recently at the International Court of Justice in The Hague and glossed over the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas, a Muslim minority, by her country’s soldiers. In 2019 the most striking political trend was a negative one: _______ nationalism. India has been stripping Muslims of citizenship, China has been locking up Muslims in camps, America has taken a wrecking ball to global institutions
belligerent Source
THE growing enthusiasm of the rich for philanthropy, together with their determination to see their money used to better effect, has prompted talk of a new “golden age of philanthropy”. But much remains to be done before today's _______ billionaires can claim to follow in the footsteps of such giants of giving as Carnegie, Rockefeller and Rowntree. The willingness of so many of the new wealthy to apply part of their fortune to “making the world a better place” is certainly welcome
beneficent Source
So a more benign idea puts the BRI in a broader historical context: the tributary system of old. China sits at the centre of the world, bringing its wealth and power to bear, first on its near-abroad, and linking people into the concept of China as a _______ power and an alternative locus to the West. Those who buy into it receive munificence from Beijing
beneficent Source
Individually and collectively we are informed by conditions and events on a daily basis that we do not matter and our existence is an accident. Religious belief offers an appealing lie of a _______ force that cares about us if we do the “right” things. This gives meaning to life, giving us essential purpose and resolving existential despair
beneficent Source
In 2021 Belgium offers the EU’s best hope for the ideology that bears his name. ■","description":"Local politics, force of habit and _______ strategy help Europe’s communists cling on","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
canny Source
Paying $1. 3m for an nft of a picture of a rock, as someone did in August 2021, may turn out not to have been a _______ investment. For customers, the risk is that financial platforms’ greater access to data might invite misuse of market power
canny Source
Patience among Mr Orban’s European allies ran out earlier this year, when the Hungarian leader quit the powerful European People’s Party club of centre-right politicians before he was pushed. Mr Orban’s reputation as a _______ operator on the European stage has been dented. Elections in Hungary are free but unfair
canny Source
If it does not, they often gain regardless, as they are usually first in line for liquidation proceeds. Yet _______ specialists are frustrated. Convinced that a recession was just around the corner, they have raised $136bn since 2017, more than they did in the four years that followed the financial crisis, according to Private Debt Investor, a financial-information provider
distressed Source
SIR — In response to your article on _______ investing, you do not address the obvious irony that would result from increased default rates for so-called
distressed Source
Bonds issued by the companies most likely to default on them are no longer “junk”, but instead “speculative grade” or “high yield”. Borrowers would never dream of stiffing their lenders; some, however, engage in “ _______ exchanges” that reduce the value of their debt without lenders’ consent. One especially genteel measure of profitability that emerged during the coronavirus pandemic was “EBITDAC”—earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and covid
distressed Source
The academics found that 56% of the firms surveyed had taken some form of government aid and this was true of almost all businesses that had suffered a revenue decline of more than 50%. Unsurprisingly, companies in the most _______ industries were most likely to have taken assistance. The aid seemed to work
distressed Source
Office-owners have been spared any substantial demand shocks, and sale prices in big cities have held up despite lower rents in many places. Delinquencies and _______ sales have been rare. But there are still dangers
distressed Source
Investors are waiting for a signal from Beijing. So far the absence of any strong sign of support has shown that regulators do not want to step in as they did recently with Huarong, a state-owned investor in _______ debt that required a full bail-out in August. The treatment of Huarong, which is intricately connected to China’s financial system, suggests that Mr Xi is still intent on avoiding a generalised market meltdown
distressed Source
The slow-money crowd will buy two shares per day but the price must get cheaper by $2 a day to induce them to trade. In a world without predatory traders, the _______ hedge fund manages to sell its stock over five days, with the last share going for $90. But the other hedge fund knows the prey is wounded
distressed Source
But the reversal of capital inflows has been matched by higher borrowing costs. In March the risk premium that emerging markets must pay buyers of their dollar bonds rose to _______ levels (over ten percentage points) for nearly 20 governments—a record number, says the IMF. To weather the crisis, emerging economies may need at least $2
distressed Source
com/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20211120_IRD001_0. jpg","__typename":"URL"}," __typename":"Content","width":1280,"height":720},"__typename":"Media"}},{"headline":"Ladak h’s pashmina-goat-rearing nomads are _______","url":{"canonical":"https://www. economist
dwindling Source
Amid such contradictory trends, there will be an oversupply of at least one commodity: economic analysis. ","description":"Supplies may be _______, but complaints about “shortages” are surging","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
dwindling Source
5bn. A _______ share of middle-income jobs and the growth of the gig economy fuelled fears that labour markets were changing faster than flat-footed governments could. With the public and some economists cheering on, it is tempting for politicians to stoke the economy with more ad hoc spending, or put in place vast schemes such as UBI
dwindling Source
LUNAR-GAZERS ARE eagerly awaiting the full moon on May 26th. For some people in the western Americas, Australia or South-East Asia the Moon will appear to glow red for around 15 minutes as a result of the first total lunar _______ (when the Moon moves into the Earth’s shadow) since January 2019. Even many of those who can’t see the full
eclipse Source
Those inside the bubble are expected to keep on top of judicial reform in Poland and coalition formation in Sweden, as well as the grand sweep of geopolitics. A deep knowledge of the domestic politics of 27 countries and an _______ understanding of how the EU’s institutions work (in theory and in practice) is both necessary and impossible. Some bullshitting is inevitable
encyclopedic Source
This wave of unrest and authoritarianism partly reflects covid-19, which has exposed and exploited vulnerabilities, from rotten bureaucracies to frayed social safety-nets. And as we explain this week, the despair and chaos threaten to _______ a profound economic problem: many poor and middle-income countries are losing the knack of catching up with the richest ones. Our excess-mortality model suggests that 8m-16m people have died in the pandemic
exacerbate Source
And that threshold will not necessarily be discernible in advance. Not all the ways in which today’s weather harms people will be _______ d by climate change. But research suggests that many of them will
exacerbate Source
Nor is it clear for what precisely the 54-year-old Scot is paying the price. Some see his departure as the firm’s strangled mea culpa; the ousting of a boss is typical of a firm engulfed in the sort of scandals Mr Sneader has had to cope with, from dodgy dealings in South Africa and settling conflict-of-interest lawsuits to paying almost $575m to settle claims that its advice helped _______ America’s opioid crisis. Yet the roots of all those crises predate his three-year tenure
exacerbate Source
Were the judges to rule on three to four cases every business day, it would take at least two-and-a-half years to clear the docket. Scheduling interruptions caused by the pandemic, and the multiple hearings and appeals for each case _______ the problem. The average wait time for a case to get through the system is two and a half years
exacerbate Source
The pension of a teacher who stays in the same state could be twice as big as that of a teacher who moves mid-career. Perversely, policies to help the poor unintentionally _______ the plight of left-behind places. Unemployment and health benefits enable the least employable people to survive in struggling places when once they would have had no choice but to move
exacerbate Source
Amid the fog, however, one thing seems certain: some economies will suffer much more than others. Economic crises expose and _______ structural weaknesses. Analysis by The Economist of five decades of GDP data finds that growth rates in rich countries tend to converge during expansions, as even the weakest economies are pulled along
exacerbate Source
GDP per person may again fall in 2022, as it has every year since 2015, when crude prices fell sharply. Terrible roads, power cuts and erratic policymaking all _______ the problems. Rising oil prices could bail Nigeria out in 2022, if its creaking wells can pump enough
exacerbate Source
But part of Mr Dell’s genius lay in realising that his triumph would come from complementing his cocky young self with colourful elder statesmen who understood the pitfalls of building a business at lightning speed. The laconic Mr Knight’s sidekick was Jeff Johnson, an oddball so enthusiastic about selling trainers that he wrote endless letters to his _______ boss. He never got a response, yet the affection between the two men helped make Nike what it is
exasperated Source
On occasion proprietary servicing became a matter of life and death. According to US PIRG, hospital technicians became _______ when they found they could not quickly fix ventilators in overflowing intensive-care units because they did not have immediate access to manuals and parts. This prompted several manufacturers, such as GE, to make more service materials freely available
exasperated Source
But with the currency weakening it makes little sense—except as a way of unsettling investors. _______ economists blame Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the mildly Islamist prime minister, for this aversion to raising the interest rate. He is on record as saying that banks’ interest frates should be the same as the rate of inflation, but no more
exasperated Source
ECONOMY PASSENGERS taking one of the few international flights still running have had an unusually pleasant experience of late. _______ cabin crew battling to close overhead lockers full to bursting with wheelie-bags, duty-free booze and laptop cases have been replaced by masked attendants presiding over planes two-thirds full at best and often with only a handful of passengers. Some report sleeping across empty rows of seats
exasperated Source
It was taken down after a public uproar. “We need to be mature about the whole thing,” says an _______ Amit Chakrabarty, who works at a hotel in Kolkata. As in any other business, pleasing customers is the key, says Sikender Yadav, whose hotels in Delhi are listed on StayUncle
exasperated Source
In desperation, some have suggested that the supply of medicines should no longer be the exclusive preserve of big drug firms. _______ by constant shortages in the world’s biggest pharmaceutical market, American hospitals are entering the drugmaking business. In 2018 a partnership of hospital groups which together cover a third of hospital beds in America set up Civica Rx
exasperated Source
To illustrate it Justin Metz, a visual artist, looked to the first edition of “Alice in Wonderland” for inspiration. On 25th October we put a non- _______ token (NFT) of that cover up for sale. A little over a day later, after a late flurry of bids, it sold for 99
fungible Source
IN SEPTEMBER our “Alice in Wonderland” themed cover sent Alice down the rabbit hole, into the weird world of non- _______ tokens (NFTs), cryptocurrencies and blockchains. The new technology, the accompanying story argued, contained promise for all sorts of digital and financial activities
fungible Source
NFTs will create new problems in an attempt to solve old ones, but for now many creators and collectors are too busy cashing in to care. ","description":"“Non-_______ tokens” use cryptocurrencies’ blockchains to sell original versions of digital artefacts","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
fungible Source
Now The Economist is going in. We are selling that cover as a “non- _______ token” (NFT), a record on the Ethereum blockchain that represents a piece of digital media. The online auction will run on Foundation, a platform for digital artwork, from 5pm BST on Monday October 25th until 5pm BST on Tuesday October 26th
fungible Source
com/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20211030_BKP002_0. jpg","publisher":"The Economist"}}]} Our coverage of NFTsA selection of stories about non-_______ tokens and decentralised financeWeekend readsThe spirit levelWhy in-person Halloween shopping maintains its appealAnd how costume stores appear and vanish swiftly as ghostsThe long waitA row about toilets reveals a lot about women’s place in ChinaProgress is possible, but activism is discouragedRed, white and blue tapeCuba’s communist regime is trying to control cryptoDigital currencies are a lifeline for ordinary CubansEarthy delightsThe Van Gogh Museum showcases a rejected early masterpiecePeople hated “The Potato Eaters” when it was unveiled in 1885. Vincent van Gogh thought it was his best workSubscribeGroup subscriptionsReuse our contentHelp and contact usKeep updatedFacebookInstagramTwitterLinkedInYouTubeRSSPublished since September 1843 to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress
fungible Source
FAMOUS books have been much abused by the theatre. Dickens suffered so much _______ staging—more than 50 versions of “Nicholas Nickleby” were put on during his lifetime—that he felt forced to change his writing style, throwing time-shifts into his narratives to trip up the adapters. Undeterred, theatrical managements ever since have used other people's literary repute to put “bums on seats”
hackneyed Source
The lover's incessant iterations that some woman named Marinette “has custody of her soul” are increasingly irritating. Moreover, the protagonists' extracurricular follies aren't persuasively erotic, but stiff, technical, and dependent on _______ leather props. Thus his collapse into deep, terrible badness feels so under motivated that when he arrives in St Trinity, Robert Stone's stand-in for Haiti, it is as if he got on the wrong plane by accident
hackneyed Source
It's the beginning of the end of the long campaign, and, probably, of Labour's time in office. Mr Brown banged on again about his background and his values: someone has obviously told him this stuff goes down well with a key part of the electorate, but to my ears it increasingly sounds _______ and cynical. David Cameron, meanwhile, talking on the embankment outside County Hall and opposite Parliament, managed a joke and some more or less convincing passion, even if what he actually said was familiar from his previous speeches too
hackneyed Source
D'Souza argues that Obama's policies are motivated by a hatred towards American power absorbed from his Kenyan father. He offers exactly zero evidence for his _______ psychological theory. But the most laughable weakness in D'Souza's thesis is the fact that the policies which D'Souza presents as the “dreams of a Luo tribesman” have a decades-long American pedigree and are embraced by wide swathes of the American electorate and political class
hackneyed Source
LEAVING aside the obvious and damning factual error in William Kristol's column this morning, his characteristically _______ prose and the unenviably consistent record of errors and misjudgments, he makes a worthwhile point: The more you learn about him, the more Obama seems to be a conventionally opportunistic politician, impressively smart and disciplined, who has put together a good political career and a terrific presidential campaign. Kristol being Kristol, he goes in for the clumsy, bombastic kill in the next sentence: But there’s not much audacity of hope there
hackneyed Source
Dickens had been hired to write copy to fit round a series of sketches by Robert Seymour, the leading illustrator of his day. The subject of the mainly visual narrative was to be a _______ one, a group of London bloods trying their clumsy hand at country pursuits. But a few months into the project Seymour killed himself
hackneyed Source
Outside, a troop of black-clad security guards armed with big sticks adds a genuine air of menace. Such space-age fantasy appears _______ in Guizhou. The mountainous region is one of China’s poorest provinces (see map)
incongruous Source
THERE ARE few more _______ places for a seminar on the future of business than the Sacred Convent of Assisi, in Italy. From Schumpeter’s cell high in the convent’s outer walls, the view over rural Umbria was so beautiful it was like looking at the world through God’s eyes—not those of Mammon
incongruous Source
They only capture at most 37% of bitcoin’s total computing power based on a sample of mining pool data, though the CCAF calls it a “reasonable approximation”. The data also throw up some _______ destinations. Take Ireland and Germany: there is little evidence that these countries have ramped up their crypto mining, yet their global hash rates increased by 46% and 17% respectively between January and August this year
incongruous Source
THE most nightmarish dystopian worlds are both familiar and _______ , existing on the peripheries of possibility. A prime example is “The Handmaid’s Tale”, written in 1985 and now a ten-part television series which will be released on Hulu from April 26th
incongruous Source
In 2001 it suffered its worst economic collapse in more than a century. In December of that year, after $20 billion had fled the country and bank deposits were frozen, an _______ combination of unemployed rioters and pot-banging middle-class protesters caused Fernando de la Rúa, the Radical president, to resign. To a cacophony of que se vayan todos (kick them all out), the political system appeared to implode
incongruous Source
Yet, if you read a news report about thousands of children drowning because of a flood in a distant country, you may not feel compelled to act at all. What could explain this seemingly _______ gap in empathy? One reason is that you, as a human, are simply hard- wired to care more about those in your immediate vicinity. But another is that you might believe that you have no ability to meaningfully affect the lives of distant strangers
incongruous Source
This special report will argue that, as a result, the relationship between citizens and those who govern them is changing fundamentally. _______ though it may seem, the forces that are now powering the campaign of Mr Trump—as well as that of Bernie Sanders, the surprise candidate on the Democratic side (Hillary Clinton is less of a success online)—were first seen in full cry during the Arab spring in 2011. The revolution in Egypt and other Arab countries was not instigated by Twitter, Facebook and other social- media services, but they certainly helped it gain momentum
incongruous Source
On the other is a row of low commercial buildings, selling the sorts of basic household goods available from any street stall in Indonesia: little packets of coffee, tea, shampoo and Indomie instant noodles, SIM cards, cigarettes and fizzy drinks. But from one doorway wafts the _______ scent of Christmas. In a large concrete-floored warehouse sit waist-high pyramids of cloves, pallets of nutmeg and sacks filled with spices
incongruous Source
Mr Cavallo had made his name with his 1991 “convertibility” plan, which killed Argentina's chronic hyperinflation. The plan removed all scope for monetary mischief by pegging the peso to the dollar, and making the currencies freely _______. But Argentina's “monetary self-denial”, as Mr Blustein calls it, coexisted uneasily with its financial self- indulgence
interchangeable Source
Marconi was not fooling when he chose, for the first image transmitted by television, a ventriloquist's dummy. Mr Connor further suggests that all ventriloquists' dummies are _______—the cheeky boy, upon whom violence can guiltlessly be visited (it would not do if they were girls or small animals). But he adds that it is never clear who precisely is talking through whom, a point brilliantly made in the Tim Robbins's film “The Cradle Will Rock”, in which the dummy becomes dangerously radical (Mr Connor appears not to have seen this fine work
interchangeable Source
That was in 1598, some 250 years before it became American territory (and the best part of a decade before English merchant-adventurers splashed ashore at Jamestown, Virginia). A _______ man in denims and cowboy hat, Mr Salazar is a fifth-generation Colorado rancher, farming the same corner of the San Luis valley that his great-grandfather settled 150 years ago, just when Mexico ceded the territory to America. As families like the Salazars put it, they never crossed the border, the border crossed them
laconic Source
But part of Mr Dell’s genius lay in realising that his triumph would come from complementing his cocky young self with colourful elder statesmen who understood the pitfalls of building a business at lightning speed. The laconic Mr Knight’s sidekick was Jeff Johnson, an oddball so enthusiastic about selling trainers that he wrote endless letters to his _______ boss. He never got a response, yet the affection between the two men helped make Nike what it is
laconic Source
On June 27th President Harry Truman announced a new Taiwan policy: America would defend the island from attack; the Nationalists must, for their part, cease air and sea operations against the mainland. “The Seventh Fleet will see that this is done,” the president declared, with nicely _______ menace. Hence the Valley Forge’s show of strength
laconic Source
Coca-Cola, which has its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia’s capital, had difficulty taking even a minimal stand. When the restrictive bill was being debated, James Quincey, Coke’s _______ , British-born chief executive, could only muster words of general support for voting rights. To be fair, all companies must balance making a profit with sensitivity to the cultural moment
laconic Source
Yet in economic terms they are worlds apart. This week Cyprus became the fifth euro-zone country to negotiate a euro-zone bail-out; AAA-rated Finland, in its _______ way, is perhaps the most hardline of creditor states. It is striking how the economies of EU countries on the Baltic Sea—from Scandinavia round to Germany, Poland and the ex-Soviet Baltic states—boast the union’s fastest-growing economies while many of those on the Mediterranean, from Greece to Spain, are shrinking fastest
laconic Source
Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychology professor and conservative culture warrior, revealed on March 20th that an invitation to take up a visiting fellowship at Cambridge University had been withdrawn. The University’s Divinity Faculty confirmed the decision in a _______ statement: “We can confirm that Jordan Peterson requested a visiting fellowship, and an initial offer has been rescinded after a further review. ” Mr Peterson had quite a lot more to say about the matter
laconic Source
AT A time when 140-character tweets and _______ Facebook statuses can ostensibly start a revolution, the epigrammatic phrase has never felt more significant. This creates some interesting pressure for writers
laconic Source
SINCE he took office as president in July, Ollanta Humala has proffered few words to Peruvians, giving only one press conference and few interviews. He was characteristically _______ on December 4th when he declared a state of emergency in the northern department of Cajamarca, dispatching the army to quash weeks of protests against Minas Conga, a giant mining project. His television address announcing the measure lasted less than three minutes
laconic Source
The first is to gain admission to a highly selective school, thereby signalling one’s value to potential employers. The second is to pursue a _______ field of study such as computer science or economics, rather than English or history. Students who can achieve both feats tend to earn the most; those who achieve neither, the least
lucrative Source
Now its zero-covid strategy exemplifies the inflexibility of unchecked centralised power. One of the scandals in which British politics is mired is over whether its leaders took advantage of the crisis to award _______ contracts to their pals. The long-term threat of a big state is that such bureaucracy, institutional failure and corruption become routine and widespread, making people poorer and limiting individual freedom
lucrative Source
Mr Xi does not intend to force Chinese consumers back into Mao suits. But his war on flamboyance, especially among the rich who may spend at least $100,000 each a year on foreign brands, threatens the most _______ end of the market. It also imperils luxury marques that charge consumers in China more than they do in their outlets in, say, Milan
lucrative Source
Smartphones unleashed people’s creativity far from their desks and cloud computing enabled software to be offered as a service over the internet. Rather than cling to the _______ legacy business, Mr Narayen embraced a chance “to reimagine ourselves”. Putting Photoshop and other popular but complex applications, such as Illustrator, fully into the cloud would have been technically too tricky
lucrative Source
IF NOTHING ELSE, our auction of an NFT was entertaining—and _______ . Starting on Monday October 25th The Economist invited bids for a non-fungible token of an image of our recent cover on decentralised finance
lucrative Source
This niche stretches all the way down from designer fashion through craft beers to bakeries offering “artisan” loaves. To the extent that automation takes over more sectors, this niche seems likely to become more _______ ; there is “snob value” in owning a good that is not mass produced. The second market lies in those consumers who wish to use their purchases to support local workers, or to reduce their environmental impact by taking goods to craftspeople to be mended, or recycled
lucrative Source
Neuro-plasticity, the human brain's ability to change in response to experience, means that people are less likely to resort to violence in their daily lives than their forebears; other behavioural strategies work better. That may not have been quite what Lincoln meant, though the belief in man's improvability is as uplifting in this _______ work as it was in the president's speech. The notion that mankind has, as Ian Dury, a punk-rocker, once put it, “reasons to be cheerful”, also lies at the heart of Robert Muchembled's quirkier work, “A History of Violence”
magisterial Source
Over time, the word “strategy” has been drained of meaning by ubiquity and overuse. Sir Lawrence Freedman’s aim in his _______ new book, “Strategy: A History”, is to find a workable definition of what strategy is and to show how it has evolved and been applied in war, politics and business. Above all, he argues, it is about employing whatever resources are available to achieve the best outcome in situations that are both dynamic and contested: “It is about getting more out of a situation than the starting balance of power would suggest
magisterial Source
Random House; 656 pages; $35 and £25. ANY BIOGRAPHER of John Maynard Keynes must labour in the shadow of Robert Skidelsky’s _______ three volumes about the great economist. Zachary Carter, a journalist at the Huffington Post, has tackled the problem in an ingenious way, by focusing on the development of Keynes’s ideas and how they fared after his death in 1946
magisterial Source
More than ever, perhaps, Indians and outsiders would benefit from reacquaintance with Gandhi’s belief in compromise. Mr Guha’s _______ account of a compassionate man provides a timely opportunity. Yet, as Gandhi knew, in the end it is political actors, not writers, who bring about real change
magisterial Source
R. Martin's "Game of Thrones" saga; when Mr Martin's books get silly (all those dynasties and monsters), it is time to educate myself with Ian Morris's _______ "Why the West Rules—for Now" (reviewed by The Economist here). And my reluctance to carry a £110 device on the tube, where it might be dropped or stolen, means I use my Kindle mainly at home or on plane flights
magisterial Source
95. Allen Lane; £35 The _______ first instalment of a two-part biography about a man who towered over American foreign policy for more than two decades, and still divides opinion as no one else does. Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot
magisterial Source
The book is sprinkled with just enough high-altitude analysis to make it more than merely a great fly-on-the-wall account. Anyone looking for a more academic take on where this meltdown places in the history of financial folly should turn to “This Time is Different” (see The Economist's review) by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, a _______ work on the causes and consequences of crises stretching back 800 years. Which book would you offer as a general primer for a new Wall Street journalist? Again, so many
magisterial Source
uk JOHN DARWIN has spent his whole career thinking about Pax Britannica. Three years after his _______ study, “The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World- System, 1830-1970”, the Oxford historian has returned yet again to the subject. This time, though, his focus is different and the period he covers is longer
magisterial Source
The outlook for the wider gains from the Olympics is similarly gloomy—but covid-19 is only partly to blame. Economists have long argued that, rather than consumption, tourism and prestige, the games leave high debt, wasteful infrastructure and _______ maintenance obligations. In a 2016 paper Victor Matheson and Robert Baade, two American academics, concluded that “in most cases the Olympics are a money-losing proposition for host cities
onerous Source
They offer debit cards and online banking services through snazzy apps. But instead of obtaining a banking charter, which is _______ , costly and time-consuming, they often negotiate partnerships with small regional lenders, which hold and insure customers’ deposits. The startups pride themselves on their speed: they typically deposit paycheques a few days faster than large banks and, thanks to simpler identity checks, open accounts in minutes, even for customers with poor credit histories
onerous Source
Yet, for all its good intentions, the Biden plan lacks ambition. As well as promoting infrastructure-building, Mr Biden should urge his neighbours to lower trade barriers, harmonise provisions across the hundreds of trade agreements which already criss-cross the region and clear up _______ customs procedures. This could help persuade investors to take the plunge
onerous Source
It is like arranging a “state visit”, says one banker who used to make the trip 30 times a year. The documentary requirements can be _______ and inconsistent. One delegation of senior businesspeople, hoping to visit Shanghai, were asked for their primary-school transcripts
onerous Source
The treatments he proposes are no better than his diagnosis. To boost growth, he promises to free the economy from “ _______ ” government regulations and to cut taxes. That sounds fair enough, until you get to the details
onerous Source
That absence allowed minorities in the chamber to use various manoeuvres, most famously the filibuster, to block legislation a majority wishes to pass. Once _______ and used sparingly, subsequent changes to the rules have allowed these ruses to become routine, cost-free and all but ubiquitous. This has turned the Senate into the only legislative body in the world which requires a supermajority for ordinary business
onerous Source
In a bid to weed out illegal material, the card firm is demanding that porn sites take steps that go beyond what the law requires, including reviewing footage before publication and checking the identity of those who upload or feature in it. Sites that think these sorts of rules too _______ are under no obligation to work with Mastercard. But Visa is also cracking down, and the two firms handle 90% of card payments outside China, meaning that they are becoming the industry’s de facto regulators
onerous Source
This year at least 70 restrictions have taken effect in 14 states. In May one of the most _______ rules introduced this year—a near-total ban at six weeks’ gestation, before many women are aware they are pregnant—became law in Texas (though it is still possible the Supreme Court will strike it down). The law in question in Dobbs, the Gestational Age Act, sounds mild by comparison: it bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy
onerous Source
A few conservatives burned their Nike shoes in protest. But the company’s share price quickly rebounded and Nike’s sales rose as millennials showed they were more than happy to buy footwear that attracted the _______ of President Donald Trump. Nike’s customers may be more accustomed to politically tinged marketing than those of Gillette
opprobrium Source
Still, a deeper question remains: has anyone asked Europeans how much sovereignty they are ready to surrender to save the euro?\nEconomist. com/blogs/charlemagne","description":"As it acquires more powers, the European Commission is attracting more _______","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
opprobrium Source
Some wondered whether the world would be a better place if the outage were permanent. A share of the _______ heaped on Facebook is incoherent. Politicians are angry but so far seem incapable of co-ordinating reform to rein it in
opprobrium Source
It is in the resolution of such stand-offs, says Jennifer Jacquet, an academic in New York, that shame comes into its own. “Is Shame Necessary?” is her thought-provoking treatise on the soft power of _______, and its important role in achieving social cohesion in an ever more individualised culture. \nIn a market society where almost every ethical principle has its price, an appeal to a disinterested sense of civic duty seems at times nostalgic, if not futile
opprobrium Source
How will rich rewards for lobbying go down with the Conservative Party’s new working-class voters in northern constituencies? That MPs voted for the amendment by just 250 to 232, despite a government majority of 80 and a three-line whip, suggests many Tory MPs are uneasy. Mr Rees-Mogg closed his speech by saying that “sometimes to do the right thing, one has to accept a degree of _______ ”. The government has just earned a great deal of
opprobrium Source
True, Israel has built scores of settlements since the war, so that more than 400,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank, alongside 3m Palestinians. But its leaders calculated that annexation would bring global _______ , destabilise the region and doom the two- state solution—the idea that a Palestinian state and a Jewish one might one day peacefully co-exist. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister today, thinks he knows better
opprobrium Source
Russia’s claim that the gas was released when a rebel arms dump was bombed is almost certainly a lie. As Mr Assad’s protector-in-chief, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, deserves to be singled out for _______ . A permanent stigma Often defied, the prohibition against chemical weapons is one of the oldest global agreements to make war less ugly
opprobrium Source
Better that than suppressing useful technological innovations. Making subsidies explicit, however, is not always comfortable for the beneficiaries—or for regulators; obvious support attracts more public _______ . The real risk of CBDCs to the financial system may be that they eventually precipitate a new kind of run: on the idea that banks need to exist at all
opprobrium Source
Mr Ostberg says that high labour costs have become less of a problem in Europe, because the efficiency of delivery has improved substantially in recent years. European consumers have also grown less _______ amid the pandemic boom in online shopping of all kinds. As a consequence, Delivery Hero has reversed its decision to leave the German market altogether, by offloading its domestic businesses, Foodora, Lieferheld and Pizza
parsimonious Source
A much more pointed reprimand to Texas—and to her colleagues to the right—came from the pen of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Writing for herself and the other two liberal justices—Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan—Justice Sotomayor highlighted the impact of Texas’s law on the lives of its citizens and couched the majority’s _______ holding in favour of the clinics as dangerously weak tea that a craftier legislature could circumvent. While expressing optimism that the district court will now pick up the ball and “act expeditiously to enter much-needed relief” for Texas women, Justice Sotomayor noted her exasperation with the delay
parsimonious Source
She had apologised for these comments in the past, but a killing in Georgia on March 16th, in which six of the eight victims were Asian women, made them look even worse. Two days later Ms McCammond took to Twitter again—to say that she had agreed to _______ the Teen Vogue job. Hers is hardly the first career to be capsized by old tweets
renounce Source
The spat makes everyone look bad. It reveals an administration that is capricious and a Republican Party establishment so out of touch that it thinks it should be the mouthpiece for firms that _______ their citizenship. It shows great companies, such as Pfizer, reduced to shifty deal-junkies that are obsessed with financial fixes
renounce Source
But I remain convinced of the importance of financial shocks in the 1930s and the years after 2008. Of course, this means I have to _______ the view that business cycles are all alike! Noah Smith describes the conclusion to which Mr Lucas has apparently come: There must in fact be two types of recessions, with one (more frequent, less severe) type caused by "real shocks", and the other (rarer, more severe) type caused by "financial shocks". Mr Lucas wouldn't be alone in thinking that "financial shocks" are responsible for different sorts of downturns and recoveries than are normally observed (though many would disagree that "real shocks" are responsible for the others"
renounce Source
The TPNW is a newer concern. Driven by non-nuclear countries and pressure groups, and in force since January, the treaty obliges ratifying countries (56 so far) to _______ the development, production and ownership of nuclear weapons. Supporters say this turns the screws on nuclear powers who have done little to meet their disarmament obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970
renounce Source
Serge Leclaire, a French psychoanalyst, posited the intriguing idea that life sets us the task of metaphorically killing this wonderful child. We must continually _______ the fantasy of an ideal self and grieve its impossibility. This idea always brings to mind one of my first patients, a woman in her 20s whose mother had recently died of a terminal illness
renounce Source
True, he’d served 51 years in the party, as an MP for Bristol South-East and Chesterfield. He had had to fight to sit in the Commons at all, campaigning for eight years to _______ the peerage he had inherited from his father. He had been a minister, for industry and later for energy, under Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan in the 1970s: right-wing governments both, in his view, though Labour in name
renounce Source
economist. com/printedition/2019-09-21","name":"Sep 21st 2019 edition"}}]} BritainSep 21st 2019 edition_______ timesBritain’s Tempest warplane heads for a dogfight with an EU rivalEconomic logic suggests the British and European projects should merge. Politics says otherwiseSep 19th 2019FacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppFOR A FEW days, the ExCeL convention centre in east London was transformed into a Disneyland for arms dealers
tempestuous Source
This was unlike the culture wars of the 60s or the 90s, in which a typically older age cohort of moral and cultural conservatives fought against a tide of cultural secularization and liberalism among the young. This online backlash was able to mobilize a strange vanguard of teenage gamers, pseudonymous swastika-posting anime lovers, ironic South Park conservatives, anti-feminist pranksters, nerdish harassers and meme-making trolls whose dark humour and love of _______ for its own sake made it hard to know what political views were genuinely held and what were merely, as they used to say, for the lulz. What seemed to hold them all together in their obscurity was a love of mocking the earnestness and moral self-flattery of what felt like a tired liberal intellectual conformity running right through from establishment liberal politics to the more militant enforcers of new sensitivities from the wackiest corners of Tumblr to campus politics
transgression Source
REEM AL HASHIMY Director-general of Expo 2020 Dubai Dubai Facebook fury Your observations about the incoherence of Facebook’s many critics were helpful as far as they went (“Facepalm”, October 9th). But the most vexing question is why, after years of frustrated policymakers calling for more regulation, and as many years of Facebook inviting them to dish it up, have lawmakers and regulators produced so little other than noise? Maybe their inaction betrays an implicit recognition that the same human failings that are distorted and amplified on Facebook are already legislated for, and that the social network’s worst _______ is that it is as unflattering but depressingly accurate as any hi-def selfie. GREGORY FRANCIS Managing director Access Partnership London The true romance language As an adult, I tried to learn the French language (Johnson, October 16th)
transgression Source
It derives from the Old English word godsibb, which meant godparent – that is, a friend of the family. When we gossip, we engage in a delicious mutual _______ . By sharing secret information with me you’re indicating that you know I’m not the sort of person who will rebuff or report you for it, and vice versa
transgression Source
Mr Yang and his wife refused to pay a fine for their second daughter. The _______ cost Mr Yang his job as a law professor. In April a sum of 240,300 yuan was taken from his wife's account
transgression Source
Mr Rajapaksa has meanwhile dug in for the long haul—having used his popularity as a war victor to scrap presidential-term limits. This amounts to a textbook _______ of the Commonwealth Charter, which includes a commitment to freedom of expression, the separation of powers and the like, promulgated by the queen in March. The meeting should never have been held in Sri Lanka
transgression Source
By using a distorting fish-eye lens, Yorgos Lanthimos, director of “The Favourite”, drew attention to the film’s warped view of the court. Them and us As much as the eras in which they are set, the real subject, or target, of these productions is the costume drama of yore, with its pretence of _______ and the claim to authoritative knowledge of the past that it implied. Think of the authentic Tudor gowns in “Elizabeth R”, starring Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth I
verisimilitude Source
but Sandy Hook!' will no doubt be pleased to know that school shootings, too, are down 33 percent since 1993". This is all most excellent news, though I would resist the impulse to think that these welcome trends will somehow _______ the felt need for further gun control. The decline in gun violence is consistent with a truly amazing general decline of violence, a subject recently explored in Steven Pinker's fascinating book, "The Better Angels of our Nature"
vitiate Source
However, the case shone an unwelcome spotlight on the Nazarbayev family’s fortune (another daughter, Dinara Kulibayeva, and her husband, Timur Kulibayev, are together worth $5. 2bn, according to Forbes magazine), just as the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices were beginning to _______ the Kazakh economy. Even more embarrassing has been the furore stirred by Ms Nazarbayeva’s youngest son, who uses the name Aisultan Rakhat and who featured prominently in British tabloids last year after his arrest for biting a police officer summoned to remove him from a stranger’s flat in central London
vitiate Source
Instead they will talk, as now, to their counterparts in big countries like Germany, France and Britain. That will largely _______ any notion of the EU at last speaking with one voice, or of answering the famously mythical Kissinger question about whom to call when an outsider wants to talk to Europe. Now every inoffensive Belgian can dream of somethingIt is just as hard to believe that Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicolas Sarkozy wanted such an outcome when they first resurrected the Lisbon treaty from the bones of the EU constitution
vitiate Source
However, the case shone an unwelcome spotlight on the Nazarbayev family’s fortune (another daughter, Dinara Kulibayeva, and her husband, Timur Kulibayev, are together worth $5. 2bn, according to Forbes magazine), just as the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices were beginning to _______ the Kazakh economy. Even more embarrassing has been the furore stirred by Ms Nazarbayeva’s youngest son, who uses the name Aisultan Rakhat and who featured prominently in British tabloids last year after his arrest for biting a police officer summoned to remove him from a stranger’s flat in central London
vitiate Source
Those reparations—$21. 7 billion in today's money, says the government—did much to _______ Haiti's first century of nationhood. But opponents argue that the case is a frivolous distraction from the country's real problems
vitiate Source
For a start, European countries have to be readier to pursue economic reforms. Bad policies, such as job-destroying regulations, could _______ the potential gains from a single currency, just as they have limited the benefits from the single market. So could the stability-and-growth pact, by curbing governments' room for manoeuvre, which is already cramped by their decision to give up monetary policy to the ECB
vitiate Source
First, it would mean a big extension of Russian influence (though the time to worry about that was when striking the weekend deal). And second, Germany in particular would be loth to sanction Russian help in the form of a loan, since this would add to Cyprus’s debt burden and _______ attempts to put it on a sustainable footing. Explore our interactive guide to Europe's troubled economiesIf Cyprus fails to get sufficient support from Russia (which, after all, turned down pleas for further help last year), then two other possibilities remain
vitiate Source
In the new shop, Brazilians without bank accounts—plumbers, salesmen, maids—flock to buy on instalment credit. In a country with no credit histories, the system is _______ : the staff interview customers about their qualifications and get them to sign stacks of promissory notes, like post-dated cheques, before allowing them to take their purchases home. But it works, more or less
cumbersome Source
Many investors would add to that list special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). They are an alternative way of taking firms public that bypasses the _______ initial public offering (IPO) process. The pace of deals has been furious
cumbersome Source
Another round came after the Kobe earthquake in 1995, which killed 6,500 and left more than 300,000 homeless. The government now has pre-arranged contracts for repairing infrastructure, allowing post-disaster reconstruction to begin fast without going through _______ procurement precesses, says Sameh Wahba, of the World Bank’s disaster-management programme. Local governments stockpile essential goods in schools and community centres
cumbersome Source
One is cleaning up radioactive waste, particularly when it is inside a nuclear power station—and especially if the power station in question has suffered a recent accident. Those who do handle radioactive material must first don protective suits that are inherently _______ and are further encumbered by the air hoses needed to allow the wearer to breathe. Even then their working hours are strictly limited, in order to avoid prolonged exposure to radiation and because operating in the suits is exhausting
cumbersome Source
The concept has its roots in the idea of “lean management”, developed by Toyota in car manufacturing, and in the “Agile manifesto” drawn up by a group of software developers back in 2001. Big software-development projects were (and are) notorious for producing costly, late and _______ results. The idea of agility was to focus on small, innovative and multi-disciplinary teams
cumbersome Source
Instagram has exploded in popularity since 2016. One reason is that people are tiring of Facebook’s cluttered interface and _______ privacy controls. Instagram offers pretty pictures and is easy to use
cumbersome Source
5trn. Yet compared with other industries and other countries, buying and selling property in America is _______ —and extraordinarily expensive. In an industry crying out for technological disruption, the only revolutionary change over the past decade has been the rise of celebrity estate agents who star in reality TV shows including “Million Dollar Listing” and “Flip or Flop”
cumbersome Source
In 1773 banks in England went in on a clearinghouse in London, for example, an improvement on the system of managing separate ledgers with each bank. The banks themselves took in gold coin— _______ to carry and verify—then created new money by offering more in loans than the gold they had on deposit. In 1776 Adam Smith described coins as an earth-bound highway, where bank money offered a “waggon-way through the air”
cumbersome Source
Anecdotal evidence for its greater contagiousness is mounting: super-spreader events after which 35-78% of people tested positive have occurred in Norway, Denmark, Spain and Britain. Moreover, Omicron has _______ capacity for reinfection. A recent study led by Juliet Pulliam of Stellenbosch University showed that the number of South Africans who test positive at least 90 days after their last positive test is more than you would expect based on earlier waves
unprecedented Source
\nDownload the EIU’s full report here. ","description":"The pandemic caused an _______ rollback of democratic freedoms in 2020","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
unprecedented Source
This book argues that, whatever its other merits, Palestinian statehood would have little impact on terrorism because no possible compromise in Palestine will end the terrorists' insatiable demands. They are also cross with State for _______ on support for Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi opposition leader who in exile became Mr Perle's friend. Or maybe State's crime is a want of patriotism
stinting Source
Even more important, it assumes that a law for doctor-assisted suicide cannot be drafted in a way that would prevent its abuse. Consider the Dutch In principle, it should be possible to solve all these difficulties—to write legislation that protects the vulnerable, forbids insurance companies from paying for death but _______ on pain killers, and regulates the system of supervision. Unfortunately, there is not much practical experience to draw on
stinting Source
Some have been loaned, including his “The Last Supper” (pictured, above), one of Tintoretto’s most audacious and enigmatic works, taken from the church of San Trovaso in the Dorsoduro district of Venice. Tintoretto put his slightly ragged apostles in the back room of a tavern; it looks as if—until the moment the painting captures, when Jesus tells them that one of them will betray him—they have not been _______ on the wine. A cat is hunting for scraps under the table
stinting Source
This inefficiency constantly draws bosses to try to save office costs, especially in a downturn, although the reality is that office spending makes up only a tenth of property and headcount costs, with the rest going on workers’ wages. Despina Katsikakis of Cushman & Wakefield, a property consultancy, warns that such _______ by firms can have an adverse effect on the wellbeing of their employees. To optimise office use without killing morale, Goldman is therefore giving staff at its new London building options about where they work—at unassigned desks, private rooms and informal hangouts
stinting Source
In a big turnaround, Mr Romney abandoned his pledge to review Mr Obama’s plan to pull all American combat troops out of Afghanistan in 2014. The candidate also unceremoniously dropped any suggestion that the administration covered up the role of al-Qaeda-linked militants in the killing of America’s ambassador to Libya, or contributed to the envoy’s death by _______ on diplomatic security. He only offered fleeting references to the tragedy, as he repeatedly suggested that the world was in a state of “tumult”, showing that Mr Obama’s foreign policy was unravelling
stinting Source
On October 12th euro-area leaders committed themselves to the same potent mix of debt guarantees and recapitalisation that Britain had unveiled, to much acclaim, the previous week. Governments are not _______ . Germany has set up a €500 billion ($680 billion) stabilisation fund; France has pledged €360 billion; the Netherlands €200 billion
stinting Source
Indeed, the break-down of the relationship between this one-time barrister and MP for East Surrey and his prime minister gives the lie to one of the most enduring claims about her premiership: that she dominated British politics merely through her intransigence. The reality, smothered by myths propagated both by Thatcher’s supporters and by her left-wing opponents, is that the prime minister was more _______ than she appeared. A new, definitive biography by Charles Moore, the second volume of which was published this week, serves as a reminder of that
stinting Source
This was a welcome change from the Modi government’s previous insularity. So was its promise, in response to panicked pleas from companies, not to lock up executives for _______ on social projects. The central bank’s 35-basis-point cut in interest rates on August 7th raised spirits
stinting Source
” The other reason the question is philosophical is that there has, historically, been too little evidence to settle it. Arguments about life in the cosmos must _______ from a single example that is itself poorly understood. Biologists still lack a bulletproof theory of how earthly life began
extrapolate Source
The Drake equation (see chart) codifies this intuition. Gather enough information and _______ it to the universe at large and you could come up with an answer. The physical terms of the equation are fairly easy to fill in
extrapolate Source
The authors find that the number of genomics papers packaged with error-ridden spreadsheets is increasing by 15% a year, far above the 4% annual growth rate in the number of genomics papers published. If we _______ current trends indefinitely into the future, then by 2025 every spreadsheet attached to a genetics paper will have an error—unless, of course, there is an error in the spreadsheet we used for this calculation.
extrapolate Source
It does this by feeding into a piece of software called Octavia data from a scaled-up version of Dr Bloom’s deep mutational scanning that runs assays on between 1m and 10m variants. Octavia’s job is to recognise patterns in the Petri-dish data—for example, which of the millions of mutations tend to lead to tighter binding, and also which lead to poorer neutralisation by antibodies—and then to _______ those across all possible variants of spike. This leads to predictions about which mutations will defeat antibodies, and which will spread more easily
extrapolate Source
Investors, meanwhile, need to hold their nerve. It is tempting to _______ the triumph of Google and Alibaba to an entire new group of firms. In fact, most unicorns face a long war of attrition and soggy margins
extrapolate Source
Another vibrant subfield today is Chinese science fiction, which offers an outlet for subtle dissent, and gives Western readers a sense of the country’s hopes and fears. In all these cases, sci-fi authors are using the freedom granted by the genre to consider present-day concerns and _______ them to mind-stretching conclusions. All of which does have some predictive value
extrapolate Source
ON THE NIGHT of a mid-term legislative election on November 14th the mood in the opposition’s campaign headquarters was oddly flat. Across Buenos Aires the governing Peronists were _______ . President Alberto Fernández called for a rally this week in the Plaza de Mayo, scene of the movement’s past triumphs, “to celebrate victory”
euphoric Source
” Part of music’s appeal is that it unites us – dancing with someone is infinitely more fun than doing it alone. “If you want to talk about _______ experiences,” Kringelbach says, “it’s all about other people. ” Social pleasures, he says, are the most important
euphoric Source
And one month after he started Mr Krugman devoted a short post to rebuffing him. To be noticed by Mr Krugman is a big thing for a blogger; all the current _______ ies court such attention, with neo-chartalists churning up his comment threads and Austrians challenging him to set-piece debates. The more Mr Krugman wrestles with them, the more attention they garner—a correlation that has made him wary
heterodox Source
This system reflects the values and aesthetic tendencies of capitalism in every respect. Contemporary art has become just a form of entertainment, detached from spiritual lifeIt is characterised by capitalism’s _______ advocacy of individual freedom, its encouragement of so-called “creativity” and the idealisation of unfettered personal development. Its symptoms can be observed in the overwhelming tendency to consider art from a purely commercial perspective, neglecting spiritual concerns in favour of wealth accumulation
fervent Source
Other experts worry that well-meaning interventions can make things worse for children. They point to the _______ international campaign to eradicate child labour in the cocoa industry, even though 94% of children in the industry work for their parents or relatives. Criminalising child labour has led to raids on communities and incidents of NGOs removing children from cocoa farms or remote fishing villages, as has often happened in Ghana
fervent Source
Mr Trump himself cares not a jot about Taiwan (though as president-elect he made waves by taking a congratulatory phone call from his Taiwanese counterpart, Tsai Ing-wen). Yet his administration housed appointees whose _______ support of democratic Taiwan is the flipside of their Manichaean view of the evils of China. Poking China in the eye is part of the mission
fervent Source
BEATRICE WEBB grew up as a _______ believer in free markets and limited government. Her father was a self-made railway tycoon and her mother an ardent free-trader
fervent Source
But it also brings dangers. New indicators may be misinterpreted: is a global recession starting or is Uber just losing market share? They are not as representative or free from bias as the _______ surveys by statistical agencies. Big firms could hoard data, giving them an undue advantage
painstaking Source
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economy Source
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economy Source
economist. com/special-report/2021/12/07/japans-_______-is-stronger-than-many- realise","datePublished":"2021-12-07T11:34:47Z","headline":"Japan’s
economy Source
Heavy spending on advertising may also create a barrier to entry, as a firm entering the market would have to spend a lot on advertising too. However, some economists argue that advertising is economically valuable because it increases the flow of information in the _______ and reduces the asymmetric information between the seller and the consumer. This intensifies competition, as consumers can be made aware quickly when there is a better deal on offer
economy Source
I am greatly impressed, if not over-enthused. By expanding your thought and concern to every corner and every nation of the globe, The Economist should have no _______ nor apprehension in distinguishing itself distinctively a true world newspaper, and a leader at that. Thank you for your great effort
qualm Source
In a tie for first place, to no great surprise, are the Nordic trio of Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Their nationals can head to any of 173 countries with nary a _______ . At the other end of the scale, pity the Afghans for whom visa-free travel is limited to just 24 countries
qualm Source
Here he's conflating two separate and unequal arguments about Wal-Mart. There's one, dealing with mom-and-pops, that's a cultural _______ . It laments the homogenization of the retail economy and the destruction of individualized, decidedly local, outlets
qualm Source
Not so. In the summer of 1999, with a _______ or two about the Asian economies and the mess in Russia, he still believes that “liberal democracy and a market-oriented economic order are the only viable options for modern society”—just the culmination of the politico-economic process that Hegel had in mind when he talked about the end of history after Napoleon's victory at Jena in 1806. Mr Fukuyama has lately grown alarmed about what is happening in the world of biotechnology, the arrival of mood-altering drugs such as Prozac and Ritalin and the possibility that science may soon be able to create “a new kind of human being”, which could herald the arrival of “post-human history”
qualm Source
Mexico’s government could not stomach the troubles of processing tens of thousands of migrants each month, nor the affront to national dignity of declaring its own country safe for migrants while so many citizens do not feel it is safe for them. Neither _______ seems to bother Guatemala’s president, Jimmy Morales. Against the will of virtually all of his country’s political class, he negotiated the deal in secret for weeks
qualm Source
AN ITALIAN nationalist joining forces with a German one to promise “a new European dream”, as Matteo Salvini termed it, is bound to stir the odd _______ . But oblivious, or indifferent, to historical echoes, Mr Salvini, the leader of Italy’s Northern League, on April 8th sat cheerfully alongside Jörg Meuthen of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on a platform in Milan as he announced the formation of a new, nativist bloc in the next European Parliament
qualm Source
In a tie for first place, to no great surprise, are the Nordic trio of Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Their nationals can head to any of 173 countries with nary a _______. At the other end of the scale, pity the Afghans for whom visa-free travel is limited to just 24 countries
qualm Source
Because the old version was on the books at the time of Mr Arbery’s death, the defence still relied on it. In this case, the citizen’s arrest argument was not enough to _______ the accused. More from The Economist explains: Why has Narendra Modi abandoned cherished plans to overhaul Indian farming? What will the covid-19 pandemic look like in 2022? Who is Yoon Seok-youl, South Korea’s conservative candidate for president?
exonerate Source
The president is crowing. Democrats in Congress point out that Mr Mueller did not _______ the president over obstruction of justice, which is also true. But make no mistake: this is as good an outcome as Donald Trump could have wished for
exonerate Source
SINCE 1992 the Innocence Project, an American legal charity, has used DNA evidence to help _______ 271 people who were wrongly convicted of crimes, sometimes after they had served dozens of years in prison. But a mystery has emerged from the case reports
exonerate Source
Even when cases are flimsy, defendants may see little option but to plead guilty. A defence lawyer who offers a witness $1 to _______ his client commits bribery. A prosecutor who threatens the same witness with prison if he does not give damning evidence is just doing his job
exonerate Source
Germany is considering new restrictions; in Saxony the unvaccinated have already been barred from non-essential shops and other locations. After a lengthy investigation, the Manhattan district attorney’s office moved to _______ two of the men convicted of assassinating Malcolm X in 1965. The DA found that prosecutors, the FBI and the police withheld evidence that would have acquitted the two men, who were released in the 1980s (one has since died)
exonerate Source
Because of an existing legal opinion stating that a sitting president cannot be indicted, the report did not reach a judgment on whether Mr Trump should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice. The final sentence of the report notes that “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not _______ him. ” A hefty minority of the party hankering after impeachment, against the wishes of the Democratic leadership, had hoped to bolster their stalled case
exonerate Source
Arthur died in 1987, almost a decade before Purdue, which the brothers had acquired in 1952, began selling OxyContin. By the time that happened, his branch of the family no longer held a stake—facts that its members hope will _______ them from the taint of the “OxySacklers”. But after a gripping if lengthy account of the patriarch’s career in the first third of his book, Mr Keefe’s view is less forgiving
exonerate Source
REEM AL HASHIMY Director-general of Expo 2020 Dubai Dubai Facebook fury Your observations about the incoherence of Facebook’s many critics were helpful as far as they went (“Facepalm”, October 9th). But the most vexing question is why, after years of frustrated policymakers calling for more regulation, and as many years of Facebook inviting them to dish it up, have lawmakers and regulators produced so little other than noise? Maybe their inaction betrays an _______ recognition that the same human failings that are distorted and amplified on Facebook are already legislated for, and that the social network’s worst transgression is that it is as unflattering but depressingly accurate as any hi-def selfie. GREGORY FRANCIS Managing director Access Partnership London The true romance language As an adult, I tried to learn the French language (Johnson, October 16th)
implicit Source
For much of its history, this exemption was limitless. That helped the well-to-do who faced big bills for their houses and incomes—and the high-income, high-tax states that received an _______ subsidy from the federal government. The subsidy cost $369bn (1
implicit Source
A plume of smoke has drifted across the South Pacific ocean, reaching Buenos Aires. Australia’s normally _______ society has been shaken. Shane Warne, the most celebrated sportsman in a sports-mad nation, has gone so far as to raise money for the relief effort by auctioning off the baggy cap he wore as part of Australia’s all-conquering cricket team
phlegmatic Source
CONSIDERING their _______ appearance, fish arouse an extraordinary amount of emotion. But only in Iceland could the abstruse economics of fishing quotas be at the heart of the country's most virulent political debate
phlegmatic Source
SO A few travellers on the Tube have taken to wearing masks. In my fatalistic way I tend to assume a third of the city probably has swine flu already, and I am a bit disappointed to see the fabled _______ London spirit giving way to what seem to me to be over- precautions. But maybe we will all be wearing them in a month
phlegmatic Source
“Our faces are bathed in tears,” the employees wrote. Chinese media were far more _______ about the woes of Imperial Investment, which has facilitated 935m yuan ($142m) in loans since its launch in 2013. “Runaway P2P bosses are no longer newsworthy,” declared the Jinling Evening News
phlegmatic Source
But the pair differ markedly in style. Mrs Merkel, the _______ daughter of a Lutheran pastor, grew up on the east side of the Berlin Wall, keeps her emotions in check and weighs her words like gold dust. Mr Laschet, a jovial, gaffe-prone Rhinelander of strong Catholic faith, was delighted to win an “award against deadly seriousness” at a carnival in his home town of Aachen
phlegmatic Source
Good news is just bad news postponed. When the doomsayer played by Peter Cook is forced to recognise that the Earth has not been consumed by flames, he is _______ . “Never mind, lads,” he tells his followers
phlegmatic Source
Britain nurtures two utterly contradictory notions of its character in times of hardship. One is dogged, stoic, _______ —the Britain of make-do-and-mend, of snoek and orderly queues outside half-empty shops, and the thwarted dignity of the “hunger marches” of the 1930s. The other image is of rout and chaos: strikes, riots, rubbish mountains in Leicester Square, the legendary bodies that went unburied, three-day weeks, devaluations and IMF bail-outs
phlegmatic Source
It has found that Italians are actually the worst offenders, with 47% of men admitting to unfaithful sex. _______ Britons are least likely to have engaged in “un jeu de séduction”. IFOP has been tracking infidelity in France since 1970
phlegmatic Source
Savings allow households to consume more later or to cushion the blow of a misfortune. But why is their _______ to save so high today? Saving typically rises during the bad times and falls during the good. The financial crisis of 2007-09 prompted Americans to pull back on spending and pay down debts
propensity Source
A book published by the party last September was entitled “Extracts from Discourses by Xi Jinping on Countering Risks and Challenges and Responding to Sudden Incidents”. The 251-page volume ranges from soaring debt and property bubbles to plots by the West to _______ “colour revolutions” in China. The unrest in Hong Kong in 2019 is often derided as one such foreign-orchestrated attempt to undermine the party
foment Source
Many were incompetent. The party feared that farmers’ anger would _______ unrest. Making village leaders more accountable could help keep the lid on, officials thought
foment Source
economist. com/books-and-arts/2011/03/24/_______-of-the-moment","displayLink":"www. economist
foment Source
The preponderance of small firms in such places as Greece, Italy and Portugal, seems to be one of the factors holding those economies back. But if governments wish to reverse the inequality big firms _______ , reforms to the labour market are unlikely to do the trick. Instead, they will have to spur competition by reducing barriers to entry for smaller firms, most notably by improving their access to credit
foment Source
As for Facebook, if the social network’s one billion users were a country, it would be the world’s third largest. The digital revolution these giants have helped _______ has brought huge benefits to consumers and businesses, and promoted free speech and the spread of democracy along the way. Yet they provoke fear as well as wonder
foment Source
Thus Chinese leaders profess to believe both that traditional Tibetan culture is repugnant, full of superstition and cruelty, and that Tibet is an “inalienable part of China”. They also claim that the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, is becoming irrelevant, yet insist he managed to _______ the latest outpouring of anti-Chinese resentment seen in Tibet (see article). The Dalai Lama is a constant irritant in China's efforts to achieve full international respectability
foment Source
The country is in an unusually flammable mood. This being America, there are plenty of businesspeople around to monetise the fury—to _______ it, manipulate it and spin it into profits. These are the entrepreneurs of outrage and barons of bigotry who have paved the way for Donald Trump’s rise
foment Source
IN 1776 ABIGAIL ADAMS urged her husband John to “remember the ladies”, warning him that women “are determined to _______ a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation. ” The future president responded that for men to relinquish their political primacy would be to “subject us to the despotism of the petticoat”
foment Source
ART and beauty are inexorable; Pablo Picasso said that art exists to _______ , polish and “[wash] away from the soul the dust of everyday life”. Luca Guadagnino is one of cinema’s most aesthetically-minded directors; his films often probe the concept of beauty and its role in human relationships
embellish Source
All these quick victories have helped activists bring about short-term outperformance. But what do they do for investors and companies in the long term? Naturally activists _______ their role. Mr Icahn claims credit for a big return to shareholders of some of Apple’s $177 billion cash pile and the break-up of eBay, but both events would have happened anyway
embellish Source
In this case an obsession with the “work resumption rate” has invited fiddling. Some low- level officials have told firms to _______ their recoveries, reports Caixin, a magazine. To prevent such trickery, the central authorities started checking electricity data
embellish Source
But these laudable efforts do not appear to be solving the basic problems with Chinese statistics. A new paper, by Chang-Tai Hsieh of the University of Chicago and three co- authors from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, finds that industrial output and investment have been consistently _______ ed. As a result, they argue that China overstated real GDP growth by two percentage points on average every year from 2008 to 2016 (see chart)
embellish Source
A mutually beneficial relationship emerged between the workplace and the house. The purpose of work was to acquire, maintain and _______ the latter. Modern consumerism was directed towards the family home: furnishing it, decorating it, kitting it out with the latest appliances
embellish Source
(Which is why Dirac's equation actually yields four solutions, one for each possible combination of spin and charge. ) As a consequence, matter-antimatter pairs can disappear in a puff of energy without breaking conservation laws which physicists regard as _______ ; the opposite values simply cancel each other out without producing a surplus of either charge or angular momentum. Some particles, like photons of light, carry no electric charge but can still have opposite spins
inviolate Source
For most of the 20th century, in the UK and the many countries that follow British accounting principles, the true and fair view held the upper hand over the strict rule- setters. It was the most _______ of the four golden principles of accounting (and the only one not beginning with the letter C: the other three being continuity, consistency and conservatism). The case for “true and fair” was not helped by a general debasement of the accounting profession itself
inviolate Source
In most of the rest, including much of Siberia, northern Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland and northern Scandinavia, there is hardly anyone. Yet the region is anything but _______ . Fast forward A heat map of the world, colour-coded for temperature change, shows the Arctic in sizzling maroon
inviolate Source
Both sides should give way quickly. The tech firms must come to terms with the fact that every previous form of communication—from the conversation to the letter to the phone—has been open to some form of eavesdropping: they cannot claim their realm is so distinct and _______ that it can imperil others’ lives, especially as the number of people who need to be monitored is in the thousands. And it is far better to agree to some form of standard now, rather that wait for an atrocity plotted behind impenetrable walls to be unleashed: if that happens the Dick Cheneys and Donald Rumsfelds of the future will be setting the rules
inviolate Source
With its brief, lyrical sections, its scatter of enigmatic photographs, “The White Book” feels less like a novel than a manual of wisdom, even of prayer. It seeks to fix memories that, like the recollection of “a dish of wrapped sugar cubes”, will “remain _______ to the ravages of time”. The woman not only journeys “further into my own interior”
inviolate Source
SEPTEMBER is a cruel month in international monetary history, when regimes that once seemed _______ have shattered. In 1931 it was the month when Britain went off the gold standard
inviolate Source
But few Londoners used it to cut through St James’s—hardly surprising, as the district already has lots of pleasant streets. What the Smithsons had really created, wrote Reyner Banham, an architecture critic who nonetheless admired the achievement, was just “a stretch of _______ pavement, free from the swinging doors of Bentleys and the insolence of commissionaires”. Still, The Economist was happy in its new home, and protective of it
inviolate Source
The general adoption of vaccine passports is meant to encourage people who might otherwise resist getting a jab. To abuse Sir Isaiah Berlin’s famous distinction, the “negative” liberty of any individual not to be forcibly vaccinated will remain _______ . But at the same time, the sheer weight of the incentives that the passport system entails will make getting vaccinated seem like the only realistic route to living a good life, or being “positively” free, in Berlin’s sense
inviolate Source
Most other dissidents, on left and right, made their peace with the regime more than a decade ago, when King Hassan II, who died in 1999, was paving the way for his son. But followers of Justice and Benevolence refuse to take part until two of the constitution's articles are revised: the 19th, which gives a lot of power to the king, recognising him as Commander of the Faithful, thus heir to the Prophet Muhammad and rightful leader of Morocco's Muslims; and the 23rd, which states that “the person of the king is sacred and _______ ”. As a result, Justice and Benevolence faces steady repression
inviolate Source
Soon after coming to power in 1949 he was reportedly the first leader to commit himself to being cremated, a practice advocated by the Communists who wanted to put an end to grave- building that wasted precious land. But despite the winding down of the cult of Mao in the years after his death in 1976, the mausoleum has remained _______ . Calls for its dismantling have been all but taboo
inviolate Source
America imports more light vehicles than are sold in Canada and Mexico combined. With a sunset clause—not to mention the risk that Mr Trump may _______ on his promises—firms may prefer to produce in America. Access to Uncle Sam’s vast market is what matters
renege Source
But a ban could also accomplish too little, if a government’s commitment does not seem credible. Manufacturers who suspect that future politicians may _______ on a pledge will not bother to make the investments needed to comply. A mandate introduced by Californian regulators in 1990, specifying that zero-emission vehicles should account for 2% of annual sales by 1998, rising to 10% by 2003, was revised substantially in 1996 when it became clear that the cost and performance of batteries were not improving fast enough to meet the targets
renege Source
“Less-for-less” would drip-feed some $100bn of assets frozen abroad in return for a rollback of uranium enrichment. Iran will demand that America reverse all sanctions imposed by Mr Trump and promise never again to _______ on the deal. America will insist that Iran first scale back its nuclear operations
renege Source
As it is translated into Chinese and circulated among more officials, changes are inevitable. “You can’t really _______ on something that is a non-binding work in progress,” says James Zimmerman, a partner in the Beijing office of Perkins Coie, a law firm. China still wants to avoid a full-fledged trade war
renege Source
The main drivers of strategic default are the scale of negative equity, and moral and social considerations. Few would opt to _______ on their mortgage if the equity gap were below 10% of their home's value, the authors find, partly because of the costs of moving. But one in six would bail out if loans were underwater by a half
renege Source
To the extent history is playing any part in all this, it is in its tendency to repeat itself. North Korea has promised disarmament again and again over the past 30 years, only to _______ each time after pocketing generous inducements. If the flimsy agreement Messrs Trump and Kim signed in Singapore is to turn out differently, as Mr Trump insists it will, America must be clear-eyed and exacting in the detailed nuclear regime that it negotiates with the North
renege Source
The creditors, particularly Germany, are standing firm, rightly making clear that they will not be blackmailed into repeatedly rewriting bail-outs. If in fresh elections on June 17th the objectors have a majority, as the polls suggest, and if they _______ on Greece's bail-out deal, then the world will cut off the supply of rescue funds. It is hard to see Greece then staying in the euro
renege Source
Neither has given much ground yet. Of the two, the Taliban may prove more _______ . Turkey, like Pakistan, has real security concerns, even if its ruler, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, often exaggerates them
obstinate Source
One of the largest vaccine-wary groups are white evangelicals, or “born-again” Christians, who voted overwhelmingly for former President Donald Trump last year. They are _______ in their doubts and about a quarter of America’s population. The country’s herd immunity may rest on their shoulders
obstinate Source
The Supreme Court officially invalidated “separate but equal” arrangements in its 1954 decision Brown v Board of Education. Nonetheless, _______ school districts remained heavily segregated for more than a decade afterwards—until federal courts began enforcing mandatory integration orders. As with housing, it is possible to calculate a black-white dissimilarity index for elementary-school students, and observe how it has changed with time
obstinate Source
Declinism about corporate America is hardly new. In some ways American business has indeed been less _______ of late. The share of employment in new companies fell from 4% in 1980 to around 2% in the 2010s
vivacious Source
To see why, visit the Copacabana branch of the National Institute of Social Security (INSS), which administers state pensions for Brazilians employed in the private sector. Elizete Ribeiro, a _______ masseuse, does not look ready to be pensioned off. She is just 56 years old
vivacious Source
Even China’s tech giants have not been spared and are slashing bonuses and travel expenses. This wintry spell is a remarkable reversal for a batch of firms, such as Meituan-Dianping, an online-services super-app, that are among China’s most _______ . Early last year they appeared to be in rude health and were drawing in vast dollops of investment
vivacious Source
In the final act of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones”, which opened the Metropolitan Opera’s new season on September 27th, a college fraternity performs a percussive and _______ step dance (pictured). Terence Blanchard, the composer, has said that some early collaborators “didn’t understand the significance” of the dance and suggested cutting the scene
vivacious Source
The chance to see “Interior with aubergines” (1911), for example, a vast canvas that vibrates with floral motifs and fabrics and disrupts space and dimension, lent for the exhibition by the Museum of Grenoble, is indeed a sheer delight. As are the original, _______ “Jazz” cut-outs (1943-46) or “Red interior, still life on a blue table” (1947), one of Matisse’s last works in oil, on loan from Dusseldorf. Looking at his paintings at a time of pandemic, though, is a reminder of how much more there is to him
vivacious Source
“Statuesque” women may or may not appreciate the reminder that they are tall or full- figured. “Bubbly” and “ _______ ” go beyond cheerful to imply a lack of seriousness. And if there is a compliment that black Americans resent above all, it is “articulate”, which is heard carrying a note of surprise
vivacious Source
Indeed, the artist has made more than 140 paintings in the past two years alone. Painted on a table that she can approach from all four sides, the new canvasses have a fantastic variety of compositions, _______ colours and poetic titles. They feel like Ms Kusama's most overtly personal work so far
vivacious Source
In March cyber-attacks, possibly from the north, debilitated the computer networks of three South Korean banks and three television stations. That was followed by _______ threats to attack Guam, Okinawa, Hawaii and the American mainland itself. But even though Mr Kim comically overstates his strength, the rest of the world should not underestimate it
histrionic Source
At a time when religion is on the retreat in many countries, people often look to alternative theories of life and the universe, particularly in periods of uncertainty. As coronavirus has spread, so have conspiracy theories: protesters gather to denounce masks, vaccines and 5G networks; social-media feeds teem with _______ videos about murky cabals and worst of all, it has reached your family WhatsApp group. But if you’re going to argue with a conspiracy theorist, you’d better speak their language
histrionic Source
In Texas the trade-off between public health and economic health largely played out in favour of business interests. Last year during lockdown, Dan Patrick, the _______ lieutenant-governor, summed up this philosophy by arguing that “there are more important things than living” and claiming “lots of” grandparents were willing to die to save the economy. Underscoring the state’s view of business, on February 1st Mr Abbott used his state-of-the-state address to declare five “emergency items”
histrionic Source
But they were losing the momentum for military action, which was the American intention. The increasingly _______ Eden, in particular, wanted not only the reversal of the canal's nationalisation but also regime change: he wanted Nasser “destroyed”. The Israelis provided a way out
histrionic Source
Unlike the gleaming glass towers of nearby Leeds, Bradford’s squat skyline of sandstone seems stuck in the time-warp of the Industrial Revolution (bar the minarets). Residents accuse the council, the government and above all Britain’s sometimes _______ media for portraying the city as a trough of extremism. Others say preachers stoke the division
histrionic Source
What is unfolding around the country offers a template for reform at the national level. And for all the _______ talk of cliffs, brinks and shutdowns, the politicians in Washington have not inflicted any crippling damage yet. Those who like to lecture smugly about America’s impending decline should take a closer look
histrionic Source
In many free societies, China’s rulers are increasingly seen as capable but cruel. They are credited with _______ feats, whether that means girdling the nation with high-speed railways or sending rockets to the Moon. But they are seen as unbearably repressive, too, notably towards ethnic and religious minorities in such regions as Xinjiang
prodigious Source
As far as anyone can tell, viruses—often of many different sorts—have adapted to attack every organism that exists. One reason they are powerhouses of evolution is that they oversee a relentless and _______ slaughter, mutating as they do so. This is particularly clear in the oceans, where a fifth of single-celled plankton are killed by viruses every day
prodigious Source
It is much harder to answer than in the past. For two decades until mid-2014 China’s _______ accumulation of foreign-exchange reserves was the clear by-product of actions to restrain the yuan, as the central bank bought up cash flowing into the country. A sharp drop in reserves in 2015-16 was evidence of its intervention on the other side, propping up the yuan when investors rushed out
prodigious Source
Last September, just six weeks after it opened, cracks found in two steel beams forced the closure of the Transbay terminal’s crowning gardens as well as the rest of it. You can still climb the Millennium Tower—but you need to be aware that the city’s tallest residential building has developed an unwelcome departure from the perpendicular, something which is generating a _______ amount of litigation and not a little mockery. Rather than damaging the emblematic purpose for which this sort of prestige architecture was conceived, such shortcomings enrich it
prodigious Source
Dr Manning gives the example of BERT, an AI language model built by Google in 2018 and used in the firm’s search engine. It had more than 350m internal parameters and a _______ appetite for data. It was trained using 3
prodigious Source
36%. That is partly because the Japanese, _______ savers, own so many bonds. The central bank owns most of the rest
prodigious Source
LARRY HOUSEHOLDER sounds unrepentant. Until July the Republican was speaker of Ohio’s state assembly—a politician best known for his _______ fundraising and helping his party colleagues raise cash. Then in July the feds came knocking
prodigious Source
Fully one-fifth of Chinese homes are vacant, finds a widely cited survey. Housing investment equates to about a tenth of GDP annually, higher than the _______ levels reached in Japan before its bubble popped three decades ago. Debt has soared for buyers and builders alike
prodigious Source
2bn in operating profits. The AWS piggy bank has supported both expansion in retail—in 2017 Amazon paid $14bn for Whole Foods, an upscale supermarket chain—and new projects which the company’s engineers cook up at a _______ rate. One of the whizziest is Project Kuiper, a satellite-broadband venture; another is Haven Healthcare, a not-for- profit aimed at reducing health-care costs, created with JPMorgan Chase, a bank, and Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate
prodigious Source
Oil prices have fallen already. There are _______ signs that bottlenecks are easing. Business surveys in goods-producing hubs, such as Taiwan and Vietnam, show a pickup in delivery times
tentative Source
Output was collapsing and the speed and scale of support rightly trumped any worries about its cost, accuracy or side-effects. Now lockdowns are easing, there are _______ signs of economic recovery (even in places where covid-19 is still raging) and political debate has shifted to whether, when, and how far to pare back these dauntingly expensive emergency fiscal policies. America’s unemployment top-up scheme expires on July 31st, Britain’s furlough scheme at the end of October
tentative Source
Yet the Quincy Institute’s medicine is too strong for most politicians. Commentators _______ it for endangering global stability and America’s security, and being soft on Chinese human-rights abuses. Public opinion is ambivalent
chastise Source
The mood has not been this bad since 1991, when the elder George Bush delayed loan guarantees to Israel; or maybe 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower forced Israel (and Britain and France) to withdraw after the intervention against Egypt. Mr Obama was right to _______ Mr Netanyahu over Palestine. But he should not ignore him altogether
chastise Source
“Very important now that we overcome the obstacles and thoroughly overcome them”. (Aside) Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, And _______ with the valor of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round, Enter MacGove fresh from a meeting with Boris Johnson on the blasted battlefield that is the post-Referendum British Conservative Party. MacGove If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me Without my stir
chastise Source
Yet Ms Rice is hearing much the same refrain in response. America cannot preach democracy in Palestine, then _______ the winners, just as it cannot demand concessions from Hamas without Israel budging, too. It cannot bully dictatorial allies to reform, then always expect their support
chastise Source
The Sui disagreed. Yet their campaign to _______ the recalcitrant Goguryeo proved disastrous. Despite having mobilised more than 1m soldiers, the Sui armies failed to make substantial gains on the battlefield
chastise Source
The demand for perfection may be stifling, but a perfectionist can also feel that his achievements are the only thing holding him together. When we’re overwhelmed by life and _______ ourselves for our inadequacies, a stellar test score or a thousand Instagram likes can deliver the fleeting sensation that everything is under control. That sensation quickly fades, of course, and requires constant refreshing
chastise Source
More broadly, he says he will force China to play by the rules of international trade and investment: no more theft of intellectual property, no more unfair subsidies for state- owned firms, no more predatory pricing. And economics is not his only concern: he promises to _______ China more loudly for its human-rights abuses and to bolster America’s armed forces to counteract China’s growing military clout. As in most things, Mr Romney’s China-bashing seems studied and methodical
chastise Source
We live in an age of petty dictators. Local government apparatchiks _______ us for putting the wrong litter in the wrong bin. The politically correct police dissect our language for crimes against a multiplying collection of dogmas
chastise Source
Some call him “the black Bernie Madoff”. Let us prey Mr Madoff, whose victims lost perhaps $20 billion, perpetrated the largest “ _______ fraud” ever. The term refers to scams in which the perpetrator uses personal contacts to swindle a specific group, such as a church congregation, a rotary club, a professional circle or an ethnic community
affinity Source
And investors are comforted by the structure of the deals, which use the schemes’ cash flows to repay debt, and limit risk if an airline goes bust. _______ Capital Exchange, a fintech firm, is working with JPMorgan to securitise air miles, so that they can be more easily traded. The trick for airlines in all this is to balance the costs and benefits of perks so that customers stay engaged, while carriers’ margins are preserved
affinity Source
“Up to six months after vaccination, the immune system is still in the process of optimising and perfecting its response,” says Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in Missouri. “Antibodies induced in the first two or three months are being slowly replaced by much better antibodies in terms of binding _______ to the spike. That’s hard to see
affinity Source
As they expected, based on news that broke while they were conducting their work, the bond with mink ACE2 was particularly strong. They found a similarly strong _______ with ACE2 from white-tailed deer, long before reports of infections in that species emerged. Cats and dogs also showed up as being at risk—which reports then confirmed that they were
affinity Source
Mr MacAskill also worries about “moral licensing”. One study found that people tend to treat giving to charity like buying a medieval indulgence—they may believe they have the right to act immorally if they have done something they deem _______ . Measuring a charity’s efficiency is not straightforward, however
altruistic Source
In fact, says Ben Southwood, until recently the head of housing at Policy Exchange, a right-leaning think-tank, Mr Barber is “the modernist that traditionalists like”. One reason is his magpie tendency: he cites influences as diverse as Francesco Borromini, from the _______ period, Le Corbusier, a modernist pioneer, and Victorian almshouses. Others are his skill at combining density with low-rise design and preference for bricks over concrete
baroque Source
All such projects are based in part on romantic fantasy, of which the Utopian dreams harboured by Greece’s leaders and their foreign supporters were a peculiarly compelling specimen: they strove to recreate one of history’s most glorious epochs, that of classical Hellas. For Greece’s external well-wishers and some Athenian patriots, that meant resurrecting Periclean Athens; others in the Greek ruling class dreamed of forging a neo- _______ empire based in Constantinople. Some entertained both visions at once
byzantine Source
Part of what makes China’s financial industry daunting is its size. Banking assets have ballooned to about $50trn and they sit alongside a large, _______ system of shadow finance. Total credit extended to firms and households has soared from 178% of GDP a decade ago to 287% today
byzantine Source
Worse, they don’t get that they don’t get it. The _______ voting system that has done away with Mr Sneader has not yet determined which of his two potential successors will replace him. Nor is it clear for what precisely the 54-year-old Scot is paying the price
byzantine Source
But some do. All of them are less _______ than the old conservative parties. Minority groups have reasons to worry
conciliatory Source
The Minjoo party lodged a criminal complaint against a political-science professor after she criticised it for being self-serving and suggested that progressives should vote for other parties; the complaint was withdrawn after a public outcry. NGOs led by North Korean refugees who dislike the government’s _______ stance towards the North have lost their non-profit status and allege police harassment. There is trouble in the legislature, too
conciliatory Source
Though vaccines will emerge, reaching every corner of the world with them will remain an aspiration. So a more _______ tone is in order. In 2021 humanity will continue to adapt to living with the virus—in ways that make the coexistence less taxing
conciliatory Source
Muhammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, tweeted that “intelligence from Iraq” indicated an American “plot to FABRICATE pretext for war”. The USS Nimitz, an American aircraft-carrier, having been ordered home from the Persian Gulf days earlier as a _______ gesture to Iran, was told to stay put. In the end, January 3rd passed without incident
conciliatory Source
More than 40 governments, from France to India, are either levying or planning to levy digital-services taxes on the revenue of firms such as Amazon, Google and Facebook. The growing sense of anarchy over how to tax Silicon Valley, the global desire to raise more tax revenues and a more _______ White House all mean the scene is set for a global deal. The OECD’s forthcoming summit is not the first time it has tried to orchestrate reforms—it helped pass changes to the transfer-pricing regime in 2015
conciliatory Source
Lips curled, pursed and bitten, ground and grimacing teeth, eyes rolled and averted, the occasional, fleeting, hard-won smile—all are entirely naturalistic yet perfectly calibrated for the camera. When an interloping cop tries to be _______ to Mare, a grudging, stifled flick of the wrist embodies, in a flash, the vulnerability beneath her bravado. It is startling how startling this performance seems
conciliatory Source
HE WAS slow and deliberate in his speech, like a dominee (minister) of the conservative Dutch Reformed Church he had belonged to all his life. Grey, not just at his temples, but in his cautious, _______ manner. And the very epitome of conservatism, from his earliest days in student politics while studying law at Potchefstroom University, a bastion of Afrikanerdom where he edited the student newspaper, to his membership in the Broederbond, a secret society of Afrikaner men dedicated to white rule
conciliatory Source
At its best, it unites the country around common values to accomplish things that people could never manage alone. This “civic nationalism” is _______ and forward-looking—the nationalism of the Peace Corps, say, or Canada’s inclusive patriotism or German support for the home team as hosts of the 2006 World Cup. Civic nationalism appeals to universal values, such as freedom and equality
conciliatory Source
Such an image may resonate with those frustrated by regular showdowns over America’s debt ceiling. Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, has said the country risks running out of money by October 18th if the federal-debt limit is not raised, something that the Republicans had been unwilling to _______ doing. On October 6th, as The Economist was going to press, Mitch McConnell, the Republicans’ leader in the Senate, offered to stop obstructing a small rise in the debt ceiling, which would put off the issue until December (see United States section)
countenance Source
The king sends him into exile. The figure of the overbearing leader who pays the price for his failure to _______ “the moody frontier of a servant brow” recurs throughout Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies. In “Henry IV, Part I”, the rebel Hotspur is so unwilling to listen to counsel that his ally Northumberland blasts him for “tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own!” In “Richard III” the king turns on Buckingham, his partner in crime, the moment that he expresses faint doubts about Richard’s schemes
countenance Source
Neither a break-up nor another listing looks likely, however. Mr Lee seems reluctant to _______ the radical first option. One attempt at persuading SE into the second around 2016, as part of an activist campaign by Elliott Management, an American hedge fund which had taken a stake, failed
countenance Source
Satire thrives where the usual checks on human folly fail. In this case it points to the fact that America, despite having a gun-murder rate 25 times higher than that of other developed countries, has no serious debate on how to reduce the killing, because Republican lawmakers refuse to _______ the only thing that easily would. By making it even a bit harder for killers to get guns—as action taken in Australia, Britain and Canada shows—America would have fewer gun deaths
countenance Source
Among the suggestions was a programme of public investment which, some thought, would put unemployed Britons to work. The British government would _______ no such thing. It espoused the conventional wisdom of the day—what is often called the “Treasury view”
countenance Source
The refugee exodus finds France on Europe’s sidelines again. When vast numbers of migrants started to land on Mediterranean shores earlier this summer, Mr Hollande refused to _______ the idea of national quotas to share out the asylum-seekers. It was not until Mrs Merkel turned Germany into a haven, earning accolades as the guardian of Europe’s humanitarian spirit, that the French began to shift
countenance Source
Coal generates not merely 80% of India’s electricity, but also underpins the economies of some of its poorest states (see Briefing). Panjandrums in Delhi are not keen to _______ the end of coal, lest that cripple the banking system, which lent it too much money, and the railways, which depend on it. Last is the technical challenge of stripping carbon out of industries beyond power generation
countenance Source
Michigan, Mississippi and Wyoming all saw double-digit percentage declines, though those improvements were not necessarily the result of those states’ policies. However, the Department of Justice, led by the conservative Jeff Sessions, refuses to _______ the creation of safe injection sites, which have been shown to reduce addicts’ risk of overdosing in Canada. Instead, he has threatened to prosecute them under the federal “crack-house” statute
countenance Source
Soaring prices—or shortages, if governments try to limit rises—will dent households’ and companies’ budgets and hit spending and production. That will come just as governments withdraw stimulus and central banks _______ tighter policy. A demand slowdown could relieve pressure on supply-constrained sectors: once they have paid their eye-watering electricity bills, Americans will be less able to afford scarce cars and computers
countenance Source
More appearances seem assured. The stock of _______ embezzlement—what John Kenneth Galbraith, a quotable economist, called “the bezzle”—varies with the business cycle. It grows during booms
covert Source
. intelligence-gathering and _______ action”. As a diplomat for 33 years, rising to become deputy secretary of state under Barack Obama, Mr Burns wielded the ideas
covert Source
The state can usefully offer more and better subsidies for R&D, such as prizes for solving clearly defined problems. The state also has a big influence over how fast innovations _______ through the economy. Governments need to make sure that regulation and lobbying do not slow down disruption, in part by providing an adequate safety-net for those whose livelihoods are upended by it
diffuse Source
Milton Friedman aimed to eliminate many of the responsibilities that politicians, following Keynes’s ideas, had arrogated to themselves. All three men had a big impact on policies—as late as 1850 Smith was quoted 30 times in Parliament—but in a _______ way. Data were scarce
diffuse Source
And all across Asia digital conglomerates are battling it out. The industry’s emerging structure is a far cry from the open, _______ capitalism this newspaper supports. But an oligopoly of rivals is much better than a monopoly
diffuse Source
The issue is whether these will be enforceable in the courts, or left to secondary laws. The second question is whether Chile will move to a semi-parliamentary system, as part of an effort to _______ power. Third, the new document seems certain to impose stricter environmental standards
diffuse Source
The real test, however, will come over time. China hopes that its new techno-centric form of central planning can sustain innovation, but history suggests that _______ decision- making, open borders and free speech are the magic ingredients. One thing is clear: the hope for confrontation followed by capitulation is misguided
diffuse Source
DeFi’s opportunity comes about because centralisation brings problems. True, it is cheaper to build a financial-settlement system run by an entity everyone trusts, such as the Federal Reserve, than to get a _______ group of individuals to verify transactions. But government infrastructure ossifies
diffuse Source
Even economists realise that free trade can be a hard sell politically. The political economy of trade is treacherous: its benefits, though substantial, are _______ , but its costs are often concentrated, giving those affected a strong incentive to push for protectionism. Since 1776, when Adam Smith published “The Wealth of Nations”, those pressing for global openness have won more battles than they have lost
diffuse Source
Neither London nor Washington is about to become Budapest. Power is more _______ and institutions have a longer history—which will make them harder to capture than new ones in a country of 10m people. Moreover, democracies can renew themselves
diffuse Source
The laws of thermodynamics, though, take a dim view of different concentrations of something being next to each other. Small molecules and ions that are more frequent on one side of that membrane than the other will _______ across it in an attempt to even things up. Proteins embedded in such membranes pump molecules in the opposite direction to maintain the distinction between inside and out
diffuse Source
This film explores what the regime is doing–and why. This film features Russian opposition activists who spoke to The Economist as part of a full-length _______ . Fearless: The Women Fighting Putin, a co-production of The Economist and Hardcash Productions for ITV will be broadcast in the UK at 22:45 on Thursday November 11th
documentary Source
“It is impossible to explain,” says Roel Coutinho, a former head of the national outbreak- management team. He blames the Dutch culture of governing via _______ negotiations and consensus—a system known as the “polder model”. Indeed, almost nine months after elections last March, the country has no new government
exhaustive Source
BioNTech is working closely with regulators—America’s Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency. It is currently running clinical trials of vaccines tuned to earlier variants, to establish the principle that you do not need _______ tests for every tweak of the vaccine. Even so, it would be March or April at the earliest before any new vaccine might be available—and by then it is hoped the worst of the fourth wave will be over
exhaustive Source
” The author of those words: Ashoka, a Hindu convert to Buddhism, who unified India in 260BC. ","description":"An _______ new survey offers evidence of underlying similarities","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
exhaustive Source
IN THE 1940s Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine writer, wrote a short story about mapping. It imagines an empire which surveys itself in such _______ detail that when unfolded, the perfectly complete 1:1 paper map covers the entire kingdom. Because it is unwieldy and thus largely useless, subsequent generations allow it to decay into tatters
exhaustive Source
Furthermore, the proliferation of property rights has its costs. The American legal scholars Michael Heller and Rebecca Eisenberg call it the “anti-commons”: the idea that innovation withers because of too many property rights, patent thickets, _______ and exhausting copyright licensing procedures and the like. To take one example, the smartphone in your pocket is covered by between 5,000 and 15,000 patents, and potentially by as many as 250,000 when all related patents are counted
exhaustive Source
Schemes in which parents are paid modest sums to keep their children in school have proved effective at reducing child labour. An _______ review by the World Bank, which looked at 30 studies, found clear evidence that these tend to reduce child labour, with the biggest reductions among the poorest recipients. Cash-strapped African countries may gripe that they cannot afford such handouts, and that borrowing or taxing to pay for them would curb economic growth and job creation
exhaustive Source
Bribery distorts competition and diverts national resources into crooked officials’ offshore accounts. But the cost and complexity of investigations are spiralling beyond what is reasonable, fed by a ravenous “compliance industry” of lawyers and forensic accountants who have never seen a local bribery issue that did not call for an _______ global review; and by competing prosecutors, who increasingly run overlapping probes in different countries. To stop a descent into investigative madness, enforcement needs to be reformed in four ways
exhaustive Source
" In fact, that was not how Kristallnacht began; Kristallnacht came five years after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, and after decades of anti-Jewish pogroms (and centuries of anti-Semitism) in Germany and eastern Europe. For the edification of Mr Perkins and our readers, here is an _______ list of all the things that are like Kristallnacht: Kristallnacht. Mr Perkins apologised for the Kristallnacht reference; he maintained that he was trying, however ineptly, to warn that "when you start to use hatred against a minority, it can get out of control
exhaustive Source
But though their own work may be unsullied by ingratiating ornament, it is also, often, untouched by readers. In one exemplary if extreme comparison, Diarmaid MacCulloch’s _______ biography of Thomas Cromwell sold a respectable 32,000 copies in Britain. Ms Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” trilogy, which also recounts Cromwell’s life, has sold 1
exhaustive Source
THE PANDEMIC caused a fearsome economic slump, but now a weird, _______ boom is in full swing. The oil price has soared, while restaurants and haulage firms are having to fight and flatter to recruit staff
exhilarating Source
Scottish nationalists must instead appropriate the economic pain of working-class Scots and, ignoring the fact that millions of English, Northern Irish and Welsh felt the same way, fashion from it a reason to reject the British state. The result has been alchemical—that is, an _______ delusion. To inveterate nationalists—maybe a quarter of Scots, including the retired lecturer in Kirkcaldy who said he would vote for independence even if he was “still living naked in a black house”—the political case for independence has conferred some intellectual respectability
exhilarating Source
More than a hundred DeFi applications are in the works. Big rich countries will come a step closer to testing their own digital currenciesSuch fast-paced, _______ changes provide a stark contrast with retail finance of old, with its sleepy way of doing business, exorbitant fees and dire customer service. There is much to like about the new finance
exhilarating Source
Like much of the greatest rock’n’roll, it is powerful because it is unwholesome. It’s one of the most brilliant, _______ and transgressive blockbuster albums ever made. At that moment, its creators radiated what the pop writer Simon Price characterised as “fuckinghellness” – the ability to trigger uncontainable excitement and jaw-dropping incredulity at the very fact of their existence
exhilarating Source
This form of sound, being by definition annoying, has political resonance, and planners do their best to minimise it. But sound can also be soothing, _______ , saddening, surprising and many other things besides. These aspects of the urban soundscape are little-studied
exhilarating Source
Some will make a life-altering and fatal decision for jihad. Whether easy or extreme, angry reactions may be perverse, but they can feel _______ . Mr Mishra sustains an angry assault on the notion—which in his depiction risks creating a straw man—that progress has led in a graceful arc from the Enlightenment to the liberal internationalism that prevailed until recently
exhilarating Source
Applying these estimates to the current plans to defund the police departments of New York ($1bn cut) and Los Angeles ($150m cut) suggests that between 700 and 2,000 more violent crimes will occur every year in these two cities, depending on whether each department implements a hiring freeze alone or also cuts overtime and other wages. Some will rightly argue that the study by Professors Chalfin and McCrary is based on administrative data and not a formal experiment, and that annual variation may pick up _______ factors, such as the local economy, city budgets, social disorganisation, demographic factors and recent changes in crime. The pair go to great lengths to demonstrate that changes in police numbers are only weakly correlated with such potentially confounding factors
extraneous Source
This battle is about more than the suffering of a child, her family and those who care for her. Texas Right to Life, a pro-life group that is funding the Lewises’ legal fight, hopes it will result in the overturning of a state law designed to protect doctors’ right to withhold what is known as “ _______ ” or “non-beneficial” care. The law allows doctors to see if another hospital will accept the patient and, if that fails, to stop treatment after ten days
futile Source
\nEditor’s note (December 8th 2021): This article has been updated since it was first published. \nMore from The Economist explains:\nWhy have prices of cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, fallen—again?\nWhy the rich world is facing a hiring problem\nWhy are eastern European countries cosying up to Taiwan?","description":"Their track record is weak but they aren’t always _______","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
futile Source
That enough to convict him will do so is inconceivable. Mr Trump’s behaviour forced on Congress an _______ choice. He deserves to be removed for attempting to tip the 2020 election
invidious Source
Another wrote: \"If the dinosaurs were still alive they’d be saying, thank God for extinction. \"","description":"Saudi Arabia's religious police cracks down on the _______ influence of dinosaurs","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
invidious Source
FOREIGN AFFAIRS played an important, and murky, role in Donald Trump’s presidency from before it even began. Russia’s meddling in the election that brought his unexpected victory, and Mr Trump’s happiness in snubbing the findings of his own intelligence services on the subject, set an _______ context for all that followed. His later attempt to inveigle political favours from Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, led to his becoming the first president ever to be impeached over his conduct of foreign policy
invidious Source
The Melmottes and Maxwells of this world may come and go. But the British upper classes go on forever, shape-shifting but sempiternal, sponging but self-satisfied, _______ but opportunistic, the world’s most cynical and accomplished free-loaders. ■
lethargic Source
Instead, it is fingers that are being pointed, and threats brandished. Delays to covid-19 vaccine deliveries in EU countries threaten to slow the group’s already- _______ inoculation plans. News of production snafus has sent tempers flaring as politicians, Eurocrats and drug firms try to apportion the blame
lethargic Source
The government has already made some solid green pledges—promising to cut carbon emissions by 78% by 2035, to ban the sale of new petrol- and diesel-powered cars by 2030 and to phase out gas boilers by 2035—and will no doubt make more at the COP26 meeting in Glasgow. Mr Johnson’s conversion to greenery not only brings a jolt of energy to a _______ international process. It also brings some ideological diversity
lethargic Source
As for Parliament, Mr Modi and his sidekicks think of it not as a deliberative body but as a rubber stamp. They can do this because the opposition are disorganised and _______ . Granted, opposition MPs are now demanding a debate and investigation into Pegasus, and boycotting Parliament to press their demands
lethargic Source
WHEN 13-YEAR-OLD Xiao Kang began to feel _______ and his breathing grew wheezy last autumn, his parents assumed he was working too hard at school. Then his fellow classmates at Changzhou Foreign Languages Middle School started complaining too
lethargic Source
Mr Martin put Mr Starr on tambourine and brought in a session drummer for "Love Me Do", refusing to let the young quartet do less than their best. When Lennon brought in “Please Please Me” he was embarrassed that Mr Martin spotted the flaw in the _______ tempo. He sent them packing back to Liverpool to work on it, eventually suggesting the dynamic coup de grâce ending that would cap this, their first number-one record, a last barnstorming idea in a song full of them
lethargic Source
With a virus especially dangerous for the very old, Italian death rates were bound to be high, but the shambolic organisation of health care, especially in nursing homes, made it much higher still. In a country where ministers, regional officials, senior civil servants and famously _______ judges are much better paid than their foreign counterparts, Italy’s doctors are poorly paid. There are excellent medical centers in northern Italy but in many hospitals and nursing homes, especially in the south, hard- working doctors and nurses are ill-served by assistants, staff and even technicians who fail to work, or even show up, knowing their jobs are secure
lethargic Source
As glum and obscure as it is, “Annihilation” has some silly “let’s split up” decision- making, it has various implausibly cryptic clues left by previous explorers, and it has someone who conveniently inventories her comrades’ defining traumas—“She’s an addict, she has cancer”—so that Mr Garland doesn’t have to go to the bother of developing three- dimensional characters. The film is by no means as shambolic as “The Cloverfield Paradox” or as aimless as “Mute”, but it is tightrope-walking the fine line between open-ended, mind-expanding mystery and _______ , pretentious twaddle. Still, if ever a film were saved by its concluding half hour, it is “Annihilation”
lethargic Source
Both Jet Airways, the biggest, and Kingfisher itself have burned their fingers doing deals before. A foreign carrier might want to take a stake, but that would require the present _______ government to lift the prohibition on such investments, the kind of simple issue on which its indecision is final. Kingfisher will thus probably need to rely on institutional investors
lethargic Source
I know what you’re thinking. Literal is the word we use when we mean exactly what we say, and _______ or figurative is what we say when we’re playing around. When we’re being figurative, we say “it was a million miles away”, meaning “I walked for hours
metaphorical Source
This is a loss to satire, but is it also representative of anything larger? In his resignation letter, Mr Boghossian wrote that the university had been changed from “a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division”. Students at PSU are “being trained to _______ the moral certainty of ideologues,” he wrote. A spokeswoman for the college retorted that, “Portland State has always been and will continue to be a welcoming home for free speech and academic freedom
mimic Source
But what if their success in outperforming the public markets could be tracked and replicated? A few pioneering firms claim to have done just that. DSC Quantitative Group, a Chicago-based fund, and State Street, an asset manager, both offer “investable” indices, launched in 2014 and 2015 respectively, that allow investors to _______ the performance of American private equity. Both firms needed a measure of the industry’s returns
mimic Source
Flat organisations are meant to reflect the modern workplace. Businesses in generations past used to be steeply hierarchical to _______ the armed forces, remembered by bosses of yesteryear as a place where missions were accomplished. Starting off at the bottom of a pyramid, perhaps six or seven rungs below the top brass, wasn’t so bad if you intended to progress at the same firm for your entire career
mimic Source
These are similarly connected to a 3D-printed plastic palm. The whole is covered with a flexible elastomer layer to _______ skin and is attached to the user’s residual limb via a customised plastic socket. In contrast to current models, which are electrically powered, Dr Gu’s hand is powered pneumatically by a pump held in a waist bag, with the connecting air lines running under the user’s clothes alongside communication cables
mimic Source
Some of the most alluring packages that Pythonistas can find in the Cheese Shop harness artificial intelligence (AI). Users can create neural networks, which _______ the connections in a brain, to pick out patterns in large quantities of data. Mr Van Rossum says that Python has become the language of choice for AI researchers, who have produced numerous packages for it
mimic Source
And the rupee would be bolstered, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley, a bank. The hope for India, and many other emerging-market governments, would be to _______ China’s experience. Foreign ownership of its central-government bonds has more than doubled from 4
mimic Source
A niche business is becoming mainstream. Startups and established food conglomerates are hungry for a share of a rapidly growing market for plant-based meats—foods that _______ the taste, texture and nutritional qualities of meat, without a single animal in sight. At the moment, the market for meat substitutes is tiny
mimic Source
They have many tools at their disposal, and Mr Steele, who has a background in computational biology, evaluates them expertly and with verve. They range from drugs that _______ the life-extending effects of dietary restriction to gene-editing tools such as CRISPR and computer models that simulate whole biological systems. Such models may eventually prove the key that unlocks the inner Methuselah in everyone, by revealing both the limits to these systems and their redundancies: what can be tweaked, and what had best be left alone
mimic Source
Nearly 3,000 bodies have been found in southern Arizona since 2001. Although not formally religious himself, Mr Warren has much to say about the _______ nature of the desert and the rituals he performs when (as has happened 18 times) he discovers a dead body. On June 5th robed representatives of more conventional faiths, including a rabbi and an imam as well as many Protestant churches, came to the courthouse in Tucson to show their solidarity
numinous Source
PRRI finds that 29% of Americans are both spiritual and religious, and 31% are neither: this latter category includes people who formally adhere to a faith but without much enthusiasm. But that still leaves large groups of people outside that binary split: those whose transcendent feelings don’t prompt them to sign up to any particular faith (18%), and those who pray or fast but have little real interest in the _______ (22%). Because they seem to be growing, demographers, marketing strategists and political consultants will probably pay particular attention to the “spiritual but not religious” segment
numinous Source
Can these two impulses ever be reconciled? Through the 20th century, a fine place of worship in a hardscrabble, dockside district of Glasgow witnessed a bold effort to bring the two kinds of religion into sync. Govan Old Church is certainly a _______ location. The present structure dates only from the 19th century, but it stands on a site where Christian worship was offered for many centuries before that
numinous Source
AFTER MONTHS of quarantine even the most unremarkable household fixtures may acquire _______ qualities—the ominous front door, say, or the beckoning fridge. That the mundane can be pregnant with mystery is an item of faith for David Lynch, co-creator (with Mark Frost) of “Twin Peaks”, a television drama first broadcast 30 years ago
numinous Source
Many nominal Christians do not hold these beliefs, while many of the unaffiliated do. No politician, in either Britain or America, could build a career on appealing to _______ beliefs of the non-aligned. But the burgeoning non-aligned camp does at least suggest a negative point
numinous Source
ON A boat gliding its way down an undulating peninsula where the dense virgin woods are crowned by a _______ marble peak, the atmosphere is carefree. The autumn rays make glorious patterns in the sea, and what appear to be medieval towns, with winding cobblestoned streets, tall houses and multi-coloured domes, dot the coastline
numinous Source
And although they remain overwhelmingly pro-life, nearly one-third of them voted for Mr Obama, suggesting greater willingness to vote for a candidate who believes that abortion must remain a matter of choice. Then there are the more _______ trends. In 1968 Martin Luther King called Sunday morning “the most segregated hour of Christian America”; today there are a growing number of multicultural evangelical churches, largely driven by young Christians
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You are not from here, he says. For some in Malawi, a belief in the _______ runs deep. Medicine men post flyers boasting of potions and charms to neuter rivals, punish the unfaithful or rekindle lost ardour
numinous Source
Ben Tauber had worked on Hangouts, Chat and the ill-fated social network Google+. After his appointment, there was a subtle shift in Esalen’s programme from the _______ to the digital: the workshops now included “Conscious AI” and “Blockchain & Cryptocurrency”. This invited suspicions that Esalen had become the therapeutic wing of Silicon Valley, a corporate retreat that was about as countercultural as the newly installed Tesla charging stations in the parking lot
numinous Source
The relationship between him and the girl he adopts, played by Saise Ni Chuinn, provides some of the most powerful moments in the film. But its most haunting feature is not any one character but the _______ and beautifully filmed landscape of Ireland’s west coast, materially the poorest but perhaps culturally the richest part of the island. Travelling anywhere along that coastline brings a sense that an entire Gaelic world came within a hair’s breadth of total annihilation but somehow survived, at least in parts
numinous Source
They aim to make the business sound more inspirational than “selling more stuff at less cost”. So they use long words, _______ jargon, and buzzwords like “holistic” to fill the space. Another reason why managers indulge in waffle relates to the nature of the modern economy
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Behind it lie myriad institutions, from banks to New York’s clearing-houses. Despite its importance, SWIFT, owned by global banks and founded in the 1970s, is an _______ part of all this. It connects 11,000 banks in over 200 countries, providing a messaging system for transactions
obscure Source
In Britain, where licensing was outsourced to the printers’ guild, prior control proved ineffective and corrupt, and was abandoned by the end of the 17th century. The papal Index of Forbidden Books (1559-1966), backed by the law in many Catholic countries, gave publicity to works that would otherwise have remained _______ . The harder Soviet censors worked, the stronger grew underground papers, political jokes and public disbelief
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Yet the Trump administration showed the value of race-neutral policies. A tight labour market and big government spending as part of the first covid-19 stimulus lifted some 10m Americans out of p _______ y between June 2019 and June 2020, despite much of the economy being partially closed. Though Mr Trump was never accused of fretting about urban p
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On the other hand, unconscious and semi-conscious prejudice is alive and well. When people use racially linked language, without _______ slurs or other racist tropes, linguists call it “racialisation”. Some ingenious research has teased out the links between prejudice and language
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Between 1975 and 2005 the ranks of administrators grew by 66% in public colleges but by 135% in private ones. As their headcount grew, so did their remit—ferreting out not just _______ racism or sexual harassment but implicit bias too. The University of California, Los Angeles, now insists that faculty applying for tenure include a diversity statement
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The image of a white-skinned man, wearing a uniform that reads “To Protect With Courage, To Serve With Compassion”, kneeling on the neck of a dark-skinned man evokes the worst of America’s past so strongly that there seems little doubt what killed Mr Floyd. Police violence was part of it, as was p _______ y. But the real culprit was racism
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Some 48% of females said they have faced discrimination at work because of their sex, compared with 3% of male respondents. Writing about the survey results, Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke, both former chairs of the Federal Reserve, and Olivier Blanchard, a former chief economist of the IMF, said that “many members of the profession have suffered harassment and discrimination during their careers, including both _______ acts of abuse and more subtle forms of marginalisation. ” To deal with its gender shortfall, economics needs two tools that it often uses to analyse and solve problems elsewhere: its ability to crunch data and its capacity to experiment
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Being both determined and right is a wonderful thing in a politician but a dangerous one in a constitutional monarch—particularly when determination shades into pigheadedness and rightness comes with a hefty dose of foolishness. Charles would be well advised to spend the rest of his internship digesting Walter Bagehot’s great book, “The English Constitution”, which lays out, in _______ prose, not only what a modern monarch should do but also what he shouldn’t. Otherwise, he may find himself doing to the dignified branch what the referendum has already done to the efficient
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Viking; 384 pages; $28. Bloomsbury Publishing; £25 In this _______ chronicle of Egypt’s trajectory since the toppling of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, the former Cairo bureau chief of the New York Times is almost as scathing about the bungling foreign policy of successive American administrations as he is about Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s strongman president. The country’s so-called stability, he suggests, is again breeding misery and extremism
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Providing tax credits and the like are of no great help when the current normal deductions leave one with virtually no taxable income anyway. Peter Weinrich Victoria, Canada Polite persiflage SIR – In response to the reader who asked for more “ _______ ity” from Bagehot, I would rather ask him to get a bigger dictionary than require yet another British institution to dumb down (Letters, December 6th). Bagehot's vocabulary is certainly
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Your correspondent and fellow reporters in the press gallery—as well as law professors Leah Litman of the University of California at Irvine and Joshua Geltzer of Georgetown—wondered about this. The president announced his most recent travel ban on September 24th—after the first two versions met with ample judicial resistance—but no statement on that day or the next amounted to a _______ confirmation that his ban had nothing to do with anti-Muslim bias. It seems Mr Francisco had misspoken
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Nevertheless, Mr Westen deigns to instruct Mr Obama in political rhetoric on the basis of a platitude in scientific drag—that "[o]ur brains evolved to 'expect' stories with a particular structure, with protagonists and villains, a hill to be climbed or a battle to be fought"—and the faith that stirring, persuasive speeches can remove barriers of public opinion and organised partisan opposition. Turning a crowd from hostility to adoration through _______ , charismatic truthtelling is a venerable Hollywood trope, a close relative of the slow clap. But here on Earth Prime, presidential talking has little effect on the constraints the president faces
pellucid Source
Most notorious is the “Atomic Lake”, created some 30 years ago when a huge nuclear device was exploded underground. It is thought to be inadvisable to spend more than two hours contemplating its _______ waters.
pellucid Source
Mr Piketty, a French economist, does not devote much space to family companies: his argument is that inequality is growing rapidly because the returns on capital are higher than the rate of economic growth. But the extent to which families are able to _______ and leverage their wealth suggests that the problem may be even worse than Mr Piketty thinks. Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, has countered Mr Piketty’s thesis by arguing that wealth dissolves over time: families either lose their money through incompetence or give it away to charities
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Yet to stop the pandemic quickly and efficiently the world needs to resist “vaccine nationalism”—the desire of countries to go it alone. That approach will not end the crisis but _______ it. It invites the same problems that were seen at the outset of lockdowns in March, when different authorities scrambled for personal protective equipment like face-masks, gowns and sanitiser
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To see them visit our hub POLITICIANS USE critical race theory (CRT) in much the same way that they use Keynesian economics: as cudgels in a propaganda campaign to advance their cherished political goals, with little regard for the actual philosophies at issue. CRT, a doctrine more caricatured than understood, rests upon the distinctly unradical claim that American institutions have systematically fallen short of the country’s egalitarian ideals due to practices that _______ racial hierarchies. It began in the 1970s as a way to analyse the intersection of American law and race; its creators were legal scholars such as Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw
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MY FRIEND the Liberal Curmudgeon strikes again: If there was one thing the Revolutionary generation agreed on — and those guys who dress up like them at Tea Party conventions most definitely do not — it was the incompatibility of democracy and inherited wealth. With Thomas Jefferson taking the lead in the Virginia legislature in 1777, every Revolutionary state government abolished the laws of primogeniture and entail that had served to _______ the concentration of inherited property. Jefferson cited Adam Smith, the hero of free market capitalists everywhere, as the source of his conviction that (as Smith wrote, and Jefferson closely echoed in his own words), "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd
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How? Online maps provided by Google, Microsoft and others use the Mercator projection to display the world. In doing so they _______ huge distortions in how the Earth is seen. The 16th-century cylindrical projection by Gerardus Mercator, a Flemish cartographer, makes life easier for navigators by keeping parallels and meridians as straight lines
perpetuate Source
Their designers can explicitly prevent such tools from consuming certain types of information, such as race or sex. Nonetheless, the use of related variables, like someone’s address, can still cause models to _______ disadvantage. Ironing out all traces of bias is a daunting task
perpetuate Source
TYRANNY COMES in many guises. Sometimes it is in the obvious form of dictators who act outside the law and terrorise people to _______ their rule. But in less odious and visible forms, it can refer to the ways that individuals may be oppressed by governments that genuinely aim to do good for their citizens
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Australia has just passed a law that would force them to pay publishers more for news displayed alongside search results or social-media feeds. From the outside, then, the industry leaves an impression of a cosy club, whose members stay out of each other’s way—or worse, help one another _______ their monopolies. And the giants are only becoming more powerful
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economist. com/printedition/2020-05-23","name":"May 23rd 2020 edition"}}]} AsiaMay 23rd 2020 editionUnscathed but _______Japan is not rallying around its prime ministerEven though the country has come through the pandemic in relatively good shapeMay 23rd 2020TOKYOFacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppSINCE JAPAN recorded its first case of covid-19 on January 16th, 784 people have died across the country of 126m, fewer deaths than in one day in New York City during the peak of the outbreak there. On May 14th the government lifted the state of emergency in 39 of Japan’s 47 prefectures, with more likely to be released this week
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Harvard University’s Greg Mankiw, whose books have educated more than most, once calculated that differences in human capital between countries could account for much of their otherwise inexplicable differences in prosperity. But economics can also be _______ about schooling. The theory of signalling likens many educational credentials to peacock’s tails: costly encumbrances, useful only as conspicuous proof that their owners are intellectually strong enough to bear them
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But Mr Cuomo is in deep trouble. In January Letitia James, the state’s attorney-general, released a _______ report saying his administration understated the number of covid- related deaths in state nursing homes by as much as 50%. Ron Kim, an assemblyman who lost a family member to a suspected case of covid-19 in a nursing home, revealed that Mr Cuomo threatened to “destroy” him for criticising him
scathing Source
From Haiti to Somalia, Congo to Afghanistan, Peacelanders live in compounds in posh neighbourhoods, roll around in four-by-fours, get drunk with other foreigners and often distrust locals. Ms Autesserre’s criticisms are _______ and often justified, but she empathises with the Peacelander too—“an outsider living and working far from family, in constant fear, and confronting a lack of basic facilities while performing a job that is emotionally draining”. Security measures imposed by charities or missions can prevent Peacelanders leaving their bases, or put certain neighbourhoods off limits
scathing Source
His criticism of the bank’s research went far beyond its “Doing Business” reports. In an e-mail to several bank economists, sent last October and reported today in the Financial Times, Mr Romer was _______ about the bank’s “diagnostic” reports on individual countries and its broader intellectual culture: “I’ve never in my professional life encountered professional economists who say so many things that are easy to check and turn out not to be true.
scathing Source
On the still-vexed question of the legality of the war after the failure to obtain a resolution from the UN Security Council authorising the use of force, the inquiry demurs from expressing an opinion. But it is _______ about the contortions performed by the then-attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, to come up with the goods. When the armed forces said that they needed more than just his view that a “reasonable case” could be made that resolution 1441 revived the authorisation in a previous resolution dating from the first Gulf war in 1990, he swiftly came up with what he called a “better view”
scathing Source
Among the suggestions was a programme of public investment which, some thought, would put unemployed Britons to work. The British government would _______ no such thing. It espoused the conventional wisdom of the day—what is often called the “Treasury view”
scathing Source
Office bulls rest their case on two pillars. One is to argue that recent evidence shows pandemic-induced disruptions are _______ and temporary. Offices have been spared the carnage that lockdowns have inflicted on other kinds of commercial property, such as restaurants and shops
superficial Source
IT LOOKED LIKE the fall of Saigon in 1975 on fast-forward: an American-backed army melting away, enemy fighters strolling into the presidential palace, desperate crowds mobbing the airport. But the similarities between Afghanistan and South Vietnam were not only _______ . Both states, built to please their American sponsors, had been hollowed out by one of the oldest diseases of governance: corruption
superficial Source
Afterwards, the remaining days typically have themes—such as finance and energy—and see politicians and business leaders stepping up to announce various new pledges, coalitions and projects. Outside the doors, activists rage against _______ commitments and rally against political inaction. Despite the well-publicised hoopla, much of the action occurs off-stage
superficial Source
One of the book’s most powerful arguments is on intellectual property. It is a highly controversial issue that typically divides into two _______ camps, caricatured as portly capitalists who claim expansive rights to pickpocket consumers and other businesses on one side, and hippie software-developers and snowflakes on the other side, who want to open- source everything. Messrs Gans and Leigh bring much-needed nuance and balance
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This font, then, cannot teach you how to read words as they are spelt in Hindi, but its aim is to demystify individual letters in its script and make India more approachable. Despite the _______ distinctiveness of English and Hindi, the two borrow from the same phonetic pool – the Indo-European group of languages, the largest linguistic group in the world. This typeface design playfully highlights these commonalities
superficial Source
The public markets provide a vast source of capital for more mature firms, helping them scale up fast, as Tesla has demonstrated. Yet so far the asset-management industry has stuck to marketing its green credentials in _______ ways. In the latest quarter the net inflows of cash into “sustainable” funds, which often track the shares of big firms that have little effect on climate change, were twice the size of the annual investments into green VC
superficial Source
The IMF’s index of commodity prices roughly tripled from 2000 to 2011. After that it began to fall, and in doing so exposed those economies which had enjoyed a _______ boom built on higher prices for their resource exports and easy credit. Trade growth also slowed
superficial Source
The easiest bit is fairly technical. Most grids struggle to handle the _______ nature of renewable sources such as solar and wind energy, so more reliable base-load power is needed that is not coal-fired. Natural gas will come back in fashion and there will be a global rehabilitation of nuclear power, which produces no greenhouse-gas emissions
intermittent Source
On September 17th President Emmanuel Macron withdrew France’s ambassadors from Washington and Canberra (though not London). The powerful reverberations of AUKUS show what a _______ shift it represents. For America it is the most dramatic move yet in its determination to counter what it sees as the growing threat from China, particularly the maritime challenge it poses in the Pacific
profound Source
It has led to a desperate scramble to enact policies that only a few months ago were either unimaginable or heretical. A _______ shift is now taking place in economics as a result, of the sort that happens only once in a generation. Much as in the 1970s when clubby Keynesianism gave way to Milton Friedman’s austere monetarism, and in the 1990s when central banks were given their independence, so the pandemic marks the start of a new era
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This wave of unrest and authoritarianism partly reflects covid-19, which has exposed and exploited vulnerabilities, from rotten bureaucracies to frayed social safety-nets. And as we explain this week, the despair and chaos threaten to exacerbate a _______ economic problem: many poor and middle-income countries are losing the knack of catching up with the richest ones. Our excess-mortality model suggests that 8m-16m people have died in the pandemic
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Further technological progress in renewable sources of energy, smart grids and battery storage are all vital steps on the path to replacing fossil fuels. The coronavirus has also revealed something _______ about the way societies should treat knowledge. Consider how Chinese scientists sequenced the genome of SARS-CoV-2 within weeks and shared it with the world
profound Source
More fundamentally, the traditional drivers of value have been shaken, new ones will gain prominence, and there’s a possibility that the gulf between what markets value and what people value will close. Current financial-market valuations reflect _______ uncertainty over the path of the virus and the length of time that the global economy will remain shuttered. How many quarters of earnings will be lost? How quick will the recovery be once it comes? Deeper concerns include the extent to which economies are experiencing supply destruction not mere disruption
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In recent weeks researchers poring over satellite imagery have spotted China constructing hundreds of nuclear-missile silos in the desert. Such an emancipation of information promises to have _______ effects. The decentralised and egalitarian nature of OSINT erodes the power of traditional arbiters of truth and falsehood, in particular governments and their spies and soldiers
profound Source
Several shortcomings stand out. In dealing with the Depression, governments ultimately discarded the gold standard, the global currency regime that helped _______ the disaster. Countries on gold sacrificed monetary-policy independence, and had to respond to a loss of market confidence with an economy-bashing increase in interest rates, for instance
propagate Source
Section 230 has become a catch-all for critics’ complex gripes with large internet companies. Democrats believe that section 230 has allowed online untruths and hate speech to _______ without the internet platforms having enough accountability and incentive to take swift action. Republicans blame section 230 for censorship of conservative viewpoints and giving online platforms too much power over what content is given prominence on their sites
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Cases there have reached 15,000 a day, and appear to be growing fast (see map). On April 22nd India’s election commission banned political rallies in the state, for fear they were helping to _______ the outbreak. There are widespread fears that these numbers, alarming as they are, fail to capture the true magnitude of India’s second wave
propagate Source
On top of this, if components made of the new material get damaged, any small cracks will seal up spontaneously, even without heating. Cracks _______ through the stuff by pulling the cross-links apart. Once the crack-causing force has gone, these links reform spontaneously
propagate Source
As so often with Mr Trump, it was an approach that mingled conservative ideology with demagoguery and personal strangeness. Conservatives prize freedom of choice over the common good; demagogues rubbish expert advice in order to _______ their own reality; and Mr Trump, a conservative demogogue but also a lifelong conspiracy theorist, probably believed some of his own misinformation. Just a small prick He was once a noted anti- vaxxer—which may explain why he did not publicise his own covid jab until weeks after it took place
propagate Source
The network goes through a number of steps to confirm this change. As the proposal _______ s over the network the various nodes check, by inspecting the ledger, whether Alice actually has the bitcoin she now wants to spend. If everything looks kosher, specialised nodes called miners will bundle Alice’s proposal with other similarly reputable transactions to create a new block for the blockchain
propagate Source
Other economists picked up where Keynes left off. Alvin Hansen and Paul Samuelson constructed equations to predict how a rise or fall in spending in one part of the economy would _______ across the whole of it. Governments took it for granted that managing economic demand was their responsibility
propagate Source
And so liberals set out to define the conditions for progress to come about. They believe that argument and free speech establish good ideas and _______ them. They reject concentrations of power because dominant groups tend to abuse their privileges, oppressing others and subverting the common good
propagate Source
In the middle of the tank is a plug hole. If the water going down the hole rotates faster than the ripples can _______ , the ripples which stray beyond the aqueous “event horizon” (a black hole’s point of no return) will not make it out. They are sucked down the drain
propagate Source
Her prose, though, is again as spare as bone. M envies the “aura of male freedom” in L’s work—and in delineating these frustrations so piercingly, Ms Cusk’s _______ and elusive story makes its own unorthodox claim to freedom.
allusive Source
economist. com/free-exchange/2008/09/09/end-of-the-frannie- rally","datePublished":"2008-09-09T17:59:50Z","headline":"End of the Frannie rally","image":"","publisher":"The Economist"}}]} EconomicsFree exchangeOur economics correspondents consider the fluctuations in the world economy, in theory and practiceThe crying of blog 49The _______ Free ExchangeAbove the foldA daily round-up of economic newsDismal scientistsLife among the rationally cynicalLink exchangeThe best of the rest of the economics webBanana republiqueApologies to our French Canadian friendsSon of stimulusMore powerful than the original?"Going to bet on another horse"Speculation speculationAbove the foldA daily round-up of economic newsMcCain to raise taxesYou can bet on itLink exchangeThe best of the rest of the economics webDoes not computeWhen online translation goes badEnd of the Frannie rallyThe slow-motion financial collapse continuesPrevious1.
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FEW feel as conflicted about the internet’s descent into _______ , 140-character tweets as Evan Williams. As a co-founder of Twitter, he has profited handsomely from the social- media firm’s rise and remains its largest shareholder
glib Source
SAN FRANCISCO boasts the lowest death rate from covid-19 of any big American city. An early shutdown, a culture of caution and mask mandates helped _______ the spread of the virus. “Our response to covid-19 has been hailed as a national model,” crows London Breed, the mayor
curb Source
By our estimates, based on excess deaths, the pandemic has claimed 860,000 lives in America. Yet measures to _______ the virus by mandating vaccination, which the Biden administration announced on September 9th, are being treated by senior Republicans as a terrifying affront to liberty. “This is still America,” tweeted Tate Reeves, the governor of Mississippi, “and we still believe in freedom from tyrants
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CHILDREN IN MANY countries will soon swap their video games and swimming costumes for books and uniforms when they return to classrooms after the summer holidays. School closures have been one of the most common policies to _______ the spread of covid-19—and one of the most contentious. According to UNESCO, the UN’s cultural agency, since the start of the outbreak schools around the world have been wholly or partly closed for two- thirds of an academic year on average, with many children reliant on limited remote learning
curb Source
window. env = {"ENV":"production"}; A _______ in insult diplomacy | The Economist {"@context":"http://schema. org","@type":"NewsArticle","url":"https://www
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The results are not expected until December, but the outcome is not in doubt. Parliament will again be full of politicians who _______ over the president. Mr Sisi, a former general, claims to disdain politics
fawn Source
In comparison, Ricardo Darín, arguably Argentina’s most famous actor, has only 41,000; Andrés Calamaro, a well-known rock star, has 34,000. At a recent lunch in the seaside city of Mar del Plata, your correspondent was intrigued to see waiters and diners _______ over Mr Bulat. A neighbouring table invited him to share their calamari and a particularly bold waitress hugged him and took his photograph to show her friends
fawn Source
A few came close, notably James Mattis, the defence secretary and a thoughtful former four-star Marine general. Rather than _______ , Mr Mattis used his turn to praise troops and to express a core plank of his philosophy: that America maintains potent armed forces so that its diplomats “always negotiate from a position of strength”. As Mr Trump basked in congratulations, then hailed himself as the most “active” and productive president since Franklin D
fawn Source
Most voters are untroubled: seven in ten Filipinos approve of Mr Duterte’s performance. Members of Congress, intimidated by his popularity, _______ in the face of his rough talk and tough policies. Both the Senate and House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to extend the state of emergency
fawn Source
To watch “A Life On Our Planet” and “I Am Greta” is to marvel at the passion of these two campaigners, but both films and both figures emphasise that a collective response is required if environmental catastrophe is to be averted. Ms Thunberg expresses her exasperation that the policymakers who _______ over her, seemingly using her presence to boost their eco-credentials, decline to make the necessary structural changes. Sir David gives a convincing outline of the steps needed to avoid disaster, including moving rapidly away from animal agriculture and rewilding large tracts of the globe
fawn Source
But there is not much transparency in how he gets things done. Many Albany insiders, observers and politicians were perplexed to see the world _______ over the Empire State’s governor. In a way Mr Cuomo was born to lead New York
fawn Source
IN THE LATE 1860s, French sailors who had set off from Saigon to find the source of the Mekong river encountered the _______ Khone Falls between Laos and Cambodia, and realised that the waters would be impassable for larger trading vessels. Their dreams of reaching the riches of southern China by river were dashed
precipitous Source
IUU fishing, where operators lack licences, go after protected species or use too fine a net, is the chief driver behind plummeting fish stocks—just a fifth of commercial species are sustainably fished. That marks a _______ decline that robs coastal states of over $20bn a year and threatens the livelihoods of millions of small-scale fishermen. Worse, IUU operators are likely to be involved in other crimes, from finning sharks to running drugs
precipitous Source
But thanks to an expansion of unemployment insurance as well as a series of stimulus cheques, the reality was very different. The poor have been the main beneficiaries, with far fewer suffering _______ drops in incomes than would have otherwise been the case. This good news should not be exaggerated
precipitous Source
. Natural disasters quicken an already _______ global loss of .
precipitous Source
Global M&A is on track to fall by 25% in the first quarter of this year from a year earlier. Without China’s voracious appetite, the decline would be even more _______ . The action has also been spread across a wide range of industries, from cosmetics to construction equipment and from film-making to fertilisers
precipitous Source
Together with amendments in 1984 and augmentation in 1986, this unlocked all the inventions and discoveries that had been made in laboratories throughout the United States with the help of taxpayers' money. More than anything, this single policy measure helped to reverse America's _______ slide into industrial irrelevance. Before Bayh-Dole, the fruits of research supported by government agencies had belonged strictly to the federal government
precipitous Source
Overall debt, including government, corporate and household, has reached about 250% of GDP, up from 150% six years ago. The _______ rise began with China’s gargantuan stimulus in response to the global financial crisis in 2008. Its total debt-to-GDP ratio increased faster than that of any other big country during that time, according to a new report from the International Centre for Monetary and Banking Studies, a Swiss research institute
precipitous Source
Inevitably, prosperity has affected people's attitudes and the local business environment. A study by the Shenzhen Academy of Social Sciences and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, released on January 18th, shows a _______ drop in the fraction of the population involved in starting new businesses, from 12% in 2004 to 5% in 2009. “It's not so special anymore,” says Kevin Au, a professor of management at Chinese University
precipitous Source
Several European countries had similar rules in place even before covid-19. In 2017 the “right to disconnect”, which allowed workers to ignore after-hours texts, emails or calls from their bosses without fear of _______ , took effect in France. Italy followed soon after
repercussion Source
Most obviously it shows that the fallout from the credit binge continues: estimates of credit losses are still rising, notably in commercial property. But the more important _______ has to do with sovereign risk. Dubai World's debt was not technically government-backed, but it was widely regarded as such by investors, who drew scant distinction between the Dubai government and a company it wholly owned
repercussion Source
One of these reforms allowed the court to create binding precedents that must be followed by lower courts in similar cases. To be heard by the tribunal a case must now have “general _______ in society”. If this test is not met then the judgment of a lower court is accepted as final Together these measures have cut the number of cases distributed to the tribunal's members between April last year and March this year to a mere 56,500, compared with 97,400 in the same period of the previous year
repercussion Source
His disastrous handling of the pandemic has pushed Brazil to breaking point. The country’s challenges are daunting: economic stagnation, political polarisation, environmental ruin, social _______ and a covid-19 catastrophe from which it is yet to emerge. In a live subscriber event, The Economist's São Paulo bureau chief, Sarah Maslin, spoke about the damage Mr Bolsonaro has inflicted on Brazil, the prospects of a country in need of reform and the likely outcome of next year’s presidential election
regress Source
But 21st-century readers are short on prophets, especially the optimistic kind, and will give this one a cheerful hearing. ■","description":"In “Humankind” he tries to _______ the idea that people are naturally prone to wickedness","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
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When you hear someone disparaging “sheeple”, stand proudly as a member of the flock. After all, it’s much harder to _______ lies if you’re ignorant too. Sheeple People who are docile or easily influenced (noun) They’ve already had the wool pulled over their eyes True believers in niche, unprovable woo-woo – whether political, sociological or extra-terrestrial – tend to share one characteristic: self-righteousness
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And third, they proclaim that the target’s work constitutes a tangible threat to certain marginalised groups within society. Of course, it only takes a single individual to _______ a bad argument. There is no reason to gather tens or hundreds of signatories except for the purpose of achieving some collective goal, such as rallying support for a political cause (eg, opposition to colonialism), or pressuring an institution into action (eg, to have a particular individual fired)
refute Source
Over the past decade a region that has habitually suffered from balance-of-payments troubles has benefited from the foreign exchange that commodities bring in. This bonanza seems to _______ the thesis put forward by Raúl Prebisch, the founding director of ECLAC, that the price of commodities is bound to decline in relation to the price of manufactured goods. Even so, relying on raw materials carries a series of risks
refute Source
Plenty of voters take this as plain-speaking. The best way to _______ the contemporary movements might be to ask them to govern. The experience of all those coloured shirts suggests that at that point they would then change into something different
refute Source
But hawks think there is little room to boost real wages by running labour markets hotter. If they are proved right, it will be hard to _______ the argument that structural changes in the economy, rather than weak demand alone, have stacked the deck against workers. Governments will then have to find novel ways to respond—or hope for another crash in the oil price
refute Source
\n\nThis page has been updated to include the interactive quiz. ","description":"The European Commission set up a website to _______ myths","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
refute Source
The snow that builds up in mountain ranges over the winter, called snowpack, is a natural reservoir. In the spring, when it melts, its waters _______ rivers, man-made reservoirs and soil. The amount of water that makes it into reservoirs each year depends on temperatures, evaporation and run-off, or how much soaks into the ground
replenish Source
A prolonged northern-hemisphere winter meant that European countries ran down reserves, leaving their stocks 25% below the historic average (chart 1, right panel). Disruptions of imports piped from Russia and Norway, which supply nearly half of Europe’s gas, made inventories hard to _______ . The flow from Norway was limited because of work on improving the country’s infrastructure; a fire at a processing plant in Siberia and the need to refill their own tanks after a brutal winter throttled Russian output
replenish Source
The cabinet of the so-called caretaker government is stuffed not with qualified technocrats but with men in boots. They will try to _______ the government’s depleted coffers by selling off Myanmar’s timber, jade and rare metals, lining their own pockets in the process. The regime will hand out contracts to companies owned by the armed forces, and do little to stem investor flight
replenish Source
Citigroup, a bank, calculates that European gas-storage levels, an indicator of the tightness of the global market, are below those seen in the past five years. S&P Global Platts, a research firm, reckons that demand in parts of Asia and Europe partly reflects the need to _______ stores ahead of the winter. Coal markets are heating up, too: the price of one benchmark has nearly trebled so far this year
replenish Source
Worldwide, about 70% of the groundwater pumped is used for agriculture. But groundwater has become dangerously depleted in places where pumping has exceeded the rate at which aquifers are naturally _______ ed. An analysis from the United States Geological Survey in 2013 found that between 1900 and 2008, groundwater was depleted by 1,000 cubic kilometres nationwide, or about twice the volume of Lake Erie, one of North America’s Great Lakes
replenish Source
A glut in China in 2010-15 pushed government inventories up to unprecedented levels and led the authorities to reduce financial incentives to corn farmers. But the resulting fall in output was too sharp, forcing China to look overseas to _______ stocks. Corn imports jumped from less than 5m tonnes a year in 2013-18 to almost 30m tonnes in 2020
replenish Source
This occurred in part because developers had fixed a maximum stability fee into the protocol. To _______ funds and restore the peg new governance tokens were issued, diluting the current owners. The coding problem was solved over the following months by a consensus of those holding the governance tokens
replenish Source
Chinese officials call the 632-metre edifice Shanghai Tower, a symbol of the financial capital’s might. The sinuous, 128-storey structure, designed by an American firm, purports to _______ a dragon’s twisting form. It is home to Chinese and foreign financial firms betting on China’s rise
evoke Source
In “Fastalgia”, one of his best-known tunes, Mr Rasouli mashes up songs by Seyyed Javad Zabihi, a muezzin from the time of the shah; Mohammad Reza Shajarian, one of Iran’s greatest cultural treasures; Archive, an alt-rock band based in London; and Arms and Sleepers, a trip-hop group from Boston. The result is a dreamy, nostalgic track meant to _______ a time when the Ramadan fast began with Zabihi’s call to prayer and the iftar, or fast-breaking evening meal, was accompanied by Shajarian’s thundering voice. Zabihi was murdered two years after the revolution of 1979; before he died last year Shajarian boycotted state radio to show support for pro-democracy protesters
evoke Source
HAS THE world witnessed “peak democracy”? Is the future one in which open societies with free markets vie for influence in global affairs with authoritarian countries under state capitalism? The very questions _______ a nostalgia for a seemingly simpler past. For Michael O’Sullivan, formerly an investment banker and economist at Princeton University, it is more useful to consider the future
evoke Source
THE WHIRR of spooling magnetic tape is more likely to _______ feelings of nostalgia than technological awe. Yet tape remains important for data storage, with millions of kilometres of the stuff coiled up in the world’s data centres
evoke Source
At present Larry can only meet Ms Guinazzo online. They _______ the sensation of touch through words and their imaginations—or try to. Zoom cuddles are not as potent as those in the flesh, says Larry
evoke Source
The buffalo towers over the humanoids. Altogether, they _______ a time when the planet belonged to animals and animals did not belong to us. The people who painted this started making pictures almost as soon as they arrived in this archipelago from continental Asia, after the last ice age, around 45,000 years ago
evoke Source
But on higher floors, the classrooms are more spartan. Rice-paper lanterns and a row of black roof tiles running along the top of the walls _______ ancient Chinese architecture. Children wear powder-blue fleeces with the mandarin collars and frog fasteners of traditional jackets
evoke Source
INVESTORS ARE still speculating about exactly what Didi Global, a ride-hailing giant, did to draw the _______ of Chinese regulators. Some say it foolishly pushed forward with its $4
ire Source
AFTER MONTHS in lockdown in grey Berlin, Chris Bloom, a personal coach and blogger, planned his escape. Risking the _______ of jealous Instagram followers, he took a covid-19 test, flew to Lisbon and settled into the Outsite co-working and co-living space, a pleasant blue-and-white tiled property with the essentials—stable internet and a coffee shop. Mr Bloom is part of a growing brigade of digital nomads in Europe, who work remotely while satisfying their wanderlust
ire Source
Take Ireland and Germany: there is little evidence that these countries have ramped up their crypto mining, yet their global hash rates increased by 46% and 17% respectively between January and August this year. That might be because of Chinese hashers re-routing their traffic through European virtual private networks to avoid authorities’ _______ . But it is clear that the global centre of bitcoin mining is shifting
ire Source
While Japan has seen relatively few deaths as a share of population and has reached relatively high rates of vaccination (after a slow start), voters have given the national government little credit. Party grandees hoped the _______ would recede after Kishida Fumio replaced the unpopular Suga Yoshihide as party leader and prime minister in October. But Mr Kishida, a milquetoast figure, has not done much better at connecting with the public
ire Source
It must not turn away from salvaging a “development dividend” for Afghanistan that empowers women and promotes minority rights. Co-operative “grids” will be requ _______ d, involving China and even Iran and Russia. Regional unity against terrorist forces and the Taliban’s known propensity to interact with such elements is crucial
ire Source
Labyrinth makes neat allusions to Octavio Paz, Gabriel García Márquez and Borges, but is Greek and invites the reader to get lost. A couple of us were tempted by Bochini, in homage to the _______ genius of the Independiente midfielder, but that would have been an insult to Brazil. We asked for your suggestions—and thank you for them
languid Source
The shows—mostly live-action or puppets, not animation—move at an unhurried pace, two or three characters on the screen at the time, with little frenetic music and infrequent special effects. Whether made in the 2010s or the 1980s, Ramasjang’s shows are downright _______ . The contrast is all the clearer when a British or American animated show that DR has licensed comes on, with every corner of the screen buzzing with unnecessary and overstimulating movement
languid Source
In Maar’s photomontage “Untitled (Hand-Shell)” (1934) the hand with painted nails is a mannequin’s rather than the photographer’s own – look closely and you can see the seams from the casting moulds. On its own, the hand would be little more than a plastic avatar of _______ femininity, fixed in a ladylike half-point at nothing in particular. But femininity is precisely what Maar’s montage subverts
languid Source
Consider Mr Trump’s predecessor. Barack Obama was known for long pauses, often filled with a _______ “uh…” He gives the impression of a man thinking hard about what to say next. But Mr Trump rarely hesitates and hardly ever says “um” or “uh”
languid Source
Part surrealist murder mystery, part small-town soap opera, there had never been anything like it on network television. With a _______ pace and meandering plotline, it was challenging viewing that was thought not to appeal to audiences back then. Yet it was one of the most popular series of 1990
languid Source
Most underwent economic reforms before the euro-zone crisis and have low bond yields and triple-A credit ratings to show for it. Many sport prominent Eurosceptic parties such as the True Finns, Alternative for Germany and the UK Independence Party, which channel voters’ anger at being yoked to Europe’s _______ , unreformed south. The kinship is not lost on British politicians
languid Source
WHETHER in the breathless years of double-digit economic growth or today’s more _______ era, one constant in China has been the poor state of workers’ rights and the frequent outbreaks of labour unrest. From coalminers in the snowy north-east to factory staff in the steamy Pearl River Delta, workers have agitated against low pay, wage arrears, unsafe conditions and job losses
languid Source
Garment factories, in particular, are easy to relocate; some firms are reportedly already contemplating moving to Vietnam or Bangladesh. _______ European procedures give the Cambodian government 16 months or so to repent or prepare. Mr Hun Sen shows no contrition, but also few signs of preparation
languid Source
A version aimed at amateurs that enables the device to transmit to a smartphone is under development. Cricket’s _______ , civilised pace can pose problems for commentators, who feel the need to keep talking even when not much is happening on the field. A favourite topic is the state of the pitch, the strip in the centre of the field where most of the action happens, and the state of which can have a big impact on bowling
languid Source
He called them “constructive” and said that the two countries’ shared future would be “a very bright one”. The previous day the White House had confirmed a Chinese commitment to buy more American agricultural products—one of the ways in which China had hoped to _______ Mr Trump, who resents China’s large bilateral trade surplus. But his soft words concealed a sting
mollify Source
When he eventually went to Yasukuni, two days earlier than promised and with a minimum of warning, he pleased few and angered many. Mr Koizumi, the first sitting prime minister to pay an official visit to the shrine in 16 years, had hoped that the change in date and a carefully prepared statement acknowledging Japan's wartime aggression would _______ critics. He was wrong
mollify Source
The president can count on public opinion in this issue, which in recent years has swung against the embargo. In an apparent attempt to _______ the pro-embargo camp, the administration recently dropped its previous opposition to a bill, approved earlier this month, imposing targeted sanctions against Venezuelan officials involved in repressing opposition demonstrations earlier this year. But none of this will assuage the president’s conservative critics in Congress
mollify Source
Many Republicans disliked it. Yet because the Democrats are associated with the immigrant communities Mr Trump attacked, his tactic also turbocharged partisan enmity, which helped _______ them. In the run-up to what are expected to be gruelling mid-terms for Republicans, Mr Trump’s family separations were an effort to dust off a winning script
mollify Source
Polling by Edelman, a public-relations firm, suggests that majorities of customers and employees make choices on what to buy and where to work based on their beliefs. Chief executives must _______ politicians, respond to activists and dampen social-media firestorms. It helps if the boss comes across as a relatable member of society, not a volcano-dwelling villain
mollify Source
South Korean officials say they were happy to have been consulted on America’s new policy. But some of their attempts to _______ the North sit awkwardly with Mr Biden’s priorities. Police in Seoul this week interrogated Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector who sent leaflets northwards last month, defying a new law
mollify Source
Had he been in St Petersburg he would have been among the rebels, he candidly acknowledged when summoned to meet the tsar. Releasing and pardoning the country’s most popular poet was meant to _______ the Russian elite. Nicholas also pledged to act as Pushkin’s patron and personal censor, in place of the regular one
mollify Source
Yet turning this into actual spending will require still more effort. To _______ antsy progressives, neither bill is expected to arrive on the president’s desk without the other. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, has pledged as much and is not known for bluffing
mollify Source
* Tan’s first novel in eight years opens in early-twentieth-century Shanghai. Lulu Minturn, an American, runs a house of courtesans, and her _______ daughter Violet is horrified to learn that she is half-Chinese. The plot follows three generations of the Minturn women from Shanghai to San Francisco and a remote village in western China
mettlesome Source
..Would that the rest of the movie followed suit. The rule is that Disney cartoons are _______ and taut, whereas Disney live-action projects are a meandering mess; who would honestly choose “Oz the Great and Powerful” over “Tangled” or “Frozen”? The director of “Maleficent” is Robert Stromberg, and the screenplay is by Linda Woolverton, who wrought her narrative magic on “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King”; but, having started the new movie at a trot, they reach the baptismal curse and come to a juddering halt. The problem, as with so many fairy tales, is the weight of time
mettlesome Source
In “Cotton-Dress Girl,” published in 1943, Janet Flanner considers the dynamic, unconventional personality of the actress Bette Davis. (“She is disciplined but unpredictable, is _______, is creative, and hates monotony. She is truthful, and as candid as glass
mettlesome Source
..There is one point on which your term paper and I agree—the play within the play that Hamlet stages in an attempt to draw a confession of guilt from his mother? That was meant to approximate the feelings associated with growing up in a small Midwestern town, with a father whose unfulfilled football dreams manifest as a heavy-handed discouragement of your involvement in drama club. Quite an _______ observation, Jacob\\!..Now, if you could just lose all the stuff about power and mortality and good and evil, you just might have a decent paper on your hands. ..## MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, AND JOHN.Matthew: Sure, there are slight differences in our accounts
astute Source
Melding fact and fiction, this book revolves around the murder, in 2008, of Pippa Bacca, an Italian performance artist who, as part of a project to promote world peace, had been hitchhiking from Milan to Jerusalem in a wedding dress. Léger weaves together the story of Bacca’s journey, _______ discussions of Marina Abramović and Svetlana Alexievich, and an account of the injustice Léger’s mother endured during her divorce. Léger grapples with her inability to understand the motivations of others, and with the ambiguity of giving voice to the silenced, noting that Bacca’s killer had, in the days before he was caught, filmed obsessively with her camera, as if he wanted to “smash his body and his sin onto the images
astute Source
Orwell criticized the writing of his time for vagueness and euphemism, claiming that official-sounding jargon was “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ” But linguistic malpractice looks different in 2019 from what it did in 1946, when “Politics and the English Language” was first published: the evils of political discourse today have little to do with cliché, or with a “_______ latinized style. ” Trumpism infects our English; Trumpism flows through the country’s bloodstream, awakening a primordial coarseness
pretentious Source
Then, in a conference room at the hospital, she sat at a table with her parents, the directors of Teen Challenge, and the two lawyers. One of the lawyers turned on an audio recorder and asked Emma if she was being blackmailed or placed under _______, a standard question. Emma shook her head, sobbing
duress Source
As teen-agers, my brother and I lost at least half a dozen French and German exchange students within the clipped evergreen walls of a small yew maze tucked into an odd triangle at the northern edge of the gardens of Hampton Court Palace. The Tudor palace, which lies southwest of central London on the banks of the Thames, was a favorite residence of Henry VIII, who received it as a gift—albeit one offered under some _______—from Cardinal Wolsey, his chief minister. Today, the palace is perhaps best known for its maze, the lone survivor of three or four labyrinths built there around 1690, as part of a substantial redesign that converted what had previously been an orchard into a fashionable new garden called the Hampton Court Wilderness
duress Source
Wall was one of the foremost scholars and interpreters of the work of Zora Neale Hurston, and, in “On Freedom,” Wall latches on to Hurston’s assertion that the “will to adorn”—a tendency toward linguistic flourish, even under _______—is an important aspect of “Negro expression. ” Wall believed that the black essay has often fulfilled two barely extricable purposes: to argue for political, economic, social, racial, and sexual liberation, and to satisfy a writer’s urge for self-expression through aesthetics
duress Source
S. The judges, considering Ana’s captivity, decided that, because she had worked for the guerrillas, even under _______, she was not their victim but functionally a member of their group. “While the respondent’s assistance may have been relatively minimal, if she had not provided the cooking and cleaning services she was forced to perform, another person would have needed to do so,” they wrote, in an opinion called Matter of A–C–M–
duress Source
R. ’s New Deal Administration had tasked Lange and the other photographers of the Farm Security Administration with showing America to itself in a moment of epic _______. Their more practical purpose was to build support for government aid to people—rural Americans struggling on dust-choked farms or forced out on the road
duress Source
Since then, though, Holmes has faded from view. Buddy _______ was another first-time actor, gangly and charismatic, who appeared in “Heaven Knows What,” and again in “Good Time,” which was informed by his time in jail. He had a number of acting opportunities, but ended up back in jail on drug charges
duress Source
Scientific ingenuity and innovation provided a vaccine to the coronavirus with unprecedented speed. But we need to remain both _______ and flexible to make sure we use it to its best possible effect. We believe we are proving that right now in Israel with the timely booster jabs and that other countries will follow suit
vigilant Source
Local manufacturers lost their grip on the world market for badminton rackets when they failed to anticipate the switch from wood to aluminium and graphite. If anything, however, that has only made the Sialkotis more _______ . The local business community is now trying to set up a technology university in the city
vigilant Source
The airline’s initial apology was viewed as ham-fisted, sympathising more with its own employees than with the unfortunate passenger, prompting Forbes magazine to dub United “the world’s most hated airline”. Managers must thus be eternally _______ when trying to protect their company’s good name. That can be expensive
vigilant Source
The Puritan self was its own battleground, caught between salvation and sin, flesh and spirit, and forever under siege. Like their rude civilisation hacked from the wilderness, the elect had to be eternally _______ against outside threats—and internal division. Fear of witchcraft, writes Mr Gaskill, “settled along boundaries, including the line separating body and soul”
vigilant Source
She had thought that she could elude the surveillance and judgment of her line manager at home; now she was increasingly conscious of being noticed on Slack. She had found a new source of competitiveness in home-working: who could be more productive under these added pressures? I began to notice some version of this shift in many of my patients: more stringent fitness regimes, more _______ attention to their children’s home-schooling. They also became increasingly irritable and frustrated with partners, colleagues and, at times, me
vigilant Source
Since then the Communist Party has sought a more active hand in recruitment and business decisions. And after subduing a band of _______ bosses at overextended financial conglomerates, the state is now taking aim at China’s tech billionaires, making it clear that outspoken critics will not be tolerated. Mr Xi’s preoccupation has always been maintaining China’s social and financial stability
headstrong Source
Two Latin American states merit a mention. Whereas Brazil and Mexico are plunging into populism, Ecuador and Peru are strengthening institutions, such as the judiciary, that can curb a _______ leader. South Africa has ditched a president, Jacob Zuma, who presided over the plunder of the state
headstrong Source
From GM and Geely to Mercedes and Nissan, big carmakers all want to turn out millions of such cars—and turn a profit doing so. Their strategies range from cautious to _______ . Making a profitable, mass-produced EV has proved elusive
headstrong Source
Wahhabism, after all, is one of the ideological pillars of global jihadism. The _______ prince The flipside of MBS’s boldness is his propensity to act rashly. He has pursued a cruel war in Yemen and led a diplomatic assault on Qatar, with little to show for either
headstrong Source
FOR those wanting to find evidence of the _______ and self-defeating approach of Hungary's government and especially its prime minister, Viktor Orban, the decision to storm out of talks with the IMF in July 2010 was a prime example. So now is this month's U-turn: the reopening of talks with the Washington-based institution on securing a precautionary credit line (a kind of overdraft for solvent but cash-strapped countries)
headstrong Source
As an offset against the money required must be placed a reduction in the Poor Law, in National Insurance, and in the cost of hospitals. Of the latter there are 2,634 in existence, exclusive of tuberculosis sanatoria, _______ homes, nursing homes, hospitals for chronic cases, and sanatoria attached to schools and institutions. What practical steps, then, must be taken to build a nation strong in nerve and sinew? To continue to devote unremitting care to those who have been crippled by the evils of our social system is merely to pay the penalty for past slackness
convalescent Source
) As usual, Oxford included buzzy internet- and youth-inflected coinages such as "neckbeard", "side boob" and "mansplaining". And as usual, internet commenters seemed _______ by what seemed to be a venerable institution (ie, Oxford) validating teenage slang. How do lexicographers decide what goes into the dictionary? In short, dictionary- makers act more like a fisherman, gathering words with a wide net, than a policeman, keeping out "bad words", as Erin McKean, a lexicographer, formerly of Oxford and now of Wordnik, an online dictionary, put it
nonplussed Source
The National was an austerely egalitarian place, with brutalist architecture and an opening season that offered Hamlet and a strong sense of cultural purpose. This was theatre less as entertainment and more as medicine to dose an occasionally _______ nation. “Do the English people want a national theatre?” asked the playwright George Bernard Shaw before it was built
nonplussed Source
China’s rise has made many wary. “Look at what’s happening in Hong Kong,” _______ s Itokazu Kenichi, the island’s mayor. There is also “a sense that America is in decline”, says Tasato Chiyoki, a councillor
fret Source
Public spending should be aimed more at improving long-term growth. Economists in Tokyo _______ that the government has wasted its pandemic stimulus on handouts: a study by Hoshi Takeo of the University of Tokyo finds that fiscal support in 2020 was more likely to go to companies that were already struggling before covid-19. Boosting productivity could help to offset the impact of the shrinking population
fret Source
They will be allowed to keep their original nationality, whereas native-born Emiratis cannot hold a second passport. Some _______ the government has created a two-tier model of citizenship. The citizenship law is part of a head-spinning package of reforms implemented by the UAE over the past year
fret Source
But for now, all eyes remain glued to the screen. ","description":"Governments _______ that the app’s popularity plays into the hands of the Chinese surveillance state","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
fret Source
AS PROTESTERS FILLED American streets last year to _______ the killing of George Floyd, Joe Biden had reason to feel nervous. Four days before Floyd’s death, Omar Wasow, an academic, published a paper claiming that violent racial-justice demonstrations following the murder of Martin Luther King in 1968 had set off a backlash
decry Source
THE NOTION that the modern economy lacks “good jobs” is as uncontroversial as saying that Lionel Messi is good at football. Pundits _______ the disappearance of the steady positions of yesteryear, where people did a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. “Where have all the good jobs gone?”, wonders one recent book, while another talks about “the rise of polarised and precarious employment systems”
decry Source
For customers, the risk is that financial platforms’ greater access to data might invite misuse of market power. Novel financial products could be more vulnerable to scams—and in a decentralised world it will not be clear how and where to seek _______ . It thus falls to regulators to preserve the potential, while guarding against the risks
recourse Source
Its proponents argued that many activities which were assumed to be anti-competitive were entirely reasonable strategies for improving corporate efficiency. They also claimed that in some cases even things which couldn’t be justified that way could safely be left to the market to sort out without _______ to law. Take “predatory pricing”
recourse Source
Negative rates would merely have encouraged depositors to withdraw their money from banks and hold it as cash, on which the rate of return, at zero, would have been higher. Central banks in the developed economies faced a frightening collapse in output and soaring unemployment without _______ to the tool that had been the mainstay of monetary policy-making for a generation. Central banks were not entirely unprepared for this challenge
recourse Source
But they will be captivated by the authors’ curiosity, ferocious intellects and attractive modesty. “The only _______ we have against bad ideas”, they argue, is to “resist the seduction of the ‘obvious’, be sceptical of promised miracles, question the evidence, be patient with complexity and honest about what we know and what we can know. ” Amen
recourse Source
The latest Iranian sanctions, announced last week, will heap more pain on an economy already pummelled by economic missiles aimed at banks, oil production and shipping. So dollar-centric is global commerce that other countries have long found it difficult to trade, even among themselves, without _______ to America’s currency, banks and payments infrastructure. At least half of all trade invoices are in dollars
recourse Source
In many cases, dollar debt is matched by dollar income—even if, as in the case of oil exporters, it is much diminished by low prices. And there are pots of dollars in emerging-market banks to which indebted companies may have _______ . In any event, the dollar’s ascent has stalled because of concerns about America’s faltering economy and doubts that the Fed can raise interest rates again
recourse Source
Coface, a trade-credit insurer, expects these to rise by a third worldwide by 2021. Still, because trade finance is short-term—usually 30 to 90 days—and backed by collateral, lenders have some _______ . Natalie Blyth of HSBC, a bank, reckons that the performance gap between trade-finance assets and corporate loans will widen
recourse Source
The record of the past quarter century is clear: the Soviets in Afghanistan; the Israelis in Lebanon; the United States in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Smaller, irregular forces—insurgents, guerrillas, terrorists—will find ways, as they always have, to frustrate and _______ the advantages of larger, regular militarys. And even nation- states will try to exploit our perceived vulnerabilities in an asymmetric way, rather than play to our inherent strengths
neutralize Source
Animal-rights activists rightly point out that monkeys cannot consent to such treatment. It is unlikely they would _______ were they able to do so. The controversy has had an uneven impact round the world
acquiesce Source
In the months prior to the introduction of GDPR, Facebook required its customers to agree to new terms and conditions which it felt to be GDPR compliant. If they did not _______ , they faced being blocked from their Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts. Agreement under such strictures, noyb argues, should not be considered valid
acquiesce Source
And when people object to being described as “cis”, it is their turn to bristle. If “trans” people are the only ones who need a qualifier before “woman” or “man”, then everyone else is…what? “Normal”? At least some women might drop their objections to “cis” if those using it were clear that they are not implying that cis women _______ to traditional feminine gender roles. And cis people could perhaps accept that when trans people say they feel “like a woman (or man)” they do not mean anything to do with appearance, hobbies or careers, but are rather expressing an inward sense of which of two broad groups of human beings they belong to
acquiesce Source
Mr Putin’s expensive military adventures used to generate enthusiasm, but they have become a source of irritation. He wants the West to lift sanctions and to _______ in his plan to stay in power indefinitely. But the West should not encourage his adventurism
acquiesce Source
Western governments and aid agencies have invested large amounts of money, but done little to address the political problems that cause starvation. In South Sudan and Yemen, they _______ to the obstacles that governments place on distributing aid. In South Sudan, it has proven impossible to introduce an arms embargo or sanctions
acquiesce Source
Or it can be seen as an act of human rebellion. Bartleby fails to _______ in carrying out his humdrum, tedious tasks. So this column will concern itself with the plight of managers, as they attempt to understand what makes their workers tick
acquiesce Source
FEW countries put sufficient store in rejecting things to have a national “No” day. But every October 28th Greece’s Oxi Day holiday commemorates the No with which it replied to a humiliating Italian ultimatum in 1940, a refusal to _______ that led to invasion. The snap referendum that Alexis Tsipras called on June 26th after walking out of negotiations with the country’s creditors looks like the Greek prime minister’s attempt to stage another defiant rejection
acquiesce Source
Its firms still use third-party law, usually New York’s, to raise money and make acquisitions abroad. But foreign firms active in Brazil often _______ to local law, relying on local arbitration as an alternative to courts that are politicised and glacially slow. Brazil’s government created a legal framework for arbitration in 1996, which became widely used after being approved by the supreme court in 2001
acquiesce Source
Dissenters are ejected from the party. Secretly sceptical elites _______ . William Barr, Mr Trump’s former attorney-general, recently said that Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, was privately urging him to refute the president’s fraud allegations from mid-November even as he was publicly doing nothing to counter them
acquiesce Source
Western governments and aid agencies have invested large amounts of money and energy in providing assistance, but they have done little to address the political problems that cause starvation. In South Sudan and Yemen they _______ to the obstacles that governments place on distributing aid. Though there are 17,000 peacekeepers in South Sudan, with a Chapter 7 mandate (which authorises the use of force to protect civilians), the UN is loth to criticise the government that hosts its mission
acquiesce Source
Part of this is simply the passage of time revealing that investment has performed better than expected. But Mr Sunak is also benefiting from his _______ handling of the pandemic, which limited the hit to corporate balance-sheets. All of this means Britain is borrowing less than expected
adroit Source
But the pundits’ grim warnings—that the scale of government borrowing would prompt unaffordable rises in the interest rate it had to pay or, conversely, that the central bank’s adoption of negative interest rates would fatally injure the big banks—were simply wrong (see Free exchange). Mr Abe confounded expectations even more with his vigorous and _______ diplomacy. As the grandson of one of the architects of Japan’s imperial war machine and an avowed nationalist himself, he was expected to spark dangerous rows with China while alienating Japan’s allies (see article)
adroit Source
In November 1922 Einstein was awarded the 1921 prize “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. This _______ bit of face-saving also seems, a century on, fully justified. Einstein’s first paper on the nature of light, published in 1905, contained the only aspect of his work that he himself ever referred to as “revolutionary”
adroit Source
The first is to establish clearer boundaries for the fizz and ferment of the Chinese marketplace: a stronger legal system for businesses; simplified rules for day-to-day activities; a financial system better at allocating funds. The second is to make more _______ use of the government’s grip on the economy’s main levers: to make state firms more efficient; and to team them up with private firms in new industrial-policy initiatives. Entrepreneurs still have considerable latitude, so long as they stay in their lane and move in government-endorsed directions
adroit Source
The incumbent governor, Luca Zaia, romped home with 77% of the vote. But his triumph, like that of the Democrats’ Vincenzo De Luca, in Campania, the region around Naples, was largely attributable to his _______ handling of the pandemic rather than any obvious sympathy for the League’s harsh messages on immigration and Europe. Mr De Luca, whose authoritarian ways earned him the nickname “Pol Pot”, managed the seemingly impossible task of getting Neapolitans to respect the lockdown by, among other things, threatening to deploy police armed with flame-throwers
adroit Source
Angry protesters were taking to the streets of Kinshasa and Mr Kabila’s troops buckling up to see them there. Yet through a combination of _______ negotiating and the high-minded pushiness that comes with representing a values-based superpower, Tom Perriello, the State Department’s then special envoy for the Great Lakes, and John Kerry, the then secretary of state, helped persuade Mr Kabila to back down. The resulting deal, brokered by the Catholic church, committed Mr Kabila to a power-sharing arrangement and retirement later this year
adroit Source
But as the club pointed out, not even the Dalai Lama had drawn such a crowd. Mr Woodford, who is _______ in the spotlight, says the whole saga has been like walking into a John Grisham novel. Having been sacked by the board and stripped of his office, home and company car on October 14th, the 30-year Olympus veteran—one of just four gaijin to run a leading Japanese company—was told to catch a bus to the airport
adroit Source
They turn voters into legislators, since a successful initiative becomes statute. In states like California, initiatives can even turn voters into founding fathers who _______ the state constitution. There are worlds of nuance in the detail
amend Source
The populists deride the leaders of the past as obsessed with bossy political correctness and out of touch with what matters to ordinary people; they promise their voters the chance to “take back control”. Meanwhile rising powers—as well as Russia, which though in decline is still dangerous—seek to challenge, or at least _______ , the liberal world order. And in the near future the biggest economy in the world will be China, a one-party dictatorship
amend Source
Their proponents claim this can protect vulnerable minorities against the tyranny of the majority, but history suggests it generally serves to empower well-represented minorities against the wishes of majorities that are in no way tyrannical. Most democracies see a need to tilt the scales against change only in special cases, prime among them constitutional _______ ments. In various bicameral legislatures, including those of America, Germany and India, such changes require a two-thirds majority in both houses
amend Source
Even before covid-19 the constraints of the SGP, drawn up in the 1990s, looked a poor fit for a world of low interest rates and pressing investment needs. Endless _______ ments had left a legal tangle only experts could understand. Now countries like Italy are shouldering debt burdens close to 160% of GDP
amend Source
They won 43 out of the 45 seats contested (in a parliament of 440), proving themselves as popular with voters as when they won a general election in 1990, the outcome of which the generals chose to ignore. Last year a committee was set up to look at possible _______ ments to the constitution, which will then be put to parliament. Of the possible changes, the most fuss has been created by those that concern Miss Suu Kyi herself
amend Source
Some of today’s companies are already protected thanks to their ties to the government, at the expense of the innovative outsiders who are not. Consider Delta Air Lines, which lobbied in private to _______ the voting legislation in Georgia. It is part of an oligopoly that hurts consumers, has just received $8
amend Source
When this is measured—by asking questions about reverse discrimination and how important being white is to one’s identity—white consciousness is in some cases an even better predictor of support for Mr Trump than lukewarm feelings about blacks or Hispanics (see chart). Though there is some overlap, concern over white identity is distinct from racial _______ , notes Ashley Jardina of Duke University, who is writing a book on the subject. Ms Jardina’s data show that whites can be concerned about their status without harbouring much hostility against non-whites
animus Source
Income, wealth, education and incarceration remain correlated with ethnicity to a staggering degree. True, great steps have been taken against overt racial _______ . But the lack of progress means liberals must have either tried and failed to create a society in which people of all races can flourish, or failed to try at all
animus Source
By 1992 Slovak GDP per head had improved to equal three-quarters of the Czech figure. Still, the _______ created on the Czech side by these payments, and on the Slovak side by the perception that their fate lay in the hands of bureaucrats in Prague, was exploitable by ambitious politicians. While Mr Havel remained the global face of postcommunist Czechoslovakia, a federalised political system made way for the emergence of a pair of powerful domestic operators: Vaclav Klaus, the Czech prime minister, and Vladimir Meciar, the Slovak premier
animus Source
A few weeks ago, such an assertion appeared self-serving and fanciful. But a recent poll surge by this Vichy _______ and television personality has taken established French political parties by surprise. Mr Zemmour is seeking nothing less than to turn nationalist party politics upside down and outflank Marine Le Pen, by making the hard- right leader look too soft
apologist Source
Pasteurised foods, with and without the addition of acetic acid, do stay fresh longer; that which is not pasteurised is still, sometimes, unsafe. But fermented foods thus preserved tend to be more _______ and less subtle than those that live on in the consumer, and they have none of their biological diversity. When it relies on ambient microbes fermentation is incredibly local; but the natural home for the new enthusiasm, as for all today’s enthusiasm, is the cosmopolitan internet
astringent Source
And central banks still have some purchase on inflation: if they raise rates too much, they might entrench today’s low inflation, or risk deflation. There is a better case for a less _______ form of intervention. It says, broadly, that the stockmarket is a sideshow
astringent Source
Horticulturalists prized them as an exotic novelty, beautiful additions to the gardens making the best of the young state’s lovely climate. Medical professionals recommended their planting as a way of absorbing the noxious miasmas thought to cause malaria—an idea that may have been influenced by the trees’ _______ smell. As well as these niche applications, the trees also had a broader claim on human attention, a facility that has always stood immigrants in good stead: they could thrive where others could not, and with minimal assistance
astringent Source
“It makes him a whole person, a real person,” said a supporter in a barn in Gilbert, as the obligatory country music rolled. Transmuting _______ economics into compassion, promising tolerance without a cost, wreathing jeremiads in sunshine, the story might even do the trick. Mr Rubio’s inauguration is the climax its logic demands
astringent Source
Facebook has built what is said to be the world’s biggest such open space, of 430,000 square feet (40,000 square metres), for its workers. Hitherto, knowledge workers have largely suffered in silence or grumbled in private because their chances of promotion have come to be influenced by their willingness to _______ . But a backlash is setting in: the current Harvard Business Review (HBR) has a cover story on “collaborative overload”; and Cal Newport of Georgetown University has just brought out a book called “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World”
collaborate Source
Two Latin American states merit a mention. Whereas Brazil and Mexico are plunging into populism, Ecuador and Peru are strengthening institutions, such as the judiciary, that can curb a _______ leader. South Africa has ditched a president, Jacob Zuma, who presided over the plunder of the state
competent Source
MONEY MIGHT not guarantee happiness, but income tends to _______ with contentment. In a Gallup poll last year, residents in the top 10% of countries by GDP per person scored their life situation as seven out of ten on average, compared with just four for those in the bottom 10%
correlate Source
Japan largely banned meat for 1,200 years, and still consumes relatively little meat and dairy. Too much of these can be damaging, since they contain saturated fatty acids, which _______ to heart disease. Studies have also tied eating lots of processed red meat to a greater risk of stroke
correlate Source
Both Facebook and Snap said tangled supply chains would diminish the incentives to advertise in the lucrative holiday period because of fewer goods on shelves. Moreover, even if the link with GDP has frayed, online ads appear to _______ closely with growth in e-commerce, which Facebook says is slowing as the pandemic fades. In America, there is growing evidence that consumer confidence is on the wane, which could affect one of the biggest factors believed to be fuelling the ad boom—the explosion of new businesses, many of them small-time online retailers
correlate Source
Unlike the visual cortex, then, the cerebellum has no apparent role in generating consciousness. Observations like this have led to a search for the neural _______ s of consciousness—the bits of the brain responsible for generating conscious experience. One of particular interest is the claustrum
correlate Source
A man’s preference for them is thus likely to enhance his reproductive success. Ms Marcinkowska speculates that testosterone-induced behavioural characteristics like dominance, which might be expected to _______ with masculine-looking faces even in women (they certainly do in men), help in the competition for resources needed to sustain children once they are born. But why that should be particularly important in an unhealthy country is unclear
correlate Source
Crucially, the samples came with useful data about the characteristics of the plants they were taken from, known in the argot as their phenotype. That allowed the team to cross- _______ between genotype and phenotype, identifying which bits of the former appeared responsible for what parts of the latter. As a consequence, they think they have identified 24 haplotypes that do useful things like increasing seed weight, improving yield per plant and reducing the time it takes for a plant to become mature enough to flower
correlate Source
This is partly because he lacks some of the vices of his populist peers. He does not _______ gay people, bash Muslims or spur his supporters to torch the Amazon. To his credit, he speaks out loudly and often for Mexico’s have-nots, and he is not personally corrupt
deride Source
Many hate and fight each other. Supporters of Islamic State _______ the Taliban, absurdly, as American stooges. One of the first things the Taliban did in Kabul last week was to pull the leader of Islamic State in South Asia out of jail and kill him
deride Source
Depending on your chosen theory, sheeple may have been brainwashed into disbelieving that AIDS is a hoax conjured by fear-mongering from “Big Condom” or that mobile-phone masts have been spreading coronavirus. Those who _______ the sheeple see themselves as enlightened and brave – and they definitely don’t give a flock. Luke Leitch Follow the breadcrumbs Clues in the QAnon conspiracy theory (verb) Some people need to use their loaf In the story of “Hansel and Gretel” in “Grimms’ Fairy Tales”, the children are taken deep into the forest and Hansel leaves a trail of breadcrumbs so the pair can find their way home
deride Source
IT IS long-standing Republican tradition to _______ the national media and its liberal tendencies. Despite that, the words of Lamar Smith, a Republican representative from Texas, delivered four days into Donald Trump’s presidency on the House floor, managed to stand out
deride Source
” It is easy to be cynical about such calculated displays of power. Some _______ shareholder activism as a game of smoke and mirrors, in which hedge-fund bombasts loudly call for executives to do what they were going to do anyway, and executives use activists as cover for unpopular measures such as asset sales and job cuts. That is too harsh
deride Source
The populists deride the leaders of the past as obsessed with bossy political correctness and out of touch with what matters to ordinary people; they promise their voters the chance to “take back control”. Meanwhile rising powers—as well as Russia, which though in decline is still dangerous—seek to challenge, or at least _______ , the liberal world order. And in the near future the biggest economy in the world will be China, a one-party dictatorship
deride Source
POLITICAL and economic debate is often a matter of competing visions, which means it concerns competing forecasts. In the heat of the EU referendum debate, I was struck by a financial adviser who tweeted me that he " _______ s all forecasts. " Along with the attacks on the views of "experts", it adds to a worrying change in the tone of the debate that echoes the Trump campaign's disregard for facts
deride Source
Some will see such efforts as a wise risk-mitigation strategy, as well as a way of appealing to consumers and employees. Others will _______ them as a pesky box-ticking exercise. Inevitably, they will be subject to accusations of “greenwashing”
deride Source
Sooner or later, warn the hawks, this will end in tears. Many of the people who predict the return of 1970s-style inflation used to _______ the old-school, bookish rate-setter, with his fancy econometrics and lack of market smarts. It is no small irony that they now feel so nostalgic for the pointy-headed central banker
deride Source
But not only that. Busy people who type badly, and find it easier to talk, might find it much easier to _______ their messages than they would find to sit and type them. Everyone remembers the bosses in old movies who shout things like quotation mark Ms Johnson! Take a memo
dictate Source
IT IS easy to forget that adultery was a crime in Spain until 1978; or that in America, where gay marriage is allowed by 37 states and may soon be extended to all others by the Supreme Court, the last anti-sodomy law was struck down only in 2003. Yet, although most Western governments no longer try to _______ how consenting adults have sex, the state still stands in the way of their choices about death. An increasing number of people—and this newspaper—believe that is wrong
dictate Source
President Donald Trump’s decision in 2017 to dramatically shrink Utah’s 526,000-hectare Bears Ears and 770,000-hectare Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments (by 85% and 50% of their areas, respectively) amounted to the biggest reduction of federal land protections in American history. The rollback cheered conservative lawmakers who are ideologically opposed to the idea that edicts from the White House can _______ how land some 2,000 miles (3,200km) away is used. The presidential power to declare national monuments is set out in the Antiquities Act, a little-known law passed by Congress in 1906
dictate Source
Training on a specific speaker greatly cuts down on the software’s guesswork. Just a few minutes of reading training text into software like Dragon _______, made by Nuance, produces a big jump in accuracy. For those willing to train the software for longer, the improvement continues to something close to 99% accuracy (meaning that of each hundred words of text, not more than one is wrongly added, omitted or changed)
dictate Source
The Peronists lost their majority in the Senate for the first time since democracy was restored in Argentina in 1983. Although they remain the largest party, Ms Fernández, who as vice-president chairs the upper chamber, can no longer _______ its agenda. Humiliatingly, the Peronists came third in Santa Cruz, her adopted home province in Patagonia, long a family fief
dictate Source
That a former general would be thinking about the global financial system says much about how significant that danger has become. The system is made up of the institutions, currencies and payment tools that _______ how the invisible liquidity feeding the real economy flows around the world. America has been its pulsating centre since the second world war
dictate Source
The first is to establish clearer boundaries for the fizz and ferment of the Chinese marketplace: a stronger legal system for businesses; simplified rules for day-to-day activities; a financial system better at allocating funds. The second is to make more _______ use of the government’s grip on the economy’s main levers: to make state firms more efficient; and to team them up with private firms in new industrial-policy initiatives. Entrepreneurs still have considerable latitude, so long as they stay in their lane and move in government-endorsed directions
dictate Source
What might be the consequences of all this? In the short run, a slighted France will be a more distrustful, irascible partner on other matters, less willing to compromise or give ground on trade, say, or over regulatory disputes. France cannot _______ what the European Union does; public European sympathy for France has so far been notably scant. But it can shape and block positions
dictate Source
Coca-Cola has weighed in this year, too, before and after Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican governor, signed a new law on March 31st that critics said would suppress black voters. The firm’s _______ efforts to soften aspects of the bill before its passage backfired twice over. First, civil-rights groups accused it of pusillanimity
discreet Source
In the Netherlands, by the time their first-born is 18, 20. 12% of couples will have _______ if that child is a son, compared with 20. 48% if she is a daughter—an increase in probability of 1
divorced Source
” She is one of a growing number of same-sex divorcees. By the end of 2018, 900 same-sex couples, of whom nearly three-quarters were female, had _______ . More lesbians than gay men get married, but the discrepancy in divorce rates is much wider than that in marriage rates
divorced Source
UNHAPPILY MARRIED for many years, Peter (not his real name) waited until his children were grown up before he _______ their mother. He hoped this would make the experience less upsetting for them
divorced Source
In practice, if the couple has children the person with custody often keeps the home—more often the mother. Yet the court’s interpretation sets a worrying precedent for _______ women. Their difficulties may be compounded by the two-child policy, which came into effect on January 1st
divorced Source
” Other spouses have been less magnanimous. Alec Wildenstein, a French-American art dealer who _______ his wife Jocelyn in 1999, spent a night in jail after threatening her with a gun when she walked in on his affair. In 2015 Harold Hamm
divorced Source
EBERHARD NEUTZ Laguna Beach, California To be exact Your recent leader on paying for the pandemic said that such measures will still not prevent the coronavirus from “extracting a heavy toll” (“Closed”, March 21st). The correct expression should be “ _______ ” a heavy toll. “Extracting a toll” is an eggcorn, a misheard word or phrase that retains its original meaning
exacting Source
In my work as a psychoanalyst I frequently encounter people in the grip of some punishing ideal of professional, romantic, physical or moral perfection. Rarely a day passes without at least one patient lamenting or berating themselves for having fallen short of an _______ goal or standard they had set for themselves. The self-laceration is usually amplified by the belief that someone else they know – a colleague, sibling or friend – would, in their place, have mustered the necessary effort or guile to succeed
exacting Source
What can be done so that projects like the imaginary Wilson line do not go off the rails? State and federal agencies can ensure that teams have enough capacity to review multiple projects and to manage contractors. Being too punctilious can backfire, though: New York’s _______ requirements are partly responsible for the astronomical costs of subway construction there. More advanced construction practices can also help
exacting Source
The current one thinks it has an answer: special economic zones. Special economic zones are geographically defined areas that enjoy lower taxes or less _______ regulation than the rest of a country. The intention is to promote investment in deprived areas with incentives that might be unaffordable, unpopular or unnecessary if applied nationally
exacting Source
Mr Narayen sets out the destination, and the managers of the three clouds chart the exact course. To make DDOM and the Experience cloud work, for instance, he set a goal that was both precise and _______ : Adobe’s data platform must be able to serve up content in less than one-tenth of a second. How that objective was reached was then up to the engineers
exacting Source
But Mr Rijkers’s collaborative effort, which was leaked to The Economist, is not yet among them. It passed an _______ internal review by other researchers in November. But, according to informed sources, publication was blocked by higher officials
exacting Source
The leader then had to decide how much of that 1,000 shillings to allocate to the citizen, and the citizen whether to accept that division. The disgruntled could punish a leader they considered unfair with a “fine” of 400 shillings, but _______ the punishment was not free: the citizen had to pay 100 shillings to do so. As loss-aversion theory predicts, embezzled tax provoked greater anger than stolen aid
exacting Source
When a researcher makes a claim about the world, the burden falls on them to demonstrate that the claims are true. In the best science, the standard of proof can be _______ . The researcher’s findings may need to be replicable by another scientist
exacting Source
These have alleviated some of the worst outcomes of a genetic disorder that can disable as well as kill. But for decades researchers have hoped to correct these _______ errors by providing the correct gene via gene therapy. At least one such treatment is likely to reach the market in 2022
inborn Source
In a second twin study, this time just on men, Dr Arvey asked to what extent leaders are born, and to what extent they are made. _______ leadership traits certainly do exist, but upbringing, he found, matters too. The influence of genes on leadership potential is weakest in boys brought up in rich, supportive families and strongest in those raised in harsher circumstances
inborn Source
Similarly, Organovo, a firm in San Diego, announced in December that it had transplanted printed human-liver tissue into mice, and that this tissue had survived and worked. Organovo hopes, within three to five years, to develop this procedure into a treatment for chronic liver failure and for _______ errors of metabolism in young children. The market for such treatments in America alone, the firm estimates, is worth more than $3bn a year
inborn Source
Though judged by others a pretty crude piece of kit, it was his passion, and he never ceased to try to perfect it. This compulsive tinkering was _______ . Any old piece of machinery he found as a child on the family farm had to be taken apart, to see how it worked
inborn Source
economist. com/printedition/2020-04-04","name":"Apr 4th 2020 edition"}}]} Finance & economicsApr 4th 2020 edition_______ and stingyEmerging-market lockdowns match rich-world ones. The handouts do notFew emerging-economy governments can afford a generous fiscal responseApr 4th 2020HONG KONGFacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppEditor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter
stringent Source
5°C, agreed on in Paris six years ago, is one to which many countries, notably the small- island states for which sea-level rise is an existential threat, are deeply committed. But many observers believe it _______ almost to the point of impossibility. Another conclusion in the IPCC report, though, may come as news to many
stringent Source
Start with countries. Courts in the Netherlands have accepted citizens’ arguments that their government’s climate plan was not good enough and have ordered more _______ emissions reductions. In 2019 the country’s supreme court upheld that ruling, in a case brought by Urgenda, an environmental charity
stringent Source
Asian chip foundries did not shut even during the first wave of covid-19. South Korea and Taiwan registered few deaths and avoided _______ national lockdowns. Even Chinese factories stayed open
stringent Source
According to a tally kept by Airfinity, an analytics company, 378 covid-19 vaccines are in various stages of development. Of those, three (made by Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca) have met the _______ rules for regulatory approval in at least one Western country; two more (made by Novavax and Johnson & Johnson) should get the green light soon. Two vaccines from China and a promising Russian one have also been authorised in some countries
stringent Source
This smaller effect could be caused both by more flexible rules and less enthusiasm for obeying them. Yet these less _______ lockdowns are still working. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s estimates of R—the average number of new people who catch the virus from each infected person—are dropping
stringent Source
To stand a good chance of scraping under the 2°C target, let alone the 1. 5°C target, just by curtailing greenhouse-gas emissions would require cuts far more _______ than the large emitting nations are currently offering. Recognising this, the agreement envisages a future in which, as well as hugely reducing the amount of CO2put into the atmosphere, nations also take a fair bit out
stringent Source
The shelves groaned under the weight of disinfectant and vitamin tablets, sacks of rice and flour, cooking oil and vegetables. Food-delivery firms played a crucial role in helping people in China endure the lockdown that began in Hubei province in late January, and the less _______ forms of quarantine that were subsequently implemented in cities across the country. Since early March there have been very few newly detected cases of covid-19 except among travellers from abroad
stringent Source
Mainland India’s 175m-strong Muslim population, already brutalised, ghettoised, stigmatised as “Pakistanis”—and now, increasingly as “Talibanis”—are at even greater risk of discrimination and persecution. Most of the mainstream media in India, embarrassingly _______ to the BJP, consistently referred to the Taliban as a terrorist group. Many Kashmiris who have lived for decades under the guns of half a million Indian soldiers, read the news differently
subservient Source
“Feminists of my generation understood gender as part of the apparatus of patriarchy: a social system, built on the biological foundation of human sexual dimorphism, which allocated different roles, rights and responsibilities to male and female humans. ” To women who understand the word “gender” thus, being described as a “cisgender woman” (a coinage by analogy with “trans”: “cis” is the Latin prefix for “on this side of”) can be taken to imply that they are content to live within the narrow confines of femininity under the patriarchy: _______ , abused and underpaid. Such women often describe themselves as “gender-critical”, and when a man says he must transition because he “feels like a woman” they deny there is any such feeling
subservient Source
In the 1990s, when the company was not doing so well, its organisational structure was completely overhauled. A few powerful PDs were given worldwide responsibility for the profit and loss account, and the NOs became _______ to them. In an article in Harvard Business Review in 1990, Christopher Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal suggested that the problem (especially for multinationals) was that: Dual reporting led to conflict and confusion; the proliferation of channels created informational log-jams as a proliferation of committees and reports bogged down the organisation; and overlapping responsibilities produced turf battles and a loss of accountability
subservient Source
Over the past year America has attacked its supply chains, cutting it off from essential high-tech tools. It has slapped export controls on SMIC’s customers and enacted new rules which threaten to designate the firm as _______ to the People’s Liberation Army. The company’s sales slumped by 7% in 2019 to $3
subservient Source
The “business-as-usual” approach that had characterised the early years of the first world war was entirely absent in the second. Monetary policy was made _______ to debt management and the purpose of the Bank of England became to help finance war. Debt management remained central to monetary policy between the 1940s and the mid-1970s
subservient Source
The scandal happened to coincide with a sweeping regulatory clampdown on Alibaba and other large non-state tech companies, seemingly motivated in part by the party’s desire to curtail their enormous economic clout. Despite its efforts to appear woke, the party is reluctant to up-end a patriarchal social order in which women are routinely treated as sex objects, _______ to men. The legal system still favours harassers
subservient Source
THIS AUTUMN “Downton Abbey”, a film based on the British television series, will be released and audiences will once more be transported back to the days when a powerful elite was surrounded by _______ staff who catered to their every need. But the modern versions of Lord and Lady Grantham are in the headlines every day
subservient Source
More worrying, they include Hungary and Poland. Both are big takers of EU aid, with governments that have made their justice systems _______ to politicians. Hungary has the highest fraud rate of any EU member
subservient Source
But just look at what is happening in the world. Emmanuel Macron, _______ socialist | The EconomistJul 8, 2021 .
surreptitious Source
The subject of the speech was the Fed’s large scale asset purchases (LSAPs), colloquially known as quantitative easing (QE). It had none of the _______ hints about coming Fed actions that attract headlines. Rather, it mucked about in dark, abstruse corners of corporate finance, devoting three of its 19 pages to academic references
tantalizing Source
The arguments the two sides put forward, in other words, are complex and debatable. But many trans activists think that any disagreement is _______ to hate speech and try to suppress it. Some universities with policies that reflect the belief that trans women are women have acted on complaints about people who do nothing more than express a contrary view
tantamount Source
In South Africa, where four out of ten women say their first sexual experience was rape, the polygamous president, Jacob Zuma, believes “you cannot just leave a woman if she is ready. ” To deny such a woman sex, would be “ _______ to rape”, he told the judge in his 2006 rape trial (he was acquitted). In America, where an average of 232 rapes are reported to the police every day, such views would attract instant condemnation
tantamount Source
It plans to spend $100bn over the next three years. It has also stopped cutting prices—which in chipmaking, where processing power has only got cheaper, is _______ to raising them. Its chief executive, C
tantamount Source
American and European institutions and corporations face the brunt of these malign activities. ” Mike Pompeo, America’s secretary of state, cautioned that China’s meddling in European politics was _______ to “assaults on sovereignty”. For John Chipman, director-general of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a think-tank in London, “Essentially [Mr] Esper used his speech in Munich to announce the fact of a US- China cold war with technological competition at its core
tantamount Source
Roughly 34% of legacy applicants are admitted—more than five times the rate of non-legacy applicants. This is _______ to affirmative action for well-off white students. According to a survey of freshmen conducted by the Harvard Crimson, the college newspaper, 88% of legacy students come from families making more than $125,000 a year
tantamount Source
That is more than can be said for China’s no-strings-attached concessional lending, which, according to AidData, has no effect on the receiving country’s GDP. It appears to be _______ to an export subsidy to Chinese firms, with a side order of backhanders for local elites. On a happier note, the study looks at whether Chinese aid damages Western assistance
tantamount Source
Russia’s defence ministry says that hazing has fallen dramatically in recent years. But the government did little to dispel the idea that conscription was _______ to punishment when it used the draft to silence Ruslan Shaveddinov, an anti-corruption activist and protegé of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s main opposition leader (who was later poisoned and jailed). In December 2019 Mr Shaveddinov was pressed into military service and immediately sent to a base in Novaya Zemlya, an arctic archipelago, and put to work on menial tasks
tantamount Source
Erasmus described his teachers there as “quasi theologians” whose “brains are the most addled, tongues the most uncultured, wits the dullest, teachings the thorniest, characters the least attractive, lives the most hypocritical, talk the most slanderous, and hearts the blackest on Earth. ” How could the church be rescued from its _______ ? Erasmus believed that the answer lay in rediscovering the spirit of Christ. He did not believe, as some Christians did, that it was necessary to get rid of your property and devote yourself to the poor
torpor Source
AS PART of its quest to end Japan’s 15-year-old deflationary _______ , the Bank of Japan is buying around 70% of all newly issued Japanese government bonds (JGBs). Whether this will boost inflation to the central bank’s target of 2% by the spring of next year remains uncertain: it is barely halfway there
torpor Source
But the world economy could yet shake markets again. Even if it doesn’t, the contrast between American vigour and _______ abroad will delay interest-rate rises, argues Mark McClellan of the Bank Credit Analyst, a newsletter, because the Fed cannot tighten monetary policy without sending the dollar on a tear. That could itself cause renewed financial-market wobbles, particularly in emerging markets with dollar-denominated debts (see article)
torpor Source
Investors fret that the world economy is being drawn into another downturn, and that policymakers seeking to keep recession at bay have run out of ammunition. Bazooka boo-boo The good news is that more can be done to jolt economies from their low-growth, low- inflation _______ (see Briefing). Plenty of policies are left, and all can pack a punch
torpor Source
A study in 2016 by the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister company, found that Saudi Arabia bins 427kg per person annually, triple the average in Europe and North America. Some may chalk this up to traditions of hospitality: even a “light lunch” in Cairo or Beirut leaves guests in a _______ . The reasons are more varied, though
torpor Source
Slow food, slow economy At its best Italy’s love of tradition makes for idyllic holidays, wonderful wines and delightful Slow Food. Italians like to think that their art, culture and way of life will lift them out of economic _______ . But the sacralisation of heritage is a millstone
torpor Source
In reality it indicates a party abandoning conservative ideology altogether. There are few more _______ conservatives than Ms Cheney, who was sacked from the Republican leadership this week. The daughter of a vice-president renowned for those qualities, she voted for Donald Trump’s bills 93% of the time and has rarely come across a centre-left proposal she did not view as deviant socialism
trenchant Source
Like him, she had quit the party, for her part in exasperation at its fecklessness. But Ms Pécresse performed well in the four televised primary debates, coming across as serious, well-briefed and _______ . She was also careful to remind viewers that she can be a vote-winner
trenchant Source
On March 7th a nurse was fined £10,000 ($14,000) under covid-19 legislation for organising a 40-person demonstration demanding higher pay rises for health workers. And after spending much of a year locked up by decree, freeborn Englishmen and women are less _______ in the defence of their liberties than Mr Johnson once assumed. By two to one, they think protest should be illegal in a pandemic; and when police arrested women at a vigil for a murder victim on March 13th, a plurality thought that they were right to have banned the event
trenchant Source
On this latest occasion, Mr Trump was asked by reporters if he condemned the 500 or so white racists who assembled in Virginia this weekend, led by such provocateurs and publicity-seekers as David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and Richard Spencer, a leader of the so-called “alt-right”, to protest against the planned removal of a Confederate monument. Mr Trump, so often a man of _______ opinions, proved oddly reluctant to pin the blame for the violence on the white nationalists who set out to start a riot and inspire fear, and succeeded. Instead the president deplored what he called a scene of: “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides
trenchant Source
Like Mr Cameron, Mr Kurz is happy to attack the EU, taking credit for any of its achievements yet shifting blame to Brussels for any problem. When the EU’s vaccination rollout was sluggish, Mr Kurz was among its loudest and most _______ critics. The Austrian was among the hold-outs determined to limit the EU’s €750bn ($915bn) recovery fund
trenchant Source
“I must discover what it is. ” Mr Gottlieb, a former editor of the New Yorker and a distinguished book publisher, is a _______ critic and not easily impressed. He listened to surreptitious recordings of Garbo’s phone calls “until I was so bored I couldn’t bear to go on”
trenchant Source
The role of vaccines based on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology in this success heralds a new era in the development of therapies for other diseases. The mRNA breakthrough was made possible by scientific co-operation over three decades that helped transform a promising concept into a highly potent and _______ biopharmaceutical platform. We believe that in 15 years, one-third of all newly approved drugs will be based on mRNA
versatile Source
Dropbox, a cloud-storage firm, has sold its headquarters in San Francisco. Its new sites, known internally as studios, will feature larger conference rooms with _______ layouts. And whereas big majorities of people tell surveys they favour hybrid work, they clash over what this means for meetings specifically
versatile Source
95 Echoes of Russian and Yiddish literature resound in this delightful picaresque, but you need not hear them to enjoy it. It is the late 19th century, and a Jewish mother in the Pale of Settlement sets out to retrieve her _______ brother-in-law from Minsk. Technicolour characters, pathos and humour are all wonderfully captured in a nimble translation from the Hebrew
wayward Source
S&P Global, a credit-rating agency, predicts that after an abysmal year in which revenues fell by 8-10%, America’s capital-goods sector will see sales rise by 5% in 2021. Worries about weak demand for products are being replaced in chief executives’ minds by fear of supply bottlenecks, from worldwide chip shortages to the freak traffic jam in the Suez Canal caused by a _______ container ship that may block a critical artery of global commerce for days. Still, short-term supply niggles are a better problem to have than falling demand
wayward Source
That would be the biggest escalation yet in the EU’s internal feud over the minimum democratic standards that all its members should uphold. If the commission goes ahead, it would signal a strong resolve to bring _______ members into line—and thus mark a big escalation in the long conflict. Mr Kurz is a 35-year-old wunderkind whose tough anti- immigration policies aided his rapid rise to become head of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), foreign minister and then chancellor
wayward Source
One problem is that there is no consensus on the best way to predict an object’s future orbit. To do this its position must be recorded several times, to observe how its path is being altered by the gravitational pulls of the Earth, Moon and sun, the pressure imposed on it by solar radiation and, in low orbits, the drag caused by _______ wisps of air from the upper atmosphere, and so on. Different teams often come up with different results, says Dr Konacki, who was once a delegate to the EU SST Consortium
wayward Source
In casual clothes and chatting about the tools of his trade—a “Vogel” crystal, compass, steel crucifix, pendulum and bag of salt from Jerusalem—he says he can deliver unreal results. Hired to _______ an apartment in a wealthy district of central Paris, he predicts that the air will change. In the winter, he says, the owners will no longer need their central heating, the result of beneficial vibrations
exorcise Source
Mr Snyder points out that India's state founder Mahatma Gandhi "drew upon Hindu religious and cultural materials" to mobilise against oppressive taxation, the mistreatment of women and lower castes, and colonial rule. But he was unable to _______ the spirit of hard- line Hindu nativism and this eventually contributed to India's bloody partition. As the professor concludes, "mobilising around religion" for any purpose "can be effective, but not without risk
exorcise Source
More lastingly, it made possible the success that Spain has enjoyed on almost every front during the past 30 years. The understanding did not, however, _______ all the ghosts of Franco, or all the legacies of his regime. It left a Catholic church rather too closely tied to the state for an increasingly secular country with a grim, if distant, history of religious persecution
exorcise Source
Cat, meanwhile, forced to choose between authentic empowerment and commercial success, is quietly dropped. A story of an older man abusing his power over a younger artistic protégée is a pointed choice for the Old Vic, a theatre attempting to _______ the alleged abuses of Kevin Spacey, its former artistic director. The play’s most chilling implication, though, is that for every public exposure, there are many more men like Bernard, inhabiting dark corners left unilluminated in a world of bright lights
exorcise Source
The stagnation of the 1970s was cured by the central bank engineered downturn of the early 1980s, which ushered in the long, growth-rich Great Moderation. Inflation is the enemy, and the more than can be done to _______ the inflationary demon from the modern economy, the stronger and more durable will long-run growth prove to be. But just as the gold standard served a useful person in the late 19th century only to become a mental policy prison in the 1920s, the inflation hawkishness of the 1980s seems to have created a generation of central bankers unprepared to handle the monetary challenge posed by the Great Recession
exorcise Source
Yet the Fed’s shift to a less expansionary monetary policy is only half the story: central banks in the euro area and Japan, the world’s second- and fourth-biggest economies (at market exchange rates), are still moving in the opposite direction. In Japan, the government of Shinzo Abe is striving to _______ the deflation that has haunted its economy for a decade and a half, in part through a bond-purchasing scheme on a par with America’s. If Japan is confronting the ghost of deflation past, the euro zone is spooked by deflation yet to come
exorcise Source
The revolution in unconventional gas production from shale beds, which began in the United States and is now spreading around the world, is shaking Russian state capitalism to its foundations. All the powers of Mr Putin’s Russia have joined in a holy alliance to _______ this spectre: president and prime minister, oligarchs and bureaucrats, trendy environmentalists and Kremlin police-spies. Mr Putin has denounced shale for costing too much and ruining the environment
exorcise Source
But there is a growing trend of pastors in new revivalist Christian churches, both in Africa and Britain, preaching a different, malevolent kind of kindoki. They convince parents that their children are possessed by demons which must be _______ d through isolation, fasting and beatings. Gullible and desperate believers, who consider their pastors to be “little Gods”, will pay good money for them to cure this malady
exorcise Source
” Kurt Vonnegut, author (1922–2007), Player Piano (1952) “The IBM machine has no ethic of its own; what it does is enable one or two people to do the computing work that formerly required many more people. If people often use it stupidly, it’s their stupidity, not the machine’s, and a return to the abacus would not _______ the failing. People can be treated as drudges just as effectively without modern machines
exorcise Source
AS GRAPE varieties go, pinot noir is famously _______ . Got right, the thin-skinned grapes can produce some of the world’s finest wines
finicky Source
It is a puzzling and paradoxical thing, the mental equivalent of climbing up a ladder and removing it at the same time. Why let such _______ problems get in the way? After all, the present seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. In recent years many clever companies have found a way to empty our wallets along with our minds
finicky Source
BECAUSE it is locked away inside the skull, the brain is hard to study. Looking at it requires _______ machines which use magnetism or electricity or both to bypass the bone. There is just one tendril of brain tissue that can be seen from outside the body without any mucking about of this sort
finicky Source
A year later Google abruptly shut its Chinese search engine after a dispute with censors. Chinese who want to access Western social media must do so via virtual private networks, which is _______ and can be illegal. One exception to this heavy-handed rule is LinkedIn
finicky Source
(Some linguists—a notoriously fractious bunch—will no doubt take exception to this taxonomy. ) So, is there anything sensible to be said about grammar? Theorists' _______ distinctions aside, few would object that it is a set of rules that govern the way bits of speech come together to become meaningful utterances. That, of course, raises the question of who sets these rules
finicky Source
Of these, the team reckon just under an eighth were associated with pollutants released in a part of the world different from that in which the death occurred, thanks to transport of such particles from place to place by the wind. Almost twice as many (22% of the total) were a consequence of goods and services that were produced in one region (often poor) and then exported for consumption in another (often rich, and with more _______ environmental standards for its own manufacturers). In effect, such rich countries are exporting air pollution, and its associated deaths, as they import goods
finicky Source
Nonetheless, Australia’s example shows that reforms considered impossible elsewhere are perfectly achievable. Democrats in America _______ most proposals to restrain the rising costs of public pensions or health care as tantamount to throwing grannies off a cliff; in Australia it was the left that pioneered such policies. The Labor Party sold obligatory private pensions to unions as an increase in benefits, since it is technically employers who are required to make regular payments into investment funds on their workers’ behalf
assail Source
By-elections provided opportunities for targeted campaigns. In 1912 the NUWSS established a fund to _______ candidates who opposed suffrage. Two anti-suffrage Liberals duly lost their seats
assail Source
But perhaps speedy results should be expected from a firm where the main shareholder, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, is also the boss of Ferrari. Poltrona Frau has managed to persuade investors that a luxury brand can protect it from the troubles that _______ the Italian furniture industry. Just as some fashion-industry firms have improved their prospects by going upmarket, so Poltrona Frau intends to bring glamour to its customers' living rooms through co-branding initiatives with Ferrari (that should be easy to arrange), LVMH and Dior
assail Source
The operation of America's new killing machines must be brought clearly within the law. ","description":"Although it raises difficult questions, the use of drones does not _______ the rules of war","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
contravene Source
It sets out 20 things defining a comment as “clearly illegal”, such as incitement to hatred or showing the swastika. Once posts are flagged by users, a social-media firm has 24 hours—extended to a week in complex cases—to check and remove those that _______ the rules, or face a €50m ($60m) fine. In the first week, Facebook’s over 1,000 German moderators have had to process hundreds of thousands of cases
contravene Source
That rulebook clearly states that “each user is responsible for the content he or she provides. ” On Saturday, it was updated to reflect Twitter’s new stance: targeted abuse, harassment and threats of violence now specifically _______ the platform’s user policy. “We’re here,” said a blog post explaining the change, “and we’re listening to you
contravene Source
Despite some dissenting views, the international consensus for decades has been that the settlements Israel has built in the territories it captured in its war with Arab states in 1967 are indeed illegal. They are deemed to _______ the Fourth Geneva Convention, which says “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”. \n\nIsrael, undeterred, has clung to its own interpretation of international law
contravene Source
Today James Murdoch, as the heir apparent to News Corporation, was subjected to a sustained battering by parliamentarians about his knowledge—or lack of it—of key events in the phone-hacking scandal. Apart from proving that he did not _______ the law in his own handling of the matter, Mr Murdoch's own future prospects in the News Corp empire also depend on his ability to fend off allegations of culpability and incompetence. Continue reading » The death of Philip Gould Tribune of the strivers Nov 8th 2011, 0:25 by J
contravene Source
Worshippers will be told that “honour killing”—the murder by men of female relatives deemed to have besmirched the family's moral standing (for such heinous crimes as going to the cinema with a man who is neither husband nor kin)—is not just a breach of the law. Such acts are also a sin against God, the preachers will say: they _______ the Prophet's teaching on clemency. The idea of using Muslim sermons to stamp out one of most grisly practices of traditional society, of which dozens of cases still occur every year, belongs to Ali Bardakoglu, the new head of Turkey's Religious Affairs Directorate
contravene Source
Four years ago, the government drafted laws that would give it more flexibility in procuring medicines either from homegrown sources or from cheaper foreign exporters, and has been working on the details ever since. In response, 39 pharmaceutical firms are suing the government because, they claim, the changes would _______ South Africa's constitutional protection of their patent rights. The case, which began on March 5th, has been adjourned until April 18th
contravene Source
COMPLIANCE OFFICERS are the killjoys of finance. To bankers and traders keen to let rip, they are the po-faced types who frown at any transaction that might breach this rule or _______ that regulation. A recent episode of “Billions”, a television drama about Wall Street, captured the rainmakers’ frustration: so fed up is “Dollar” Bill Stern with having his wings clipped by Ari Spyros that the veteran trader rams the side of the compliance chief’s Porsche when he pulls out of the car park of their hedge fund, Axe Capital
contravene Source
They aren’t allowed to go anywhere or to take on any work, so they are left with nothing but boredom, guilt about leaving behind their families and dreams of success that will never come true. As depressing as it sounds, “Limbo” is also a delight, thanks to its surrealist style, its absurdist humour and a _______ turn by Amir El-Masry as a despondent young Syrian musician. The film’s writer-director, Ben Sharrock, is an exciting British talent to watch
poignant Source
Two of his stories have already been published in the New Yorker and one in Granta, and his writing has gathered plaudits from Mohsin Hamid and Salman Rushdie. This collection is all about how Pakistan works: a _______ picture of Punjabi life from top to bottom. This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition var s_account = 'economistcomprod'; s
poignant Source
The country had seen much bigger weather events; in 1991 a huge cyclone killed about 140,000 people. Still, Aila’s storm surge brought enough seawater to _______ villages and wipe out rice crops. The inhabitants of Bujbunia still wince when they recall how hungry they were afterwards
inundate Source
Another, more urgent one stems from even small rises in the sea level. These can cause exceptionally high tides to briefly but entirely _______ the narrow strips of low-lying land that comprise most atolls. Such “king tides”, as they are known, are becoming more frequent
inundate Source
Much of this is wasted. “Flood” irrigation systems, where water is released to _______ fields or furrows, lose water to evaporation, or to percolation (ie, to the soil itself before it can be absorbed by the crop’s roots). A common estimate is that flood- irrigation squanders 50% of the water it releases
inundate Source
People are moving to the western part of Holland because it's where the economy grows. ” In 1993 and again in 1995 heavy river flooding _______ d the countryside and nearly rose above dykes in population centres, forcing the evacuation of more than 250,000 people. Katrina was the final wake-up call, making the Dutch face up to both the unreliability of forecasts of once-in-a-century events and the impossibility of their repeating the American feat of evacuating a million people
inundate Source
Much of the CPRA’s work involves dredging up sediment where it is abundant, including under the sea, and piping it to areas of threatened marshland. Behind an artificial beach in Cameron Parish, Brett Dupuis, a project manager for Weeks Marine, a dredging company, is working on a $31m project to restore 740 acres (300 hectares) of submerged marsh, which was _______ d by the sea during Hurricane Rita in 2005. For three months his dredging platform, two miles offshore, has been sucking up dirt from the sea bed and piping it ashore
inundate Source
Much of the CPRA’s work involves dredging up sediment where it is abundant, including under the sea, and piping it to areas of threatened marshland. Behind an artificial beach in Cameron Parish, Brett Dupuis, a project manager for Weeks Marine, a dredging company, is working on a $31m project to restore 740 acres (300 hectares) of submerged marsh, which was _______d by the sea during Hurricane Rita in 2005. For three months his dredging platform, two miles offshore, has been sucking up dirt from the sea bed and piping it ashore
inundate Source
The first is of fancy central London estates that date back to the 17th century, identified in soft hues. The second is where potential coastal flooding may _______ New York—reprised as today's Daily chart. In a special report on Germany, we publish a chart of support for the political parties across 13 years and a decade's worth of four economic indicators
inundate Source
Natural disasters disrupt production, much as less destructive episodes of bad weather do. In Japan the interruption to electricity supply means that output has been affected even in areas the tsunami did not directly _______ . Toyota, for example, halted production because of problems with parts and supplies
inundate Source
Iraq’s Kurdish region, the only reasonably governed part, is no longer in imminent danger. The great dam that threatens to _______ Mosul, Iraq’s second city, captured by IS in June, has been secured for the government by a combination of American air power and Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces. Meanwhile, Iraqi politics has taken a welcome turn with the forcing out, after eight disastrous years, of Nuri al-Maliki, the sectarian Shia prime minister
inundate Source
AMERICA’S HOUSING market is behaving oddly. Residential property—worth $35trn, slightly more than America’s stockmarket—seems strangely _______ to the economic carnage around it. House prices in May were 4
oblivious Source
MY FATHER WAS a teenager in 1940 when the Soviet Union invaded Estonia. An orphan and poor, he was largely _______ to the changes—until June 14th 1941. On that day, working a summer job at the railyards in Tallinn, he saw thousands of Estonians pushed at bayonet- point into hundreds of Russian cattle cars, 30 or 40 to a wagon
oblivious Source
The G7 cannot be held responsible for the breakdown of multilateralism. But it certainly can be held responsible for not resisting protectionism and for being _______ to the blindingly obvious need to be a global force for good. Lost hegemony Over the past two decades, the world has witnessed the rise of a defensive nationalism across both liberal and illiberal countries
oblivious Source
None reported Mr Wham and his badly drawn emoji to the police—although in retrospect they should have. Indeed, the police themselves remained in the station, apparently _______ to the dangerous events unfolding outside. But this week the authorities corrected their oversight, charging Mr Wham with holding an illegal public protest
oblivious Source
National borders would become tighter. Protectionism would become the global norm rather than the exception, _______ to the lessons of the 1930s. Global output could actually continue to shrink
oblivious Source
“It is impermissible to overlook or whitewash mistakes, which in itself would be a mistake and would give rise to more and worse mistakes,” the document said. Mr Xi seems _______ to this warning. Details of his proposed resolution are still secret, but he has shown far less eagerness than Deng to dissect Mao’s wrongdoings
oblivious Source
In their eyes, the “actual malice” standard—which requires public figures alleging libel to prove the publisher printed a statement knowing it was false or without caring whether it was true—may now be damaging. The standard has “evolved from a high bar to recovery into an effective immunity from liability”, Justice Gorsuch wrote, and has become an “ _______ subsidy for the publication of falsehoods by means and on a scale previously unimaginable. ” Justice Thomas agreed that Sullivan has contributed to a “proliferation of falsehoods” by “insulat[ing]…those who perpetrate lies” from libel suits
ironclad Source
FOR 18 MONTHS America’s borders have been shut to foreigners from 33 countries, including Brazil, Britain, China, India and members of the European Union. The ban, which was imposed by Donald Trump when he was president and maintained by his successor, Joe Biden, was not _______ : those with time and money could spend two weeks in an exempt country—Caribbean islands and Mexico seem to have been popular—then continue to America. This made little epidemiological sense
ironclad Source
THE SONG begins in typical power-ballad fashion, with _______ piano chords and rumbling strings. Soon, though, the lyrics go awry
plaintive Source
THE SONG begins with _______ melodic whistling, the sort of theme produced by the hero of a Spaghetti Western as he walks into the sunset. Electric guitars and synthesisers provide backing chords and gentle licks, before the rasping voice of the lead singer begins: “I follow the Moskva / Down to Gorky Park / Listening to the wind of change…” Musically, “Wind of Change”, released in 1990, is a fairly standard power ballad
plaintive Source
IT TAKES AN effort—a small hardening of the heart—to see day-old Jinghai Poultry chicks for what they are. These, for all their _______ cheeping and soft, fuzzy plumage, are tiny, high-performance meat factories. The product of decades of genetic research in American and European laboratories, they hatch in China thanks to global supply chains, involving the air-freighting of eggs and chicks between secure breeding sites on five continents
plaintive Source
Across the album ambient birdsong swells in the background, in shades of joy and sorrow, growing in intensity until it reaches a crescendo in the final track, “Owl Song”. The longest piece, at over three minutes, the owl’s distinctive calls take on a _______ quality. “Wake Up Calls” was begun well before the pandemic; it has taken nine years of work, much of that spent finding the required sounds
plaintive Source
Some were recorded in the prison yard. At once joyful and _______ , the titles reveal their depths of suffering. “I See the Whole World Dying of AIDS” rings true in a country with one of the highest rates of HIV in the world
plaintive Source
THE locked doors of a public library in West Norwood, a drab part of south London, are an unlikely economic indicator. But a _______ note explaining the closure—thieves have stripped the roof of its copper cladding, letting in rain on the books below—hints at profound changes to the global economy. And copper is the metal most intimately affected
plaintive Source
Saudi Arabia said the show violated its cyber-crime laws. Commercial barriers may be easier to _______ . For decades the centrepiece of Arabic television has been the Ramadan serial, which airs one episode each night during the holy month, and is meant for families glued to the tube in a post-prandial stupor
surmount Source
History and all that Three barriers block Germany taking on that leadership—all understandable ones. The first and hardest to _______ is historical. Even the word for leader, Führer, conjures up terrible memories
surmount Source
What is more, much of the population will remain poor for years to come, with little discretionary cash to spend on online shopping and investment products. \nEven if the upstart digital champions _______ these obstacles they will increasingly face one another. As their offerings broaden they will inevitably begin to overlap
surmount Source
Although Mr Purves will not reveal the financial targets set by BMW, Rolls-Royce should by then be at least self-funding. Mr Purves is confident that Rolls-Royce can _______ the other obstacle in its path: public and regulatory disapproval of cars with hugely powerful engines. Unlike a Ferrari, for example, a Rolls-Royce is defined not by the sound its engine makes, but by silence and torque
surmount Source
THE most striking result of Turkey's general election on April 18th is the dizzying rise of the far-right National Action Party, led by an enigmatic former economics professor, Devlet Bahceli. Pollsters had doubted whether the Nationalists (better known by their Turkish initials, MHP) would even _______ the 10% barrier to get seats in parliament. In the event, they won 18% of the vote, more than double their share in the last election, in 1995, putting them in second place behind the left-of-centre party of Bulent Ecevit, the caretaker prime minister, who looks set to stay on
surmount Source
In theory, that leaves plenty of room for private payment services to bridge the gap. In practice, they have lots of obstacles to _______ . Concerns about money laundering and financing of terrorist networks mean new payment providers not only have to deal with the usual red tape but also cope with layers of additional regulation
surmount Source
Unlike past crisis presidents, Mr Biden does not start with vast majorities in Congress; a lukewarm mandate gave Democrats only the barest majorities. Yet he has wielded the tools at his disposal—a budget measure known as reconciliation to _______ the threat of a filibuster—to pass laws all the same. Transformational presidents often arrive as curious avatars
surmount Source
State-building was anyway not their mission in Afghanistan, he said; rooting out terrorists was. And to those who believe he should not have gone ahead with the withdrawal plan he inherited from Donald Trump, Mr Biden said he would in that case have been forced to _______ the war: “How many more lives, American lives, is it worth, how many endless rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery?” He appears to have acquired some of Mr Trump’s disingenuous method as well as his Afghanistan policy. In fact, around 70,000 Afghan soldiers and policemen have died fighting the Taliban
escalate Source
If Russia invades it is likely to get bogged down in a long conflict; America and European countries will impose severe sanctions; NATO will be compelled to increase deployments close to Russia’s borders and America will boost its delivery of arms to Ukraine. If he de- _______ s, though, America and European allies are willing to offer Mr Putin a broad dialogue about security in Europe, though that may fall short of Mr Putin’s demands, such as a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO. Although Mr Biden is extremely unlikely to deploy troops to protect Ukraine, Kurt Volker of the Centre for European Policy Analysis, another think-tank, has no doubt that he would uphold America’s commitment to defend NATO allies in Europe, including the Baltic republics, which like Ukraine were once part of the Soviet Union
escalate Source
But it can make its Arab citizens more equal by devoting resources to their communities. It could make the administration of Jerusalem more inclusive, so that tiffs over fencing do not _______ into war. It must take more responsibility for the suffering in the West Bank and Gaza—and work harder to alleviate it
escalate Source
On November 24th he apologised for joking that the bank would outlast the Chinese Communist Party. Testing times If the worst relations between China and America for decades have not prompted decoupling in Asia, what might? The confrontation could yet _______ but both sides seem keen to avoid that for now. Wang Qishan, China’s vice- president, declared that “isolation leads to backwardness”
escalate Source
You would need to map the potential flashpoints from here to there. If you judge that a conflict cannot de- _______ easily, the wiser course might be to stay away. In geopolitics, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing
escalate Source
In a show of solidarity with Greece, a fellow EU member, France has moved a couple of Rafale fighter jets to Crete and deployed two warships to exercise with the Greek navy. Unless cool heads prevail, there is a risk that matters will _______ further—even as far as blows. Three main ingredients make this a recipe for trouble
escalate Source
Fishing illustrates the Richard Scarry rule: politicians are terrified to mess with workers whose jobs are often depicted in children’s books, since voters have a romantic view of farmers, firefighters, cops, etc. So fights between national fishing fleets can swiftly _______ , until prime ministers and presidents are slapping each other with figurative flounders. The EU keeps such squabbles in check between its members, but Britain has left the club
escalate Source
economist. com/printedition/2021-07-24","name":"Jul 24th 2021 edition"}}]} United StatesJul 24th 2021 editionCtrl-alt-_______After failing to dissuade cyber-attacks, America looks to its friends for helpTime to try collective defenceJul 20th 2021FacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppBACK IN 2014 then-President Barack Obama tried to get serious about China’s state-sponsored hacking of American companies, which was already seen as a long-running problem. That year the Justice Department indicted, in absentia, five members of the People’s Liberation Army for hacking commercial secrets
denounce Source
But he now needs to persuade people that the consultation is not just a gimmick, while not jeopardising his reform programme. ","description":"But protesters still _______ the “president of the rich”","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
denounce Source
One belongs to Clintonworld and the other is claimed by Trumpland. Mr Johnson’s ministers _______ the Supreme Court and Scottish and Welsh parliaments created by Mr Blair as constitutional vandalism, and stuff quangos once dominated by Blairites with their own fellow-travellers. Fourteen years into his retirement, Mr Blair still outshines Mr Johnson in intellectual discipline, darting ahead of a disorganised government with plans to fix covid-19 testing and vaccinations
denounce Source
Another was Mr Juncker, president of the European Commission; as the very same story reported, he was “elected by the European Parliament—taking into account the results of the European elections. ” What do people mean when they _______ the EU’s “unelected bureaucrats”, and are they making any sense? Every government has bureaucrats, who are by nature unelected. The EU, with about 33,000 civil servants, is dwarfed by the British government, which employs over 400,000
denounce Source
Several of Mr Kadhimi’s bodyguards were hurt when at least one drone hit his home in the protected “Green Zone” of Baghdad (more drones may have been shot down). The prime minister survived and, apparently nursing a wounded wrist, soon appeared on television to _______ the “cowardly” attack. The hit was so rudimentary—apparently involving quadcopters of the sort that can be bought by hobbyists and rigged with small bombs—that it could have been staged by any one of Iraq’s many armed groups
denounce Source
But although pro-government parties duly succeeded in snaffling 107 of the 120 available seats, they badly misjudged how Kyrgyzstani people would react. Large crowds took to the streets to _______ the suspected swindle. But what began as genuine democratic protests somehow metamorphosed into a power grab—and a remarkable change in circumstances for Kyrgyzstan’s most fortunate convict
denounce Source
Today that very elite, snug in Los Angeles canyons and university departments, has expanded. Hollywood studios _______ the wolves of Wall Street and the environmental vandals at large in the oil industry. The liberal sort of academic (meaning the type that favours big government) far outnumbers the conservative kind, by five to one, according to one recent study
denounce Source
He makes his findings freely available. He then shows up on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to _______ the bad guys. More appearances seem assured
denounce Source
However in recent years, many academics and academic institutions have been falling far short of this ideal. A phenomenon has arisen—sometimes referred to as “academic mobbing” —in which a large number of scholars get together to ritually _______ one of their colleagues, usually by means of an open letter. Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt drew attention to this phenomenon in their book “The Coddling of the American Mind” (Penguin, 2018)
denounce Source
economist. com/printedition/2020-11-21","name":"Nov 21st 2020 edition"}}]} AsiaNov 21st 2020 editionCan you _______ the love tonight?India’s ruling party invents a Muslim plot against Hindu womenThe Bharatiya Janata Party is determined to stop a non-existent “love jihad”Nov 19th 2020DELHIFacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppTHE ORGANISER, an English-language weekly that is a mouthpiece for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the century-old flagship of India’s swelling armada of Hindu nationalist groups, is in no doubt about the dangers of “love jihad”. The luring of good Hindu girls into marriage and conversion is only the first phase of a broader Muslim plot, asserts a recent article
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HORDES OF INVADERS gallop into China, armed with sinister, supernatural powers. As they thunder towards the capital, it falls to a simple country girl to _______ the attack. Over mountains and across deserts, dodging arrows and unleashing batteries of fireworks, in 115 action-packed minutes plucky Hua Mulan sees off the dastardly foreigners and brings honour to China
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As one of the first industries to offer online transactions, banks have been fending off hackers since the dawn of the internet. They spend more on cyber-security than any other sort of firm—$2,691 per employee—and manage to _______ a lot of the attempted thefts. Nonetheless, since 2016, no industry has suffered more from attacks than banks (see chart)
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If “responsible business” is going to mean anything, it requires taking sides and telling the old guard what younger generations have figured out: inspiring social-media adverts aside, what business is doing isn’t working. At the individual level, if your company is actively lobbying against climate legislation or taxes to fund environmental goals, don’t let your ESG work be a marketing _______ for irresponsible leadership. Young employees in particular must lead this charge: tell your chief executives that it’s not acceptable to feign loyalty to saving the planet while misleading the public and pressing politicians to forestall aggressive climate action
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No one has shown better how to administer one than Mark Schneider, Nestlé’s first chief executive from outside the firm in almost a century—and the barista-in-chief of its three- year turnaround. Mr Schneider, a straight-talking German with an American passport and a fondness for quips, is the perfect _______ for bossy hedge funds. He is not prone to panic
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For a start, the strategy seems to mean different things to different ratesetters. Jens Weidmann, the hawkish head of the Bundesbank and a member of the ECB’s governing council, took pains to point out that although inflation might _______ from the target temporarily, the ECB would not aim to exceed it. That is in contrast to America’s Federal Reserve, which also recently revised its target
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It is hard to categorise but industry wisdom is that “closet indexers” are gradually being winnowed out. These funds are ostensibly “active” (ie, they are stockpickers) but they manage their portfolios to ensure that their performance does not _______ much from the index. For all the talk about polarisation, the change in asset management is not that dramatic
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Yet his firm does not seem likely to defy investors by ramping up gas output significantly. An executive at another big oil company says the higher prices may add pressure to invest a bit more—but not to _______ from long-term climate commitments. Instead, he says new investment is likely to come from two sources that are not exposed to public pressure: the state-owned oil companies and privately held firms
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Some rich countries are offering more tutoring for struggling students, individually or in small groups. Some poor countries are simplifying overstuffed curriculums, allowing teachers to _______ from government textbooks and spend more time teaching basic reading and maths. Such reforms seem to work
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In the late 20th century the Republican Party already looked a bit less liberal and more populist than most mainstream European parties. But according to the V-Dem Institute’s analysis, it only really started to _______ to “illiberalism” when it embraced religious values under Mr Bush after his election in 2000. The party then veered into populism in 2010 with the rise of the Tea Party movement, which vowed to curb what it saw as the unjustifiable expansion of the federal government under Barack Obama
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On average, INFLATION rises when output is above potential and falls when output is below potential. However, in the short run, the relationship between inflation and the output gap can _______ from the longer-term pattern and can thus be misleading. Alas for policymakers – because nobody really knows what an economy’s potential output is, the size and even the direction of the output gap can easily be misdiagnosed, which can contribute to serious errors in MACROECONOMIC POLICY
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Over the same period, however, residential investment tumbled by 41%. In his study of America’s post-war recessions, Mr Leamer finds that GDP starts to _______ from its trend even before a recession begins in earnest and output starts to fall. Slumping residential investment typically acts as an early-warning indicator, accounting for about a quarter of output shortfalls on the eve of a recession, on average
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China’s party-state has deployed an army of cyber-police, hardware engineers, software developers, web monitors and paid online propagandists to watch, filter, censor and guide Chinese internet users. Chinese private internet companies, many of them clones of Western ones, have been allowed to flourish so long as they do not _______ from the party line. If this special report were about the internet in any Western country, it would have little to say about the role of the government; instead, it would focus on the companies thriving on the internet, speculate about which industries would be disrupted next and look at the way the web is changing individuals’ lives
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Note that this is emphatically not a worry that self-declared trans women are particularly dangerous or more prone to sexual violence. It’s rather that we have no evidence that self-declared trans women _______ from male statistical norms in relevant ways. There’s also a separate worry that violent males who do not consider themselves trans will eventually take advantage of increasing confusion about social norms about such spaces
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EUROPEAN BANKS’ fourth-quarter earnings, releases of which are clustered around early February, have been surprisingly perky. Those with trading arms, such as UBS or BNP Paribas, rode on _______ markets. State support helped contain bad loans; few banks needed to top up provisions
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They aren’t allowed to go anywhere or to take on any work, so they are left with nothing but boredom, guilt about leaving behind their families and dreams of success that will never come true. As depressing as it sounds, “Limbo” is also a delight, thanks to its surrealist style, its absurdist humour and a _______ turn by Amir El-Masry as a despondent young Syrian musician. The film’s writer-director, Ben Sharrock, is an exciting British talent to watch
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That was what lay behind the Marshall Plan from the beginning. And this went hand in hand with a _______ United States, acting as the ultimate guarantor of a system and of a balance of values, based on the preservation of world peace and the domination of Western values. There was a price to pay for that, which was NATO and support to the European Union
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Second is the munificent flow of remittances from millions of expat V4 citizens who now live and work in the EU, especially in Germany, Austria or Britain. A _______ recent economic environment has also helped, especially the success of the German economy, by far their most important trading partner and the biggest or second-biggest investor in each country. And lastly, the four all started from a low base, enabling them to serve as cheap workshops for more developed economies
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By Ada Ferrer. Scribner; 576 pages; $32 The idea of putting the United States at the centre of Cuba’s history is not surprising, but this fascinating book shows just how _______ the two countries have been. America was domineering from the start, but today has a chance to prove itself to be a friend to the island’s progress
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He lasted only 45 days in the job, returning to his own plantation in Alabama just before he died. His is one of many stories told by Ada Ferrer in “Cuba: An American History” to show how _______ the two countries have been. King’s presence on the island was telling
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When the host, Marc Benioff, the founder and chairman of Salesforce, turned to me, I stated: “idatity”. Identity and data are increasingly _______ . The term I coined that day evokes the need for people to be more aware of how they safeguard and share their information
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Soaring property prices have enriched developers who rely on approvals for projects. The commodities boom has inflated the value of oilfields and mines, which are invariably _______ with the state. Some privatisations have let tycoons milk monopolies or get assets cheaply
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The first of those areas is summed up by “Capitalism and Freedom”, the title of a book published in 1962 (see our review). To Mr Friedman, the two were inextricably _______ : without economic freedom—capitalism—there could be no political freedom. Governments, he argued, should do little more than enforce contracts, promote competition, “provide a monetary framework” (of which more below) and protect the “irresponsible, whether madman or child”
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8%. Many Thais _______ their government for failing to secure enough vaccines soon enough, or for reopening the country too quickly to foreign tourists, which they fear may have contributed to the current wave. Some grumble that the government has relied too much on Chinese-made vaccines rather than Pfizer’s or Moderna’s which they believe offer more protection
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Many also noted that Mr Trump, a political gadfly who is on his third party, had until recently espoused different views, including on immigration, which he announced as the cornerstone of his campaign. After Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election, Mr Trump seemed to _______ “the Republicans”, as he still calls his party colleagues, for failing to back immigration reform. But in Trump Tower he raged against Mexican immigrants whom he called “rapists
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The problem has attracted lots of wonkish experts, who have offered their expertise to the American government. As a scholar, Susan Rice used to _______ the Bush administration for calling broken states a deadly threat but failing to fix them. Now she is her country's envoy to the UN
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But his tone is different: less cursing (only three “fucks” in an hour) and even a moment of half-joking humility (“I would like to think I have emerged like Scrooge on Christmas morning realising the error of my ways”). Most notably, his views have mellowed about three constituencies which for decades he would reliably _______ , if chiefly for publicity purposes: customers (“usually wrong”), unions (“busted flushes”) and environmentalists (“shoot them”). The reason for this newfound magnanimity, as he explains it, is Ryanair’s size
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The consensus is that, having changed the Afghan regime, America has lost interest before finishing the job. At a hearing on February 12th, American senators queued up to _______ the Bush administration for “sugarcoating” the situation in Afghanistan. It has, said one, allowed Afghanistan's neighbours to exert influence over the warlords who still control much of the country
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Mr Khan himself campaigned for office by attacking corruption on CPEC projects. After he won the election in 2018, with a little help from Pakistan’s powerful generals, he thought to _______ China into renegotiating terms and offering other financial help—he had, after all, inherited a full-blown balance-of-payments crisis. Yet Mr Khan’s first trip to Beijing was mortifying
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Some requests were botched: in one case, Egyptian prosecutors misunderstood the principle of “double criminality”, which means a suspect can usually be extradited for breaking the requesting country’s laws only if a similar law exists in the extraditing country. “It’s hard for me to _______ the West when my client isn’t doing all it should,” says Mr Shaban. Western governments have indeed been criticised for their handling of MLA applications
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The film star Angelina Jolie, for example, has backed up her public advocacy of the cause of refugees with substantial gifts to refugee organisations. The media, which used to take little notice of charitable donations, now eagerly rank the super-rich by their munificence and _______ those they regard as tight-fisted. The latest Business Week list, which ranks giving in the latest five years, is topped by Intel's co-founder, Gordon Moore, and his wife Betty, pushing Mr and Mrs Gates into second place
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2% year-on-year in April, the highest rate since 2008. The case of Japan's curiously _______ inflation rate | The EconomistNov 20, 2021 .
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In large part, falling bond yields reflect a growing conviction that short-term interest rates are unlikely to rise quickly or soon. Central banks are fearful of cutting short the synchronised global economic upswing and, with inflation _______ , see no real need to take the risk. They are buying lots of assets: the ECB and Bank of Japan are acquiring more; the Fed is still reinvesting
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The reason for the subsequent lack of interest is that falling unemployment is no longer a good guide to the Fed’s actions. Inflation has been unusually _______ . The unemployment rate has fallen from 9% in 2011 to 3
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Good luck with getting those calls right. The forces behind the decades-long decline in real interest rates and _______ inflation are not well understood even by people who have spent a lot of time thinking about them. It is hard for most investors to make judgments about whether, when and how quickly these secular trends will go into reverse
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Both tasks are made more difficult by climate change. Malawi is especially vulnerable to rising temperatures and _______ rainfall. Most farmers in the country are smallholders
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The migrants cannot enter Poland, and with winter coming, may soon freeze. The _______ regime of Alexander Lukashenko apparently hopes to cause another political crisis in the EU about refugees. Poland has sent 15,000 troops to the area
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KRYSTINA TIMANOVSKAYA is not your standard dissident. An Olympic sprinter representing Belarus in Tokyo, she had never publicly criticised the government nor its _______ president, Alexander Lukashenko. Her crime was to complain on social media that her coaches had registered her for the 4x400-metre relay without telling her
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\nOn Tuesday February 12th the author of this story will answer readers' questions about North Korea on Twitter: http://econ. st/Xqn0Y5","description":"A sealed and monstrously unjust society is changing in ways its _______ ruler may not be able to control","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
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Alas, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France (country of the year 2017) is blocking its candidacy for the EU, fearing that welcoming another Balkan state into the club would irk French voters. Two countries became notably less _______ in 2019. In Sudan mass protests led to the ejection of Omar al-Bashir, one of the world’s vilest tyrants
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” More than a decade later the Founding Fathers would write into the country’s constitution that a slave was in fact to be considered three-fifths of a person. In Europe many liberals opposed slavery but supported _______ imperial rule overseas. “Perhaps liberal theory and liberal history are ships passing in the night,” speculated Uday Singh Mehta of the City University of New York in 1999
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Councils’ efforts to fight homophobia were crushed by the infamous Section 28. For the most economically marginalised in society, the state became a _______ Leviathan. In 1989 Paddy Ashdown wrote “Citizen’s Britain”, which discussed the paradox of a government that was supposedly committed to rolling back the frontiers of the state spending ever larger sums on social controls: police, prisons, punishment and surveillance
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The ballooning costs of keeping up with advancing technology mean that the explosion of chip designs is being funnelled through a shrinking number of companies capable of actually manufacturing them (see chart 2). Only three firms in the world are able to make advanced processors: Intel, TSMC, whose home is an earthquake-prone island which China claims as its territory, and Samsung of South Korea, with a nuclear-armed _______ neighbour to the north. The Semiconductor Industry Association, an American trade body, reckons that 80% of global chipmaking capacity now resides in Asia
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The scenes look a lot like 2015. Eurocrats insist that the whole thing has been staged by one man: Alexander Lukashenko, the _______ president of Belarus. What is going on? Mr Lukashenko is trying to cling to power
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Illegal gambling websites, many of which steal from their customers, have multiplied. And new technology makes many old-fashioned crimes easier to _______ . Drug-dealers use Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, to take payments and move money around
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The discerning skill with which Mr Radden Keefe gets inside these characters’ minds may unsettle some readers, but it is also his book’s strength. He shows how people who in peacetime might just have been strong-willed or colourful types came to condone or _______ the unspeakable. The most memorable figure in this gallery is Dolours Price
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Those involved in such shootings could be the most susceptible to change. A group called READI, run by Eddie Bocanegra in Chicago, has for the past 20 months been giving frequent sessions of behavioural therapy and counselling to 700 young men judged likeliest to _______ the next killings (or be the next victims). Mr Bocanegra’s team works on despite the pandemic, though phone and video sessions have replaced personal meetings
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The most controversial of its 13 indictments has been that of Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, who was held responsible for the suffering in Darfur. Some people who knew Sudan feared that an enraged Mr Bashir would _______ fresh atrocities. But these worries have not been borne out
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Honour killings—or, rather, the fact that they are still tolerated by a sizeable chunk of Turkish society—are just the sort of thing that makes western Europeans think Turkey is unsuited to join the European Union. That is why, among a clutch of reforms tailored to bring the country closer to European norms and approved in parliament last week, there was a proposal to scrap an article of the penal code that allows reduced sentences for those who _______ crimes of honour. But that might not be enough
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But arguing that the imbalances played a sideshow in 2008-09 is not to claim that they are innocuous. They could still _______ the crisis predicted by the alarmists. As a matter of prudence, policies to contain them could still be warranted
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First, they are banned by international agreement, and if the rules of war are to have any force, then the world must do its best to ensure that they are respected. Second, however unwilling outside powers are to intervene, the world accepts that there are limits to the atrocities that governments may _______ on their people: it was the massacre of 8,000 Bosnians by Serbs at Srebrenica in 1995 that provoked outside powers to intervene decisively in Yugoslavia’s civil war. Third, America’s credibility depends on intervening
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And the Goma ceasefire? Pressure to observe it would be a start, even though not all armed groups signed up. Among those that did not are Hutu rebels from over the border in Rwanda who helped _______ the genocide there in 1994 and caused it to spill over the border into Congo. On April 23rd, 63 international and Congolese NGOs signed an appeal urging the UN to appoint a high-level special adviser on human rights for eastern Congo
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Mr Bolsonaro seems ready to hand vast authority to his economic guru, Paulo Guedes, a pro- market economist with no political experience. He is to lead a new “economy super- ministry” that will _______ the ministries of finance, planning and industry. The elimination of the industry ministry suggests that Mr Guedes plans to resist lobbying from businesses that enjoy being shielded from foreign competition
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The Duchess of Cambridge, aka Ms Middleton, is, similarly, brilliantly bland. The Duchess of Sussex is not; and her complaint in her interview that while she was a royal she was not allowed to talk to Ms Winfrey without other people in the room demonstrated her failure to grasp the need to _______ individual needs in those of the institution. Given the potential impact of such an interview on the monarchy, it would have been bizarre for the household’s communications chiefs to allow her to negotiate with the world’s most powerful interviewer by herself
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But the passage of a new goods-and-services tax (GST) in India’s upper house on August 3rd is a deserved exception. Well over a decade in the making, the new value-added tax promises to _______ India’s miasma of local and national levies into a single payment, thus unifying the country’s 29 states and 1. 3 billion people into a common market for the first time
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And for their number one slot, instead of pilkunnussija, they could have gone with the more general Danish flueknipper, "fly-fucker", which is someone who complains continually and maddeningly about the small details. This would _______ the pilkunnussija, and many other types. And addendum 2: Kory Stamper of Merriam-Webster thinks that Cracked's Department of Finno-Ugric Studies got pilkunnussija slightly wrong, too
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One of its architects has lamented that, on present plans, it will reap only one-quarter of the extra economic growth that it could have stimulated. \nIntroducing a nationwide tax to _______ India’s bewildering profusion of central, state and lower-level indirect taxes has been a decades-long effort. Passage of the legislation in August was seen as a triumph for Narendra Modi, the prime minister, and the biggest proof of his reformist credentials
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It also distorts the economy in favour of goods and services taxed at lower rates (usually as a result of energetic lobbying). The agreement in August to _______ all manner of national and regional levies into a single goods-and-services tax (GST), applicable nationwide, was hailed as a historic opportunity to rid the economy of both problems, potentially adding two percentage points of GDP growth a year. Since then, as so often happens, politics seems to have got in the way of sound economics
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A month before West African politicians agreed on a plan to introduce a new shared currency, the eco, over the next few years. It should eventually _______ West Africa’s existing currency bloc—but not its central African cousin. Under the proposal an initial group of six countries will adopt the eco by 2015 (see map)
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To this crowd, "We have always been friends" must be "We always have been friends. " This is, of course, a rule that would _______ the so-called ban on split infinitives, the rule that declares "to boldly go" an error. Prof Liberman and the commenters have a roundup of the usage manuals that prescribe this false rule
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WILL THE stagflationary forces acting on the world economy last? Throughout 2021, central banks and most economists have said that the factors causing inflation to rise and growth to slow would be temporary. Supply-chain bottlenecks would _______ , energy prices would return to earth and the rich-world workers staying out of the labour force—for reasons nobody fully understands—would return to work. And yet as 2021 draws to a close financial markets, the public and even central bankers themselves are beginning to lose faith
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So far Erftstadt is not mourning any deaths, but not all its inhabitants have been accounted for. As the worst floods in Germany’s post-war history _______ , the finger- pointing has started. The disaster has also moved climate change to the heart of debate in the run-up to the general election due on September 26th
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If pressure on hospitals causes even highly vaccinated countries like Britain to restrict services over the winter, the economic damage will be large and the benefits smaller. The Delta wave may _______ soon, easing the pressure on the world economy. If it does not or another variant takes its place, the trade-offs involved in fighting the virus will become harder to justify
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All of this means travel will remain out of reach for many and messy for all for some time. The chaos is unlikely to _______ soon, as new outbreaks emerge and governments struggle to co-ordinate policy. Travellers must scour myriad ministry and airport websites to piece together the rules
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Joe Biden’s lead over Bernie Sanders in opinion polls during the Democratic primaries was far smaller among college-educated Americans than among those who did not finish high school. Predicting an earthquake Mr Turchin’s theories predict that political tremors eventually _______ . “Sooner or later most people begin to yearn for the return of stability and an end to fighting,” he argues
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That should weaken the link between inflation and pay. The Fed may have been unduly optimistic in thinking that price pressures would quickly _______ , but its logic remains persuasive. As supply chains slowly return to normal and as people re-enter the labour force, inflation should ebb without the need for forceful interest-rate rises
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For the time being, Tesla may bask in a Big Tech valuation, predicated on its disruption of carmaking. Investors appear keener than ever to _______ its joyride. But if recurring profits do not materialise, expect them to confiscate the keys
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This propaganda coup was made easier by a shift in philosophy at Amnesty. In 1961 Peter Benenson, the group’s founder, defined a “prisoner of conscience” as anyone who is locked up for expressing an opinion “which does not advocate or _______ personal violence”. For decades, this definition worked well
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A quarter of all the “red notices” issued for fugitives by Interpol, the international policing body, contain the word “terrorist”. As long as Western democracies _______ such bending of the rules, it will be hard to push others to stop. In 2022 they can lead by example, by showing greater respect for international law and better protecting the exiles of repressive regimes
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It is neither romanticised nor demonised. “I don’t _______ or condemn,” Mr Baker says. “I just present it
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“The existential problem is that countries respect the decisions of the Security Council less and less,” says Karen Pierce, until recently Britain’s ambassador at the UN, now its ambassador in Washington. Normally the P5 is there to uphold the rules, says Ms Pierce, but, referring to Russia’s support for Syria, “for a P5 member to think it’s OK to _______ the use of chemical weapons is quite a major shift. ” Could reform help? To ensure that the council remains representative, suggests Stewart Patrick of the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank, “ideally you’d have something like the Premier League, with relegation and promotion
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The discerning skill with which Mr Radden Keefe gets inside these characters’ minds may unsettle some readers, but it is also his book’s strength. He shows how people who in peacetime might just have been strong-willed or colourful types came to condone or _______ the unspeakable. The most memorable figure in this gallery is Dolours Price
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But in 2018 and 2019 a survey of six countries in the region (and in the Palestinians’ West Bank) by Arab Barometer, a pollster, found that more people thought honour killings were acceptable than thought so of homosexuality. In most places, young Arabs were more likely than their parents to _______ honour killing (see chart). The results are reflected on the Arab street and on social media, where opponents of honour killings are accused of promoting adultery and Western norms
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“It goes without saying”, said the prime minister's office, “that she condemns the atrocity today in the strongest possible terms. ” It is indeed inconceivable that the good Mrs Blair meant to _______ the bombing. But her remark reflects a common misunderstanding
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Globally, under the WHO’s International Health Regulations, countries cannot implement control measures at borders which could be discriminatory, as vaccine passports would be. Although governments regularly flout the WHO rules, we should not further _______ that by accepting vaccine passports. It is noteworthy that the WHO’s position is that countries shouldn’t require them, recognising in part the potential for fuelling inequity
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Some of these are directly about competition. In other cases the link is _______ . For example, if customers had good alternatives perhaps they would switch from today’s firms when the companies behave badly
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Yet it would be unwise to put too much faith in break-evens. They often reflect market influences that are only _______ to future inflation. Look at Britain, for instance
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The problem with “the business of business” mindset is rather that it can blind management to two important realities. The first is that social issues are not so much _______ to the business of business as fundamental to it. From a defensive point of view, companies that ignore public sentiment make themselves vulnerable to attack
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The "ambiguous consequences" complained of are more apparent than real, because the interests of the privileged group are not critical to the resolution of an issue affecting them. Every political issue [and these issues are perforce political] depends on three groups of citizen; those who will benefit from a change, those who will lose from a change and, critically, the general public who may be taken to be _______ in the issue, until informed. Being always the larger, it is this third group, the
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In 2015 we ran a cover calling for laws to be changed in Britain and elsewhere to allow doctors to help the terminally ill and the suffering to choose when they die. We wrote: In a secular society, it is odd to _______ the sanctity of life in the abstract by subjecting a lot of particular lives to unbearable pain, misery and suffering. And evidence from places that have allowed assisted dying suggests that there is no slippery slope towards widespread euthanasia
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Both add to the value of a life. In a secular society, it is odd to _______ the sanctity of life in the abstract by subjecting a lot of particular lives to unbearable pain, misery and suffering. And evidence from places that have allowed assisted dying suggests that there is no slippery slope towards widespread euthanasia
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Far from alleviating the impact of technological upheaval, that would risk exacerbating inequality and the social and economic tensions it brings in its wake. ","description":"Systems for continuous reskilling threaten to _______ inequality"
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Mr Scheidel, a Vienna-born historian now at Stanford University, puts the discussion of increased inequality found in the recent work of Thomas Piketty, Anthony Atkinson, Branko Milanovic and others into a broad historical context and examines the circumstances under which it can be reduced. Having assembled a huge range of scholarly literature to produce a survey that starts in the Stone Age, he finds that inequality within countries is almost always either high or rising, thanks to the ways that political and economic power _______ each other and both pass down generations. It does not, as some have suggested, carry within it the seeds of its own demise
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New members are attracted as much by the idea of more local, responsive governance as cultural identity. They include David _______ , a former chief executive of JustEat UK, a food delivery firm. “As a boy growing up in the Gwent valley, life was more pragmatic than sitting around a university lecturer’s table talking about Welsh nationalism,” he says
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She has demonstrably failed to unite the country, paying little attention to the views of opposition parties, or to those of business or the trade unions. In an address to the nation on March 20th she managed to _______ the very MPs she needed to vote for her plan. “A leader who claims to invite views but then ignores them is no leader,” warns Stefan Stern in his new book, “How to Be a Better Leader”
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“In the short term, it probably galvanizes our base,” he said. “In the long term, if you _______ the Hispanics, you'll pay a heavy price. ” Then he added, unable to help himself, “By the way, I think the fence is least effective
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THE life story of Alex Orlyuk does not seem destined to lead to political _______ . Born in the Soviet Union to a family scarred by the Holocaust, he moved at the age of six to Tel Aviv, where he finished school and military service
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So-called “technical” explanations for market movements—“where you put things that you can’t quite explain”, according to Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve—are in fashion. So it is _______ that an emerging theory of how markets work says that even random financial flows may matter a great deal to asset prices. In a recent working paper Xavier Gabaix of Harvard University and Ralph Koijen of the University of Chicago study how the aggregate value of America’s stockmarket responds to buying and selling
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” So sang ABBA in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, in the song that catapulted the Swedish band to global fame: “Waterloo”. Half a century later those words seem _______ . The band has reunited, with a new album due in November
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The case it made for free trade was that tariffs enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor, and that discrimination against foreigners leads to copycat retaliation, making everybody worse off. Our introductory issue lamented that governments, classes and individuals “have been too _______ to conclude that their benefit could be secured by a policy injurious to others”. For over 200 years, economists have largely accepted such arguments, although some politicians have displayed an atavistic fondness for protection
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THE TIMING was _______ . On November 2nd, just two days after Americans celebrated their scariest annual holiday, news of a suspicious death shocked the stockmarket
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FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGIES “cause turmoil when loosed” yet “perish once regulated”, a deputy governor of China’s central bank observed last year. This is an _______ description of the dilemma facing the country’s regulators. Innovation has swept its financial markets over the past decade
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At the Theatre Royal in Bath, a 200-year-old playhouse that Jane Austen knew, Mr Fiennes was marking theatre’s emergence from pandemic hibernation with a 75-minute solo performance of Eliot’s long poem, a four-part meditation on time, change, fate and faith. It is an _______ starting-point for theatre’s post-covid journey. “Four Quartets” wrestles not only with Eliot’s personal crises of faith and identity but the public emergency of the second world war; he composed three of the four pieces between 1939 and 1942
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Brokers, who sell on behalf of rural herders, control much of the supply of humps. By using the _______ they hoard information about prices, too, giving them an edge. If the next buyer does not know the previous price, he can end up paying more
cloak Source
Tickets for the most popular comedy clubs in Shanghai and Beijing sell out in secondsStand-up comedy is on the up in authoritarian countries from Kazakhstan to Vietnam. But as a means for taunting governments, cartoons may still be the most popular and potent form of satire in Asia, not least because cartoonists can _______ their critiques more easily. One cartoonist in Thailand says the government’s attempts to scrub the internet clean of caricatures resemble a never-ending game of whack-a-mole
cloak Source
Above all, when it does open up, the firm should adopt some radical new talking-points. Rather than _______ itself in righteousness and assert its right to complete discretion and total opacity over how it behaves, it should admit that it exists to make cold, hard cash, and make explicit the ethical lines that it will not cross and the process it has to police them. Well-run companies confront and manage conflicts of interest
cloak Source
On the other hand, the company is also criticised by hard-hearted investors who care little for ESG fads but do demand better financial returns. Though Mr Loeb dons a green _______ , he is more obviously in this camp. His explanation for his move on Shell starts by observing that “it has been a difficult two decades for shareholders”, with annualised returns of only 3% and falling returns on capital
cloak Source
Their justification is that the West was allowed to spew greenhouse gases as it grew rich and that they have the right to do so, too. Offering relative pledges connected to the intensity of future pollution, or measured against scenarios without any reductions, are popular ways to _______ meagre green ambitions and continue polluting. Tweaking statistics is another
cloak Source
Of the many projections available, none is perfect. All of them _______ some aspect of the globe in the necessary trade-off between these properties. That can give a misleading, and some would say biased, view of the world
distort Source
But this does not square with the assumption that readers and viewers value accuracy. If so, then competition should hurt media outlets that systematically _______ the news (in any direction). The brouhaha about bias in America, as free a media market as any, suggests something else is going on
distort Source
LAST month Kai Krause, a computer-graphics guru, caused a stir with a map entitled "The True Size of Africa", which showed the outlines of other countries crammed into the outline of the African continent. His aim was to make "a small contribution in the fight against rampant Immappancy"—in particular, the fact that most people do not realise how much the ubiquitous Mercator projection _______ s the relative sizes of countries. A sphere cannot be represented on a flat plane without
distort Source
The lasting victory of Reagan and Thatcher—and other reformers in Sweden, New Zealand and elsewhere—was over the first of the forces for big government. They realised that the state is at its worst when it is swollen by the _______ ed incentives of insiders to seek ever more control. Governments rightly sold off nationalised firms, cut back regulations, simplified some taxes and promoted competition
distort Source
ASK an economist about which are the most efficient kinds of taxes, and property taxes will be high up on the list. They _______ behaviour less, and are more growth friendly, than taxes on income, employment or even consumption. Yet most countries raise relatively little money from taxing property
distort Source
2bn) in grants for companies to diversify supply chains, with little enough effect to show how expensive incentives can be. Mr Evenett worries that these behind-the-border measures will further _______ trade. Places already comfortable with the idea of localising production may be emboldened
distort Source
Intel already spends about $28bn a year on capital investments, research and development. Intel’s move also marks the start of a new era of public funding for chipmaking in America that could dangerously _______ the market. The industry is lobbying for $50bn of federal support over the next decade, which it says is necessary to spur construction of 19 new fabs, requiring $280bn of private investment
distort Source
And so the Fed chairman told Congress he was worried that the federal government might completely pay down its debt, and perhaps even start saving, investing its wealth in private assets. This could _______ the efficient allocation of capital, worried Mr Greenspan. Preventing the government from completely squaring its accounts, by cutting taxes, could be a good idea
distort Source
IN YEMEN THEY set off fireworks; in Somalia they handed out sweets; in Syria they praised the Taliban for providing a “living example” of how to “bring down a criminal regime” through jihad. Around the world, jihadists were _______ by the fall of Kabul. Through willpower, patience and cunning, a low-budget band of holy warriors has vanquished America and taken charge of a medium-size country
elated Source
Jack dismisses the manager’s warning. When he is left alone in the Overlook with his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), he is _______ : he plans to knock out a novel in the peace and quiet. But like so many people who imagine that they will tick off a long-postponed project or two during the lockdown, Jack is mistaken
elated Source
Academics—especially those who have studied in America—have embraced concepts like institutional racism and white privilege, eagerly translated by local news media (“weisse Privilegien”, “le privilège blanc”). Activist journalists like Rokhaya Diallo in France, Alice Hasters in Germany and Clarice Gargard in the Netherlands are _______ that anti- black racism is being taken so seriously. So are many Europeans, black and otherwise
elated Source
The relief with which the news was greeted was commensurate with the appalling fears to which the ordinary man in every country had been prey. If war had come last week it would not have been hailed with the cheering crowds and the _______ patriotism of 1914. Europe remembers the last war too well
elated Source
That remains its aim. But whereas in Gilman’s day curators reigned supreme, now they have to _______ visitors rather than lecture them. Museums offer narratives in their exhibitions, provide a context for objects by linking them to other people and other places, work with digital experts to enable visitors to participate as well as watch and listen, and create innovative public programmes to bring in the young and the inexperienced
enchant Source
Both believe that people should be able to flourish whatever their sexuality or race. They share a suspicion of authority and _______ interests. They believe in the desirability of change
entrenched Source
9% in November, compared with a year ago, the fastest pace in the history of the single currency. Many of the ECB’s rich-world counterparts, including the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, are worried that inflation could become _______ . In the euro area, however, the greater likelihood is perhaps that, once disruptions from the pandemic fade, it still undershoots the ECB’s 2% target
entrenched Source
However, predicting when these pandemic-related forces will ease is a fool’s errand, especially now that the Omicron variant is spreading. For as long as inflation remains high, there is a growing danger that it will become _______ . The New York Fed estimates that the median consumer expects prices to rise at an annual pace of 4
entrenched Source
HABITS CAN be slow to form. But when they do, they can become _______ . When workers headed home during the first lockdown of March 2020, they probably thought the break would last for a month or so
entrenched Source
They used the backlash against the civil-rights and feminist movements to woo conservative non-college whites. But _______ identities now make such a feat harder. It appears nearly impossible for Democrats to win back a substantial share—say, 5%—of the blue-collar northern whites they once relied on for power, especially in the Senate
entrenched Source
. Such vehicles are often _______ or exceedingly rare, and many have had .
exotic Source
Even after excluding prostitution, almost three-fifths of those in forced labour in private enterprises are women, mainly because domestic work makes up a plurality of such exploitation. In construction, manufacturing and agriculture, the next three most- _______ sectors, most victims are men. The report retells horrific cases of people dragooned into work, including 600 men rescued from foreign fishing boats in Indonesian waters
exploitative Source
In France, despite recent reforms to make labour markets more flexible, the share of new hires given permanent contracts recently hit an all-time high. The truly precarious work is found in southern European countries like Italy, and neither _______ employers nor modern technology is to blame. The culprit is old-fashioned law that stitches up labour markets, locking out young workers in order to keep insiders in cushy jobs
exploitative Source
” When I started this project, I imagined the promoters would be the villains of the story, manipulating young women for profit. As I watched them work, however, I came to see that this wasn’t always a straightforwardly _______ relationship. It was also hard not to be impressed by the sheer effort they put into it
exploitative Source
The ILO reckons that some 39m African children are involved in similarly dangerous work, such as fishing or mining. Sometimes the work is even more _______ . Children from the countryside are often sent by their parents to cities to get education, only to be put to work by relatives, acquaintances or criminal gangs
exploitative Source
In 1867 Marx said the “essential difference between…a society based on slave-labour, and one based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted”. Capitalism, in other words, was just as _______ and immoral as slavery or feudalism—it just did a better job of covering it up. As Mr Piketty casts his eye over a millennium of global history, he reaches a strikingly similar conclusion
exploitative Source
And outside, sewage still runs in the street. ","description":"Making slums less _______ may be Africa’s biggest challenge","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
exploitative Source
ALL OF IT was _______ : the death and displacement, the atrocities, the flight of jihadists and the return of a brutal regime. But it has happened more quickly than almost anyone predicted
foreseeable Source
But they would have been just as gobsmacked by how cheap that borrowing has turned out to be. In many countries, the interest rate on government debt is expected to remain below the nominal growth rate of the economy for the _______ future. In other words, the “growth-corrected interest rate”, as some economists call it, will be negative
foreseeable Source
But that “subjectivity of personalities” can also enable family bosses to make brilliant decisions which elude professional managers. This special report will argue that family companies are likely to remain a significant feature of global capitalism for the _______ future, thanks to a combination of two factors. Family companies in general are getting better at managing themselves: they are learning how to minimise their weaknesses while capitalising on their strengths
foreseeable Source
6% (see chart). It seems impossible to eliminate fossil fuels from the energy mix in the _______ future. But all energy transitions, such as that from coal to hydrocarbons in the 20th century, take many decades
foreseeable Source
Hitherto in the era of nuclear weapons, the central objective of national-security policy has been deterrence. That rests on the premise that a rival state’s capabilities are visible, its doctrine known and its actions _______ . The rise of AI systems undermines those consoling assumptions, since responses may diverge from human expectations, and to disclose capabilities may be to forfeit them
foreseeable Source
The earthquake cut the plant off from outside sources of electricity. The tsunami easily topped the plant’s sea walls, flooding the underground bunkers containing its emergency generators—a _______ risk Japan’s neutered regulators had failed to foresee. Because there was no way to cool the reactor cores, the nuclear fuel within them began to melt; amid fire, explosion and alarming amounts of radiation, a puddle from hell began eating into the plant’s concrete foundations
foreseeable Source
The world is, understandably, focused on a different health crisis right now. But heatwaves, along with obesity, dementia and antibiotic resistance, pose an entirely _______ threat in the decades to come—as we explain in “What If?”, our annual collection of future scenarios. The timing and severity of the coronavirus pandemic could not have been foreseen
foreseeable Source
And, uniquely, the question of what constitutes “unbearable” suffering is for the patients themselves to decide, so long as they are of sound mind. There is an assessment period of 90 days for those whose deaths are not “reasonably _______ ”, to allow them to explore all other alternatives. In many cases, simply having the option of an assisted death gives people a sense of comfort and control
foreseeable Source
Laos has assumed 30% of the liability for the project, most of the funding for which was borrowed from the Export-Import Bank of China. Nor will the line bring in Chinese tourists for the _______ future, given China’s zero-covid policy. A wider network across the region would yield greater economic benefits for everyone, but that is outside any one country’s control
foreseeable Source
” Getting people back onto planes is not a problem, if the rebound in domestic markets where covid-19 persists is a guide. A poll in July 2020 by UBS found that only 10% of European leisure travellers and 9% of businessfolk would refuse to fly in the _______ future. In October data collected by IATA found that only 44 out of 1
foreseeable Source
He withdrew from Iraq in 2011, only to return when jihadists filled the vacuum. Donald Trump embraced dictators, threatened to _______ allies and sought to dismantle international institutions and norms that America had long fostered. Joe Biden, after proclaiming “America is back”, chaotically left Afghanistan, barely consulting allies
forsake Source
Ms Howard links the patriarchy with capitalism so often that one wonders whether she has ever seen a picture of the Soviet Union’s all-male politburo or considered the harm done to women and baby girls by the Chinese Communist Party’s one-child policy. But men do not need to _______ the capitalist system to appreciate the plight of female workers. They just need empathy
forsake Source
Collective capitalism leans away from change. In a dynamic system firms have to _______ at least some stakeholders: a number need to shrink in order to reallocate capital and workers from obsolete industries to new ones. If, say, climate change is to be tackled, oil firms will face huge job cuts
forsake Source
American politics was coming apart in the era of the Weathermen and Watergate, but returned to health in the 1980s. Scraping Diogenes’ barrel The riposte to cynicism starts with politicians who _______ outrage for hope. Turkey’s strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suffered a landmark defeat in the race for the mayoralty in Istanbul to a tirelessly upbeat campaign by Ekrem Imamoglu
forsake Source
These arguments have strength. On balance, though, the West should not _______ the Saudis; instead it should seek to restrain the damage of their air campaign, and ultimately bring it to an end. But Western support cannot be unconditional
forsake Source
“This is a drum some have been beating for a long time,” says Rev Marcus Walker. Conservatives cite scripture from the Old Testament: “Don’t _______ the gathering of the brethren. ” Some have taken this message further than Mr Walker thinks necessary
forsake Source
But it notes that unbridled economic expansion is squeezing the planet dry. The rich may have to _______ some natural resources so that the poorer world can develop. It sounds radical
forsake Source
Financial investment can look rather like gambling, but Mr Wilke’s research shows that professional investors perceive gambling as far riskier than most people do. Put into a Las Vegas casino, hedge-fund managers are more likely to behave like the characters in “The Big Short”—who _______ the card tables to research their investment positions—than they are like those of “The Wolf of Wall Street”, who gamble “like degenerates”. According to Mr Wilke, what varies is not so much people’s appetite for risk so much as their assessment of it
forsake Source
It is, for instance, unable to accommodate the entire suite of features, some of them proprietary, offered by each of the big providers. Many customers would hesitate to _______ such benefits. That leaves one last, related question
forsake Source
People take for granted how America’s security guarantees have prevented the merciless escalation of a dog-eat-dog world. Post-war Germany and Japan felt safe enough to _______ militarism and concentrate on economic growth—as they had not in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Even the Soviet Union trusted America enough to give up without a fight
forsake Source
Project those sorts of trends forward and the future looks bright. To _______ the optimists, Square will have to prove that it can eventually make money by helping tiny businesses accept credit-card payments. Its chief executive, Jack Dorsey, who also runs Twitter, says he resolved to create Square when he realised that “my second boss (after my mother!) couldn’t accept a credit card for his art
gratify Source
The Clinton administration took part in all good faith; the treaty was duly signed. That hard work is to be thrown away, at horrible cost to the environment, to _______ the new president's contempt for environmental concerns, to feed America's gluttonous appetite for energy, and to hell with the consequences. Is this not a fair summary of the position? Far from it
gratify Source
Project those sorts of trends forward and the future looks bright. To _______ the optimists, Square will have to prove that it can eventually make money by helping tiny businesses accept credit-card payments. Its chief executive, Jack Dorsey, who also runs Twitter, says he resolved to create Square when he realised that “my second boss (after my mother!) couldn’t accept a credit card for his art
gratify Source
But he will no longer be required to stay for months at a time as previously expected. The ruling split the trio of trial judges and excusal was granted to accommodate the "demanding functions of his office" and "not to _______ the dignity" of the president. It is not yet clear whether the climbdown will be enough to persuade the Kenyan leaders to continue to co-operate with the ICC
gratify Source
A culture of individualism is a culture of innovation and customisation. Market competitions to cooperate with consumers to mutual gain are won by constantly innovating in ways that ever better _______ individual desires. Democracy is essentially a mechanism of conflict to which we repair when the cooperative unanimity of market exchange is infeasible
gratify Source
Wittgenstein once wrote in one of his notebooks that “I have often learnt a lesson from a silly American film. ” Surely that is a sentiment to _______ the owner of 20th Century Fox.
gratify Source
Once again at supper. Why not play it again when the child goes to sleep at night?” Eventually the tot will pick up its little violin and a version of perhaps “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” will emerge to _______ the ears of the parents. Vivaldi, and even Bach, could follow
gratify Source
Bougainville’s people, having voted so emphatically for independence, presumably expect speedy change. The politicians seem unlikely to _______ their desires. The chances of further discord are high
gratify Source
But policymakers who fail to consider the interests of half the population cannot hope to understand the world. ■","description":"And why foreign policy should pay more _______ to half of humanity","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
heed Source
It may also be that, rather than people’s politics determining their views on vaccination, both are determined by their pre-existing membership in other social groups. Whatever the reasons, Americans would do well to _______ the words of the FDA. On August 21st it tweeted out “You are not a horse
heed Source
We should make the most of it. Toby Ord: senior research fellow, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University ■ This article appeared in the Aftershocks section of the print edition of The World in 2021 under the headline “We must _______ the pandemic’s warning”
heed Source
AS COUNTRIES around the world emerged from covid-19 lockdowns in late summer 2020, a trend became apparent: those that were slow to _______ the message of science had paid the price. Delays had resulted in a dramatic rise in infection and fatality rates, requiring more severe and longer-lasting lockdowns and often plunging the economy into deeper recession
heed Source
Complacency could yet rob the country of a brighter future. The world, in turn, would be wise to pay more _______ . Japan used to capture attention mainly as a threat, first in military terms, then in economic ones
heed Source
China’s president sees surging debt as the poisonous fruit of financial speculation and billionaires as a mockery of Marxism. Businesses must _______ state guidance. The party must permeate every area of national life
heed Source
Farmers, though, can struggle to boost yields without relying on chemicals. That could change, not just for blackcurrants but other fruit too, with the _______ use of probiotics. Probiotics is mostly known for its use of microorganisms, including certain bacteria, to restore or improve the gut flora in people and animals
judicious Source
. A _______ obscurity | The EconomistSep 27, 2013 .
judicious Source
A massive, costly aqueduct carrying Colorado River water to cities and farms in thirsty central Arizona was completed in 1993. But rather than encouraging _______ use of water, says Newsha Ajami, a hydrologist at Stanford University, the added supplies helped farmers in California increase their acreage. “Eventually it became, oh, we have groundwater
judicious Source
Now Mr Xi is helping China to “get strong”. The resolution will hail Mr Xi’s _______ leadership in managing social, economic and national-security challenges, and suggest a continuing need for his wisdom. Mr Xi’s predecessors used history differently in their resolutions
judicious Source
The judges granted each taster between zero and 20 points per wine, depending on how close (in their estimation) the drinkers’ guesses were to the correct answers, and how convincingly they explained their reasoning. However, we prefer a simpler scoring system: one point for getting the country of origin right, another point for getting the grape variety right and a _______ half-point of partial credit only in a handful of specific cases. The group’s overall accuracy was far superior to what could be expected from random chance
judicious Source
Around that time researchers found more than 1,500 drug-resistant genes in the microbial soup of the sewage of 74 cities around the world. “Antibiotics stewardship”, the concept of _______ , sparing use of antibiotics, gained currency. National action plans were written, a G20 proclamation issued and a UN resolution approved
judicious Source
One is that the royals are tireless public servants: the prince carried out more than 22,000 solo engagements and countless more as an appendage to his wife, always walking two steps behind her. A second is that they are _______ modernisers: the prince melded clever innovations (such as the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme for youngsters) with ancient rituals. A third is that the monarchy is a source of unity in a country that is often at war with itself
judicious Source
In Europe, Croatia’s Rimac and Spain’s Hispano Suiza are building hypercars, while Britain’s Arrival is manufacturing electric vans. American companies such as Canoo, Fisker, Lordstown, _______ and Rivian hope to start full-scale production soon. Foxconn, a Taiwanese contract manufacturer better known for making Apple’s iPhones, may soon also be assembling electric cars for others
lucid Source
Both regulators and customers will need to overcome scepticism that a software driver really can be safer than a wetware one. From Porsche’s point of view, though, there is one other _______ question. Given that much of the reason for owning a sports car is for owners to show off what they perceive to be their driving skills, just how big a market will there be for a version where software takes those bragging rights away? An early version of this article was published online on October 20th 2021
pertinent Source
OF THE WISDOM taught in kindergartens, few commandments combine moral balance and practical _______ better than the instruction to clear up your own mess. As with messy toddlers, so with planet-spanning civilisations
propriety Source
And as a wealthy individual, he traded millions of dollars’ worth of stocks in companies from Apple to Chevron. On September 27th, amid growing questions about the _______ of such activity for a Fed official, Mr Kaplan announced his resignation. The focus on his trading, revealed in his annual financial disclosure, risked becoming a distraction for the central bank, he said
propriety Source
The bad news is that while the euro zone has come up with a bold new array of firefighting tools, they haven't begun to address the fire-prone nature of the currency area itself. Right now, the focus is on keeping banks and governments afloat while committing member nations, over the medium-term, to the old Maastricht rules for fiscal _______ . What's missing is a mechanism to address the weaknesses in the economic structure of the euro zone
propriety Source
All this, and the sky hasn't fallen in. We have quickly moved on to micro stories about the _______ or otherwise of the coalition's proposed switch to fixed-term parliaments, and the 55% rule for dissolutions. (Robert Hazell and Peter Hennessy are on different sides of that argument, which suggests to me that it's a vexed one)
propriety Source
But in recent years they have become particularly verbose, bombarding consumers with any small detail that might enhance the brand. Shoppers at Whole Foods can peruse _______ biographies of the chickens they are about to casserole. Prospective Tesla drivers can learn not just about the cars’ specification and performance but about the principles of a stator rotating magnetic field
scintillating Source
ON THE AFTERNOON of June 29th Zee News, a Hindi-language television channel, aired a _______ exposé. Against a backdrop of scowling mullahs and spiky minarets, a breathless presenter lauded the brave police of the state of Uttar Pradesh for busting a ring of foreign-financed jihadists
sensational Source
Grazia, a fashion magazine, recently called him a French Cary Grant. “Chirac, the hipster” wrote Les InrocKuptibles, a left-leaning style magazine, has made a “ _______ comeback in the form of a fashion icon”. Five years after leaving office, Mr Chirac had already become the most popular political personality on the centre-right
sensational Source
Fortified by his belief that his extraordinary route to power is proof of the collective mediocrity of Congress, the bureaucracy and the media, he attacks any person and any idea standing in his way. Just how much trouble that can cause was on _______ display this week, with his sacking of James Comey—only the second director of the FBI to have been kicked out. Mr Comey has made mistakes and Mr Trump was within his rights
sensational Source
When he turned 18, in 1970, many offices were a “Mad Men”-style ordeal of leering eyes and roaming hands. When the Harvard Business Review surveyed its readers in 1980 about workplace sexual harassment, two-thirds of the men said it was “greatly exaggerated”—as one had it, a non-issue whipped up by “paranoid women and _______ journalists”. In a case brought in 1989 an American judge ruled that being made to fish for quarters in her boss’s pocket, though unpleasant, would not cause undue distress to any “reasonable woman”
sensational Source
As the intelligence report fretfully notes, RT videos get 1m views a day, far surpassing other outlets. But this is mostly down to the network’s practice of buying the rights to _______ footage, for instance of Japan’s 2011 tsunami, and repackaging it with the company logo. RT hopes that the authenticity of such raw content will draw viewers to its political stories too, explains Ellen Mickiewicz of Duke University
sensational Source
EUROPEAN publishing saw a _______ hit in the 1840s with “The Mysteries of Russia”, a Frenchman’s take on the supposed brutality of Slavic life. Its most lurid tale described a Russian peasant fleeing wolves on a sled, who—unable to outpace the slavering pack—escaped by hurling her children, one by one, to their deaths
sensational Source
JD. com is busily adapting its logistics network, China’s most _______ , to handle fresh produce. Last year Alibaba spent $3
sophisticated Source
Today searches for banned keywords on Google will take users to a dead end and leave them in a virtual sin bin, blocking access to the search engine for about 90 seconds, though other parts of the internet will remain readily available. Google has been one of China’s favourite targets over the years, making it a useful measuring stick for the way that filtering technologies have developed The centrepiece of this _______ filtering effort had been the National Information Security Management System, named Project 005 after its starting date in May 2000. Mr Fang and other engineers worked on it until 2002
sophisticated Source
For decades China’s government tolerated and sometimes encouraged companies to raise capital in distant markets. When the first Chinese firm went public in New York in 1993, cross-border listings were endorsed by authorities, which acknowledged that American markets offered a lower cost of capital, more _______ investors and better corporate governance. Mainland regulators even turned a blind eye to fiddly legal work arounds, known as variable interest entities (VIEs), that allowed ambitious Chinese tech firms to circumvent arcane mainland restrictions on foreign ownership
sophisticated Source
Our chart on page 4 of last week’s special report on the Pacific contained two errors. It mixed up the direction of eastbound and westbound trade; and its definition of Europe (derived from IMF figures) _______ the level of trade between that region and the Americas. In the accompanying text, we should have said, “since the 1980s trade across the Pacific has far outrun the Atlantic sort
understated Source
01% of households, with net assets of over $40m, short-changed the taxman by a whopping 30%. Second, the numbers imply that previous estimates of wealth inequality, often based on tax data, have _______ the problem. And the Scandinavian statistics may provide a conservative estimate of worldwide tax-dodging: only around 2% of Scandinavian household wealth is held in offshore accounts, compared with the global average of 4%
understated Source
Continue reading » A recession by any other name Dec 26th 2008, 19:35 by The Economist | WASHINGTON THE National Bureau of Economic Research did writers everywhere a favour by officially declaring that America was in the midst of a bona fide recession—"the present financial and economic crisis" was starting to get rather cumbersome as a phrase. Still, given the magnitude of the downturn, "recession" feels a bit _______ and plain. The 19th century had its many "panics"
understated Source
css-1ehrfcr . _snippet{grid-column:4/-1;}}A glimpse into Japan's _______ financial heft in South-East Asia .
understated Source
But New Yorkers learned last month that some of the data were not accurate. Letitia James, the state’s attorney-general and a close ally of Mr Cuomo, released a damning 76-page report saying his administration had _______ the number of covid-19-related deaths in state nursing homes by as much as 50%. Nearly 15,000 people died in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, over 5,000 more than originally disclosed
understated Source
But the other side felt no such obligation, brandishing signs with slogans like “Burn Christians, Jail Ahok”. The governor’s race has given _______ politicians a simple blueprint for winning office: stir up religious fervour by decrying real or invented insults to Islam. The opposition is likely to resort to such tactics in the next presidential election, due in 2019
unscrupulous Source
The threat is not from military coups but governments in power. Given time, _______ leaders can hollow out democracy completely. Two decades ago Venezuela held meaningful elections; today it is about to eliminate the last kernel of opposition (see article)
unscrupulous Source
For the time being, though, the traffic is in the other direction. _______ autocrats are exploiting the pandemic to do what they always do: grab power at the expense of the people they govern. ■ Dig deeper: For our latest coverage of the covid-19 pandemic, register for The Economist Today, our daily newsletter, or visit our coronavirus tracker and story hub
unscrupulous Source
Random House Business; £20 The story of how a few commodity-trading firms quietly reconfigured the world economy, making fortunes, juggling embargoes and swaying geopolitics. _______ operators such as Marc Rich (who spent two decades as a fugitive from American justice) became global power-players as intermediaries between resource-rich autocrats and their customers. Career and Family
unscrupulous Source
Future economic development, led by technology, requires China to strengthen friendly exchanges with countries around the world, especially developed ones. But the hegemonic nature of the one-party dictatorial system and its “wolf warrior” diplomacy, coupled with China’s _______ theft of intellectual property, make many countries wary, pushing them to unite to resist the external expansion and bullying. It leaves China in a situation of being relatively isolated in the international community and lacking the external environment it needs for economic growth
unscrupulous Source
Worse, IUU operators are likely to be involved in other crimes, from finning sharks to running drugs. Tens of thousands of South-East Asian and African crews toil under conditions of debt bondage to Taiwanese, Chinese and other _______ operators of big fleets. In the Pacific, onboard fisheries observers monitoring the catch are routinely murdered
unscrupulous Source
The farmers had been hoping for a better life under an UN supervised elected government. Again their hopes have been badly ruined as a result of unending land grab by the _______ , the very people the peasants put their trust upon, be they politicians, military personnel or the rich and powerful. Mostly illiterate, the farmers do not know how to voice their grievances
unscrupulous Source
There are bound to be more lurches. _______ politicians who have done much to debase the Maldives’ politics are already returning. Among Mr Solih’s unlikely new allies are Mohamed Nazim, who encouraged the police and army to mutiny against Mr Nasheed in 2012, and Qasim Ibrahim, a resort-owner who, as finance minister under Mr Gayoom, lent himself the equivalent of a third of the central bank’s capital
unscrupulous Source
Among them were Turkey’s president, who locks up thousands of Muslims for belonging to the wrong religious group, and Pakistan’s prime minister, who seems more upset by events in a classroom in France than in next-door China’s million-Muslim gulag. _______ politicians have always stirred up racial or sectarian outrage to unite their supporters and distract attention from their own flaws. But some critics seem sincerely to believe that France is the cause, rather than victim, of jihadist attacks on its soil
unscrupulous Source
SUSAN SONTAG understood that photographs are unreliable narrators. “Despite the presumption of _______ that gives all photographs authority, interest, seductiveness,” she wrote, “the work that photographers do is no generic exception to the usually shady commerce between art and truth. ” But what if even that presumption of
veracity Source
Since a government wedded to free speech is unlikely to haul Netflix’s chief executive to the Tower of London for ignoring Mr Dowden, the intervention should be read as mere virtue-signalling to conservative Britons. Still, the government’s concern for _______ is welcome. Perhaps in future Mr Johnson will pay closer attention to the truth than he did when heading a campaign to leave the European Union which claimed that Brexit would save the country £350m a week, or when he said over a year ago that a trade deal was “oven-ready”
veracity Source
” Above all, though, like all liberals Mill believed in the power of individual thought. His first big work, “A System of Logic”, argues that humanity’s greatest weakness is its tendency to delude itself as to the _______ of unexamined convictions. He renounced shibboleths, orthodoxies and received wisdom: anything that stopped people thinking for themselves
veracity Source
It is a recording of something that never happened. Mr Klingemann’s experiment foreshadows a new battlefield between falsehood and _______ . Faith in written information is under attack in some quarters by the spread of what is loosely known as “fake news”
veracity Source
Even so, it is no longer the highest achiever overall. That is China—or to be more precise, Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang (the OECD declines to include results from farther afield because it cannot guarantee their _______ ). Less well-studied countries including Jordan, Poland and Turkey have also seen improvements
veracity Source
Perhaps the most chilling example of that is in Paul de Lagarde's “German Essays”. Underlined is: “Each and every irksome Jew is a serious affront to the authenticity and _______ of our German identity. ” As the author points out, Hitler had a magpie mind
veracity Source
” In other words, it was perfectly OK to bamboozle the public with plausible-sounding factoids. Verisimilitude mattered more than _______ . His testimony earned Ivy Lee the nickname “Poison Ivy”
veracity Source
The cause seems clear: Omicron, a mutation first discovered in samples collected on November 8th in South Africa and three days later in neighbouring Botswana. Just how _______ it is remains unclear: some have claimed the variant is less deadly, though evidence of that appears, as yet, inconclusive. How can Omicron, which has only been confirmed in fewer than 300 cases in South Africa, be responsible for a wave that numbers over 10,000 cases every day? Testing, which has plagued covid data since the pandemic began, remains a problem
virulent Source
To establish a comparison with other variants, scientists need to observe enough cases across a range of ages and in people with secondary conditions, such as chronic kidney disease and diabetes, that are known to make catching covid more dangerous. One thing to remember is that, if Omicron turns out to be less _______ than Delta but much more infectious it could still lead to a rise in hospital admissions and deaths. Dr Grad reckons that assessing Omicron’s severity could take one to two months
virulent Source
But, more broadly, there is unease that America’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds research, may have supported GOF work in China. Recently there was further controversy when the NIH said that a recipient of one of its grants, EcoHealth Alliance, failed to report its work in 2018 on making a mouse coronavirus more _______ . (EcoHealth Alliance says this information was reported
virulent Source
And it may also end up being a way to monitor the transition, if it happens, of SARS-CoV-2 to endemicity. New pathogens often follow an evolutionary course whereby they become less _______ , and thereby more transmissible. Some people think this may explain the origins of the four relatively benign coronaviruses known to cause symptoms commonly badged as “the common cold”
virulent Source
The market capitalisation of all crypto assets fell by $400bn to $2trn, before picking up slightly. Why did prices fall, and what makes cryptocurrencies so _______ ? In the past, crypto-crashes have happened largely independently from wider market routs. The sharp drop in May, when cryptocurrencies lost 47% of their value in a week, was prompted by a clampdown on crypto-trading in China and a tweet by Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, saying that the electric-vehicle maker would stop accepting payments in bitcoin
volatile Source
This year the investment shortfall is one of the main reasons prices of all three energy commodities have soared. European gas prices, though _______ , were near record highs as The Economist went to press. Oil crossed $81 a barrel after the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and producers such as Russia who are part of the OPEC+ alliance, resisted calls to raise output at a meeting on October 4th
volatile Source
But by 2023 many will face a fiscal crunch, says Jens Südekum, economics professor at the University of Düsseldorf. The commercial taxes that are their main independent source of income are _______ , and covid-19 creates new demands. National laws limit their ability to cut current spending, one of Mr Tsalastras’s bugbears
volatile Source
Diplomats publicly talk of using sanctions and an arms embargo to encourage talks. Privately they are _______ of hope and worry that the longer the fighting continues, the greater the risk of Ethiopia disintegrating, Yugoslavia-like, into the ethnic states that make up its federation. Many are concerned that the conflict may also spill across borders, dragging Somalia and coup-prone Sudan into a war that has already sucked in troops from Eritrea
bereft Source
His cabinet will be home to many non-white faces. Does this amount to a new wave for the civil-rights movement? BLM looked _______ before the summer. Several activists say the national part of their movement had lost its way
bereft Source
The 2010s saw the pendulum swinging back. In large part because they feel _______ of other options, many governments have borrowed heavily—and as yet they have paid no dreadful price. Can this go on? Keynes’s ideas about borrowing reflected his view of recessions—and in particular, the Depression of the 1930s, during which he wrote “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”—as vicious circles
bereft Source
These animals have a tendency to give birth to offspring with autistic traits familiar from people—unwillingness to socialise, repetitive behaviour and unwillingness to communicate (in the case of mice, via ultrasonic squeaking). The researchers noted that the guts of both the obese mothers and their young were _______ of L. reuteri
bereft Source
Even after controlling for it, women in Britain were 15% more likely to have lost their job and 8% more likely to have been furloughed, according to research led by Abi Adams- Prassl of Oxford University. Possible explanations include discrimination, or that, _______ of child care, some mothers chose to leave their jobs. Higher-skilled women are less likely to lose their jobs than lower-skilled ones
bereft Source
Todd Harrison, a space and defence expert at CSIS, an American think-tank, says China’s goal of signing up international partners for Tiangong involves “actively courting” America’s European allies. Were America to find itself _______ of a space station, Britain, France or Germany might, he reckons, join Tiangong. That seems a stretch, diplomatically speaking, especially given other collaborations between NASA and Europe’s spacefaring powers
bereft Source
Dating firms also suffer from an inherent conflict of interest. Perfect matching would leave them _______ of paying customers. The domination of online dating by a handful of firms and their algorithms is another source of worry
bereft Source
Three months ago the situation was so uncertain that many firms, not just in America, refused to offer their habitual guidance about future earnings—in some cases for the first time ever. _______ of milestones, analysts slashed profit forecasts. Now it seems they may have erred on the side of gloom
bereft Source
Components of the gut flora are also involved in digesting certain foodstuffs containing complex carbohydrates, and an unbalance in the relevant microbial mix is implicated in obesity. Babies born via Caesarean section (ie, surgical removal directly from the womb) do not get such a biological baptism, and their guts are left bacterially _______ as a consequence. That has left doctors wondering how best to give them what they are missing
bereft Source
Like a fluorescent injection in the bloodstream, as the virus surged around the world it has illuminated the workings of the global body politic. For every symptom of resilience—including food supply-chains, the financial system and, most of all, science—there have been symptoms of _______ . One is that many societies cannot seem to grasp the nature of exponential growth
frailty Source
economist. com/printedition/2021-04-03","name":"Mar 31st 2021 edition"}}]} The AmericasMar 31st 2021 editionIt takes two to _______Argentina is in no hurry to strike a deal with the IMFThe country owes a whopping $45bn, or $1,000 per personApr 3rd 2021FacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppAT THE PRESIDENTIAL palace in Buenos Aires, political advisers are frank about their priorities. “We’re putting meat on the grill for those who put us in power,” says one, referring to voter-pleasing preparations for the mid-term elections due in October
disentangle Source
They should not waste it. ","description":"How to _______ business from government","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
disentangle Source
Resource reallocation—and any concomitant uptick in energy use—can be caused by other things, including economic growth plain and simple. To _______ the impact of energy efficiency, Messrs Rausch and Schwerin have created what they think is the first macroeconomic model to link energy use to efficiency-enhancing technological change. The provision of energy-dependent services requires combining capital (say, an electricity generator or a car) with energy (coal or petrol)
disentangle Source
The citation from one prominent wonk to justify the claim that automation was “already” happening included a New York Times article and a theoretical microeconomics paper. According to some research, last year automatable jobs vanished in large numbers; but it is hard to _______ the effect of technological change from lockdowns. It is true that America’s GDP is nearly at its pre-pandemic level even as the level of employment is 7m lower
disentangle Source
Why? Data scientists at a3. ai, a health-research group, analysed the insurance records of 14m patients in the Covid-19 Research Database, 380,000 of whom were diagnosed with the virus, to _______ the causes for The Economist. Those racial inequities persist even after controlling for socioeconomic factors
disentangle Source
State legislatures have enacted over 400 bills related to the opioid crisis since 2010. Many came into force concurrently, making it ever more difficult to _______ the effect of a good policy from a bad one. *"A dynamic transmission disease model of the opioid epidemic", by David Sinclair, Hawre Jalal, Mark Roberts & Donald Burke, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health
disentangle Source
Some of the best evidence for this “fetal-origins hypothesis” comes from historical disasters. By looking at what happened to babies who were in the womb during an epidemic, a famine or an environmental calamity, and comparing them with those born a little earlier or later, researchers can _______ the intertwined influences of genes, upbringing and the prenatal environment. Recent studies have looked at the long shadows cast by catastrophes such as the influenza pandemic of 1918, the Dutch “hunger winter” of 1944-45 and radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown
disentangle Source
Ria Ivandic, Tom Kirchmaier and Neus Torres-Blas of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) have analysed 523,546 domestic-abuse incidents reported to the Greater Manchester Police between 2012 and 2019, alongside detailed information on 780 games played by Manchester City and Manchester United in that period. They have been able to _______ why intimate partner violence increases after games and to create a timeline of when women are most at risk. (The changes are “driven exclusively from male perpetrators on female victims”, the authors observe
disentangle Source
Bagehot, a column about Britain, is named after one of the finest editors of The Economist: Walter Bagehot (pronounced Bajut), who edited the paper between 1861 and 1877. A British Liberal politician once described Bagehot as someone who "hated dullness, apathy, _______ , the time-worn phrase, the greasy platitude". Woodrow Wilson kept a drawing of Bagehot in his study
pomposity Source
For peace talks, too, virtual platforms make it possible to bring in people who probably wouldn’t find the time to get on a plane and spend several days cloistered in Stockholm or Geneva. Virtual meetings also cut out a lot of the formalities and _______ of traditional diplomacy. They are “a great leveller”, says a diplomat from a UN Security Council member: “They’re in their bedroom and you’re in your bedroom
pomposity Source
Countless Economist hacks were helped, and two or three were stung, by his advice. Gentle with newcomers, generous in passing on his skills, he would puncture pretension and _______ . He snorted at the way that one ardent young campaigner, when informed of a fact or two, argued equally ardently in the opposite direction
pomposity Source
Strategists like to talk in terms of early-, mid- or late-cycle investing. It is tricky to say when one stage ends and another begins, just as it is hard to _______ adulthood from adolescence. The markets drop some hints, though
delineate Source
The administration of then-president Richard Nixon declined to spend congressionally approved funds on programmes he disliked (by law Congress has the power of the purse, and decides how to spend federal money, but the president, through his executive agencies, is the one who actually spends it). The act compels a president who wants to spend money differently from how Congress has appropriated it to explain why, ask permission and _______ the fiscal impact of his decision. It also creates a process, known as reconciliation, that lets Congress move quickly when considering legislation that aligns spending with fiscal priorities established in the congressional budget resolution
delineate Source
But perhaps it should have been. The fiasco arose in part because of the “cone of uncertainty” sometimes used to _______ the possible paths of a storm—a template which, as luck would have it, is one of many maps and charts patiently explained by Alberto Cairo in “How Charts Lie”. His book could not be more timely
delineate Source
A class distinguishes one technology from another. Subclasses _______ processes, structural features and functional features of the technology in that particular class. A class-subclass pair—say, 136/206 for class 136 (batteries: thermoelectric and photoelectric) and subclass 206 (solar energy type)—is a unique code, and every patent is identified by at least one such code
delineate Source
Both countries base their claims to sovereignty over the island on interpretations of unclear historical treaties, beginning with the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the American War of Independence. In 1979 both governments applied to the International Court of Justice to _______ the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick, but decided against resolving the dispute over Machias Seal Island. A subsequent 1984 ruling settling other disputes in the area recognised a 100-square-mile (259-square-km) break in the international boundary known as the “Grey Zone”, in which the island lies
delineate Source
But because the “municipality prioritisation index” used total crime numbers, rather than rates per person, the plan’s targets for prevention projects were mostly just the biggest towns and cities. El Salvador’s police claim to collect data good enough to make crime maps that _______ gang territories, but say they cannot release them because doing so could “compromise intelligence operations” and stigmatise residents of violent neighbourhoods. Such claims are common across the region
delineate Source
America now lags behind much of the rich world in its vaccine rollout, in part because of the reluctance of some on the right to get jabbed. But the academic debate is not _______ on the extent to which polarisation is rising; political scientists even disagree on how to define it. How is polarisation measured, and are American voters really growing further apart? In general, political polarisation is defined as the grouping of people into two extreme positions
conclusive Source
How many people with covid-19 go on to develop the long version? The answer is complicated by the difficulty of diagnosing the condition, which is now formally called post-covid syndrome. Diagnosing any disease is rarely straightforward because the symptoms of various illnesses overlap and tests—if they exist—are not always _______ . Treatment by trial and error is common practice, starting with drugs for what seems to be the most likely ailment
conclusive Source
Over the past half-century, however, they seem to have reverted to a more atomised condition. The death of culture Mr Putnam’s analysis is suggestive rather than _______ . Although some social pathologies, such as a turn toward nationalism and xenophobia, have spread globally, nothing like America’s mortality crisis can be found in other rich countries
conclusive Source
For example, the effect of Chinese imports on the size of the labour force falls to a quarter of its 1990s size in the 2000s. This is hardly _______ —slashing sample sizes inevitably reduces the power of a test. Mr Rothwell has not disproved anything
conclusive Source
The 90% figure quickly became ammunition in political arguments over austerity. Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman, cited their “ _______ empirical evidence” in a budget plan calling for swingeing cuts to public spending. In a February letter to European Union finance ministers Olli Rehn, the vice-president of the European Commission, touted the “widely acknowledged” 90% limit as a reason to press on with European fiscal cuts
conclusive Source
In the months after the Paris Olympics rumours began to circulate that some competitors had been taking regular injections of EPO-producing mRNA. But the tests available failed to show _______ evidence of foul play. New tests were then developed in time for the 2028 games
conclusive Source
They have won, as an Englishman would have won, by obstinacy. They would not admit the possibility of real defeat; they did not know that they were beaten; or, to speak more accurately, they knew that though they seemed to be beaten they were not: they felt that they had in them latent elements of _______ vigour which, in the end, they should bring out, though they were awkward and slow in so doing. We may alter, perhaps, to suit this event, the terms which, in one of the greatest specimens of English narrative, the great English historian describes on a memorable occasion the conduct of Rome
conclusive Source
TWO TALES are often told about Japan. The first is of a nation in decline, with a shrinking and ageing population, sapped of its _______ . The second is of an alluring, hyper-functional, somewhat eccentric society—a nice place to eat sushi or explore strange subcultures, but of little wider relevance to the outside world
vitality Source
The great prize on offer is the chance of bringing the coronavirus pandemic under control. But in the meantime risks abound, to health, economic _______ and social stability. As 2021 approaches, here are ten trends to watch in the year ahead
vitality Source
Its barons like to boast of revamping the companies they buy. But they themselves have been _______ to their own business model, centred on funds with a ten-year life. Within this time span, fund managers, known as “general partners” (GPs), commit to buy, manage and sell a clutch of companies; investors commit to lock up their money for the duration
steadfast Source
He was right. Although Germany, Denmark and Norway stopped arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Mr Trump stressed America would remain the kingdom’s “ _______ partner”. On December 1st 2018 the CPJ counted more than 250 journalists in jail for their work: at least 68 in Turkey, 47 in China, 25 in Egypt and 16 in Eritrea
steadfast Source
What will the consequences of even lower union membership be? Unions engage in both collective bargaining for their workers and political lobbying, typically for progressive causes and Democratic candidates. Among white Americans, blue-collar workers have had their heads turned by President Donald Trump even as union bosses remain _______ Democrats, so that many members disagree with their union’s politics. Opting out of union membership—and its mandatory dues—would allow them to benefit from negotiated pay rises and holidays without incurring any of the cost
steadfast Source
However, as places including New Zealand have accepted, the coronavirus is not going away. One day China will have to _______ . Ultimately, people will gain immunity either through infection or vaccination
relent Source
Fearing they would be taken advantage of, farmers ditched their ploughs and drove their tractors to Delhi’s gates. In January the government suspended the laws’ implementation for 18 months, but the farmers refused to _______ in their demonstrations, demanding revocation, nothing less. The government’s biggest obstacle, more than any particular point of contention over policy, was a trust deficit
relent Source
Now that the Trump administration has bypassed the WTO and taken the fight straight to China, there is nothing remaining that it particularly wants from the WTO. And so the chances that it will _______ and allow nominations to the appellate body by December 10th are slim to none. In response to proposals from other members to change the body’s rules, an American representative said that they were not persuaded that the rules would be stuck to
relent Source
The supporting cast is richly drawn, ranging from Siegfried Uhse, a gay, closeted hairdresser in West Berlin blackmailed by the Stasi into collaboration, to Reuven Frank, an NBC executive who threatens to resign when the Kennedy administration blocks the network from airing the film. (The politicians _______ , and the documentary, available today on YouTube, is a triumph. ) Most of the players find some sort of redemption in the happy denouement; the family reunions described in a late scene are moving
relent Source
Whether they favour a knockout punch, a hug or torture-by-PowerPoint, activists are persistent: if they commit themselves to a full-blown campaign they usually get at least some of what they want. The CEO’s first tactic is thus to try to persuade them that he is already working behind the scenes to meet their concerns in the hope they will _______ . Even if they agree with the activists, most CEOs would prefer to reform their companies on their own
relent Source
How should the world get out of this bind? Even as Mr Trump behaves with astonishing irresponsibility, others must keep their heads. Some may impose limited retaliation—that, after all, is how to treat bullies, and the threat to local manufactures will strengthen the hand of Republicans pressing Mr Trump to _______ . But such action must be proportionate and limited
relent Source
Living alone is “great”, she says, “because you do not have to compromise”. In recent years, Britain’s housing shortage has seemed to _______ . After a deep post-recession slump, construction has climbed back up towards previous highs
relent Source
POPULISTS have a new _______ . For many years, on both sides of the Atlantic, they have thrived on the belief that a selfish elite cannot—or will not—deal with the problems of ordinary working people
grievance Source
A PRESIDENT is swept into office after whipping up a wave of _______ and resentment. He claims to represent “the people” against internal exploiters and external threats
grievance Source
William Shawcross, who is reviewing the government’s counter-terrorism Prevent strategy, to which the suspect was referred, is likely to argue that MI5 should have more say as to whether potential extremists are placed in anti-extremism programmes. Policy Exchange, an influential think-tank, urges the authorities to combat the _______ culture that poisons the minds of some young Muslims rather than waiting until they show signs of violent intent. In memoriam The physical defence of MPs needs to be linked to a wider defence of their calling
grievance Source
Such speech was bannable only if “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and “likely to incite or produce such action”. Which of these three tests—the speaker’s intent, the imminence of a crime and its likelihood—are met in the case of the Capitol riot? Imminence, clearly: the mob was in the Capitol building within an hour of Mr Trump’s _______ . What he intended, though, is less starkly obvious
harangue Source
” Much like the abrupt demand this week that China immediately close its consulate in Houston, the statement constituted a new salvo in America’s ever-expanding hostilities with China. Mr Pompeo’s _______ came on the fourth anniversary of a ruling by an international tribunal at The Hague in a case brought against China by the Philippines. That ruling demolished China’s claims to maritime resources within the sea as going far beyond rights granted by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)
harangue Source
EVEN as America's politicians _______ the bankers, the bankers are sniping back. On March 13th the chairman of Wells Fargo, America's fourth-biggest bank, called the Treasury's ongoing stress test for banks, with its glacial timetable, “asinine”
harangue Source
But it sits uneasily with the government’s aim of reducing debt. Meanwhile President Donald Trump is trying to _______ the Fed into a more accommodative monetary policy in the run-up to next year’s elections. But he is unwilling to abandon his belligerent approach to trade relations
harangue Source
Each Sunday he would host live television shows lasting up to 12 hours. He would ring up ministers in the early hours of the morning to _______ them. For 14 years, everything that happened in Venezuela passed through his hands, or so he liked to think
harangue Source
From the 1920s to the 1970s responses were more modest. A tax increase in 1935 corresponded with an increase in the taxable incomes of the rich—at a time when William Randolph Hearst ordered his newspaper editors to christen the New Deal the “Raw Deal” and _______ Franklin Roosevelt for his attempts to “soak the successful”. Mr Goolsbee also questioned whether the behaviour of the rich hurt growth over the long run
harangue Source
A NORTH CAROLINA law enacted in 2011 requires every woman seeking an abortion to submit, between four and 72 hours before the procedure, to an ultrasound of her developing foetus. The Woman’s Right to Know Act (which, in less Orwellian terms, might be called the North Carolina Right to _______ Act) relies on a 1992 Supreme Court decision upholding an "informed consent” rule whereby doctors were required to offer patients a state-issued pamphlet describing the risks of abortion procedures. North Carolina ups the ante considerably with its recent law, adding a so-called “Display of Real-Time View Requirement
harangue Source
In 2017, in a speech in Alabama, he expressed a desire, referring to a hypothetical kneeling player, to “get that son of a bitch off the field right now. ” The president continued to _______ the league and its commissioner in the months that followed, sending dozens of aggrieved tweets that alluded to “respect”, insisted on anthem-standing and badgered for a stricter policy. He even threatened to “Change tax law!” in order to punish the league, which benefits from its tax-exempt status
harangue Source
“Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain”. By Gwenifer Raymond In 2018 Gwenifer Raymond’s “You Never Were Much of a Dancer” was an _______ debut: the young British multi- instrumentalist seemed possessed of the spirit of John Fahey, an “American primitive” guitarist. The tracks on “Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain”, this year’s follow-up, stretched out, allowing her beautifully deft and expressive playing more time to breathe, as well as greater exploration of the musical themes, now no longer tied to America
auspicious Source
Rather than rushing to inoculate all 800,000 of its citizens, the government sought advice from the Zhung Dratshang, a body of Buddhist monks. The stars were not _______ , they ruled. Better to wait two months, and then to make sure that the first dose be both administered by, and given to, women born in the Year of the Monkey
auspicious Source
The steady fall in bond prices since the start of the year had suddenly quickened to a pace that threatened a destabilising rout. During February 25th the benchmark ten-year Treasury _______ spiked above 1. 6% (bond
yield Source
The expected date of lift-off in some countries is now years earlier. In the last days of October Australia’s two-year government-bond _______ jumped from around 0. 1% to nearly 0
yield Source
Cryptocurrencies, the fundamentals of which cannot easily be analysed, have soared too. Even America’s bond market is a puzzle: the ten-year Treasury _______ is only 1. 4% even though annual consumer-price inflation has reached 5
yield Source
3trn) in government bonds in order to soothe markets and gin up the economy (see chart). Now it must consider whether such quantitative easing (QE) remains _______ . That involves grappling with two questions at its next policy meeting on December 16th: whether the euro area has truly escaped its low-inflation trap, and whether asset purchases have outlived their usefulness
appropriate Source
Yet today the idea has expanded to new extremes—and obstructs free expression. In American colleges and universities, a vocal minority of students are pushing for official policies banning the practice—by, for example, disciplining students who wear Halloween costumes deemed in _______ . The threat here is quite overt
appropriate Source
The great prize on offer is the chance of bringing the coronavirus pandemic under control. But in the meantime risks abound, to health, economic _______ and social stability. As 2021 approaches, here are ten trends to watch in the year ahead
appropriate Source
IT MAY NOT always be _______ to judge a book by its cover, but that advice does not extend to weekly newspapers. Every week, the editors of The Economist debate, sometimes argue and eventually agree on what is, for us, the most important story of the week
appropriate Source
There are all kinds of interesting network issues, though. Positive externalities suggest subsidies are _______. The economics of a fiber investment, with big up-front costs, are probably a lot different from a wireless investment
appropriate Source
As usual, the technology sector has been the leader with “agile” teams made up of colleagues from across the organisation collaborating on short-term projects. Perhaps managers should be more agile, in charge of some projects and merely team members for others? And if remote working becomes more common, how will that affect management structures? How do you build a relationship between supervisor and employee if the two never meet? At the top, a focus solely on shareholder value, associated with the 1990s boom, is no longer _______ . The modern senior executive must be a statesman (or woman), dealing not just with shareholders but wider society
appropriate Source
Politicians, wanting to protect consumers, crack down on profiteers. But how to work out what price is too high, and what redress is _______ ? The story of your correspondent’s local corner shop offers a cautionary tale. This type of shop was once familiar in New York, but has largely been squeezed out by chains and bank branches
appropriate Source
Some garments remained beyond the pale (T-shirts, flip-flops, tank tops, yoga pants). But many—polo shirts, skirts (of _______ length), dress sandals—became fair game. JPMorgan was, sartorially speaking, ahead of its time among stuffy corporate giants (turtlenecks and hoodies have long been the fashion choice of Silicon Valley titans)
appropriate Source
. We will come out like a phoenix,” the vice-president, Amrullah Saleh, said on August 6th, trying to _______ his nation to defiance. Yet morale is low, and the Taliban’s slick propaganda machine is in overdrive
exhort Source
Other local authorities have introduced similar policies. There have also been softer- touch approaches to _______ women to bear more children. Rather than encouraging women to delay motherhood, state media now remind them that older mothers are more likely to have babies with birth defects
exhort Source
Politicians should leave central bankers to choose their tools: it is, after all, what the bankers are good at. So Mr Abe would be wrong to _______ the Bank of Japan to buy specific bonds, and America’s Republicans are wrong to carp at quantitative easing when the Fed has, as instructed, kept inflation close to its target. Politicians can intervene by changing either those goals or the central bankers themselves (when their terms are up for renewal)
exhort Source
Rwanda, which, with Uganda, backs the rebels, also insisted that Mr Kabila should disarm the Rwandan Hutu militias and their allies who fight for him. For their part, Mr Kabila's officials continue to _______ the Congolese to take up sticks and stones to fight the “Rwandan invaders”. Peace does indeed seem remote
exhort Source
Only then—and this was the shocking twist—would they understand that the surrender, which they had thought of as their nation's lowest hour, was in fact the moment of their liberation. Technically, von Weizsäcker was not the first to _______ the Germans to shift their perspective thus. Helmut Kohl, the chancellor at the time, had muttered the same idea only a few weeks earlier in his country-bumpkin dialect, but the press and public had taken little notice
exhort Source
AMID the bustling trade and raucous traffic of the Vietnamese capital, innumerable banners _______ citizens to “Celebrate the Spring, Celebrate the Party. ” These days, Hanoians do not have much to celebrate
exhort Source
Tablighi puts a westerner in mind of the Christian mendicant orders. The main activity of its adherents is to _______ other Muslims to lead holier lives. Its travelling part- time preachers come from all walks of life, and pay their own way
exhort Source
These sacrifices did not come easily. Political and cultural leaders took to the airwaves to _______ fellow citizens to see past the dark times to a sunnier future. Sometimes a heavier hand was required; there was military conscription, after all
exhort Source
“A SENSE of urgency” was the phrase Japan's government used to _______ the country to save itself during the darkest days of last year's financial crisis. Bank runs came and went, the financial markets wobbled, foreigners panicked
exhort Source
An exception is the Yom Kippur war and the subsequent oil embargo. But in general, markets regain their _______ . The economy carries on
poise Source
A half-century after the surgeon-general’s alarm, they, and incorrigible puffers, are its last remaining friends. ","description":"Big tobacco firms are maintaining their _______, but quietly wheezing","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
poise Source
There was no rope to secure him if he fell, as there had been when he repeatedly rehearsed the route. After a four-hour display of sloth-like precision, power and preternatural _______ , the 31-year-old safely made the summit, hiked back down to the valley, and phoned his mother. He then squeezed in a workout
poise Source
But it tends not to take them seriously for long. Covid-19 is a grave threat to the market’s _______ . News from Italy of the biggest coronavirus outbreak outside Asia led to a 3
poise Source
Though the embassy’s security staff had much to worry about, Claiborne was not an obvious source of concern. A 53-year-old mother of four grown children, Claiborne had the _______ and manner of someone used to disciplined work. As a young woman she had dreamed of becoming a ballerina, and worked toward this goal with such dedication that she was admitted to the prestigious Washington School of Ballet
poise Source
Each of these three factors reinforced the other—hence the drama. Given the anxieties about inflation, you may wonder why the bond market recovered its _______ . There are probably limits to how far an inflation scare can run this early in the economic recovery
poise Source
In 2016 Facebook’s boss pledged to cover 365 miles (587km) that year and, ever the overachiever, completed the challenge by July. He does not practise martial arts, but his almost discomfiting _______ could lead you to mistake him for a master of something like aikido. That would be appropriate, for in his professional life Mr Zuckerberg is trying to turn his opponents’ energy against them
poise Source
Studies have shown that they are more likely to be promoted than their plain-Jane colleagues. Because people tend to project positive traits onto them, such as sensitivity and _______ , they may also be at an advantage in job interviews. The only downside to hotness is having to fend off ghastly male colleagues; or so many people think
poise Source
Mr Xi has been quick to take up the political reins—he became commander-in-chief of the army at the same time as assuming leadership of the Communist Party last November, instead of having to wait another two years as Mr Hu did. Unlike Mr Hu, a dour apparatchik, he has the _______ and confidence of one born to power: his father was one of Mao’s comrades-in-arms. He “fills the room with his presence”, says a Western diplomat
poise Source
Mrs Merkel detests the spectacle. Perhaps more important, Mr Laschet shows few signs of Mrs Merkel’s trademark calm and _______ . His interventions during the pandemic were erratic and sometimes error-strewn
poise Source
Surveys suggest we consider at least half the ones we attend to be ineffective – the same bores drone on, the people with something useful to say don’t speak and nothing of importance gets decided. In many office cultures, a meeting is a byword for a _______ , time-wasting exercise. Frustration with meetings has fuelled a mini-industry in management books – “How to Hold Successful Meetings”, “Meeting Design” and “Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable” – dedicated to solving what one author labels “the most painful problem in business”
tedious Source
THERE IS SOMETHING slightly _______ about the dollar’s rude health. It seems as inevitable as lying politicians and stormy winters
tedious Source
window. env = {"ENV":"production"}; The Taliban get down to the _______ business of running a country | The Economist {"@context":"http://schema. org","@type":"NewsArticle","url":"https://www
tedious Source
The best thing such apps can do is get you away from your screen, and talking. Learn a bit, then try to escape family or roommates and _______ your thoughts about your day and your life: J’aime le beurre. J’aime le pain
articulate Source
Mr Turchin sees all this as a recipe for political chaos. _______ , educated people rebel, producing a scramble for political and economic power. Elites stop co-operating, counter-elites emerge, and order breaks down
articulate Source
“Xi just does not talk about America a lot. When they _______ their vision it’s not an America strategy,” he says. “It’s ‘this is the role China wants to play in the world over the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years’
articulate Source
Both of these were accepted by the Supreme Court. For now, however, there is still no one to put on trial, whether civil or military, and the search for evidence and _______ s goes on, with an ever-widening net.
suspect Source
“It failed to do so then, and it fails again today. ” She compared Texas’s _______ to “the philosophy of John C. Calhoun, a virulent defender of the slaveholding South” who maintained that states have veto power over federal laws
ploy Source
He seems not to like British civil servants. But these are _______ criticisms. The book is well-researched, readable and judicious
captious Source
Faced with such a muddy result, Dr Rösler would probably try to declare victory and soldier on in government. But even if he succeeds, his credibility as the head of a _______ party is likely to crumble. A binding decision against the ESM, on the other hand, could well break up the coalition
captious Source
He seems not to like British civil servants. But these are _______ criticisms. The book is well-researched, readable and judicious
captious Source
Hundreds died. And though Mexico's authoritarian history is nothing like as long as China's, its habits of government _______ even the PRI. Mr Fox's victory makes it that much harder to argue that any country's political traditions or habits of thought leave it invulnerable to economic liberalisation
antedate Source
Implementing even current UN targets, let alone “nature needs half”, would cost more than $70bn. Dyed-in-the-wool greens who _______ at talk of “return on investment” or “cost- benefit analysis” need to grow up. Correction (February 14th 2019): We originally described Hugh Possingham as moonlighting as chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, while working at the University of Queensland
bridle Source
The English feel that by pocketing more money than they deserve, the Scots are not playing fair; membership of the EU was wrong because Parliament is the only legitimate source of power; English history has provided “our island nation” with both a web of ties with the Anglo-sphere and a unique global economic and strategic niche. Riding tigers The Conservatives have used this powerful identity to grab power, and like to think that they can direct it where they will—applying the spur whenever they choose and the _______ whenever they need. But can they really? They may have harnessed English nationalism, but it has reshaped their party
bridle Source
South-East Asia’s post-colonial states are young and insecure. Their leaders _______ at any perceived challenge to sovereignty—or to their right to rule. Yet, for all the advantages, many South-East Asians find the Chinese presence sometimes overwhelming and the protestations of non-interference insincere
bridle Source
The evangelicals in the study barely engage with the science of environmentalism, instead querying the motives of those pushing such arguments. They especially _______ when Democratic politicians push for big-government solutions (“The Al Gore Effect”, the paper calls it). Dr Ecklund and her colleagues at the Chicago seminar wondered if the devout might be won round by environmental arguments stripped of politics and focused on helping people in poor, ecologically vulnerable countries
bridle Source
WHEN HASSAN AL-BANNA founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt nearly a century ago he implored his followers to seek “self-sacrifice, not personal advantage”. Today, though, they are struggling to _______ . The oldest and once-powerful Islamist movement has been tearing itself apart
comply Source
Those who have struggle to make sense of it, not least because so much detail has yet to be filled in: of the 400 rules it mandates, only 93 have been finalised. So financial firms in America must prepare to _______ with a law that is partly unintelligible and partly unknowable. Flaming water-skis Dodd-Frank is part of a wider trend
comply Source
Employers will have to pay for workers’ time off getting jabbed but not for tests. Companies in “wilful” violation of the rule—those that knowingly fail to _______ —will face fines of up to $136,500. Employees of the federal government’s executive branch, and contractors who do business with it, will also have to get jabbed and cannot opt out through testing (with some exemptions on health and religious grounds)
comply Source
Those listings have already been threatened by American rules that require all listed firms to provide access to internal auditing documents or be booted off exchanges. Chinese companies cannot readily _______ because officials in their home country consider such materials to be “state secrets”. The dilemma goes back a decade but a law put into practice by the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 2nd will purge all non-compliant companies from American bourses by 2024
comply Source
Researchers now race to post a working paper with America’s National Bureau of Economic Research in order to stake their claim to an area of study or to influence policymakers. The downside is that consumers of fast-food academic research often treat it as if it is as rigorous as the slow-cooked sort—papers which _______ with the old-fashioned publication process involving endless seminars and peer review. A number of papers using high-frequency data which generated lots of clicks, including one which claimed that a motorcycle rally in South Dakota had caused a spike in covid cases, have since been called into question
comply Source
In the absence of a political faith in break-ups, modern trustbusters are operating on the assumption that Big Tech will dominate in perpetuity—and placing upon the incumbents the state-like duties to police bad user activities, from fomenting terrorist violence to infringing copyright. Yet this raises a new problem: _______ ing with these rules would be so expensive that only a handful of (mostly American) companies could afford it. This snuffs out any hope of a big incumbent being displaced by a nascent competitor
comply Source
03%. The second effect is that banks are left with a lower ratio of equity capital to assets, making it harder to _______ with minimum capital requirements set by regulators. One rule is the “supplementary leverage ratio” (SLR), which requires big banks to fund themselves with equity worth at least 5% of their total assets
comply Source
“This is not the normal way of doing business. We are not sure that the law allows them to do this,” says a _______ spokeswoman for Telenor, which used to pride itself on its good relations with the Russian authorities. It is now scrambling to clarify the situation
crestfallen Source
Yet while 17m Britons were voting to leave the European Union on June 23rd, Gibraltar—a tiny British Overseas Territory dangling from the southern coast of Spain—voted by 19,322 to 823 to stay. Their votes “did not even move the needle”, Gibraltar’s chief minister, Fabian Picardo, told a _______ public the following day. The peninsula now faces an uncertain future outside the EU, which has helped underwrite decades of prosperity and kept the all-important border open
crestfallen Source
SUGA YOSHIHIDE, Japan’s prime minister, had been plotting for his re-election as late as September 2nd. The next day, he emerged from a meeting with the other leaders of his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) looking _______ . With his approval ratings wallowing and his support inside the party hollowing, he declared that he would not run in the party’s leadership race after all
crestfallen Source
9 years in 2011, just under a year less than the women of Hong Kong. People were even more _______ at the news that this was largely caused by the death toll from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in north-eastern Japan. It was a reminder of how disproportionately the disaster had hit the elderly in this ageing corner of the planet
crestfallen Source
In Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, “American Psycho”, the serial-killer antihero tries to impress some fellow masters of the universe with his new business card. He is _______ when they all whip out equally fancy ones—and aghast when one produces an absent colleague’s card, which is on thicker paper and has a watermark. Lots of companies try to turn their cards into miniature plugs for their products
crestfallen Source
Never mind love, let’s talk apartments Mr Li is busy, fielding telephone calls from potential clients and turning away a young man who walks in but lacks a college degree. “Don’t give up,” he calls after the _______ youth. By taking in a poor outsider, families gain a biddable son-in-law and children bearing their mother’s name, he enthuses
crestfallen Source
IN THE SUMMER of 1987 a _______ Boris Johnson went to call on Anthony Kenny, the master of his college, Balliol, and a distinguished philosopher and classicist. Mr Johnson had learned that he had been summoned for a “viva”—he was on the borderline between a first- and second-class degree—and wanted some extra coaching
crestfallen Source
The significance of Sunday's vote, they had argued, lay less in who was being elected—the 60 members of the Legislative Council (Legco), Hong Kong's pseudo-parliament, have little real power—than in the message it would send China about the desire of the territory's 7m-odd people to preserve, and indeed increase, their political freedom. But when the votes were counted, it was the democrats, not the authorities in Beijing, who were left looking _______ . The democrats and their allies won 60% of the popular vote, up three percentage points from the last election in 2000; and turnout hit a record high of 55
crestfallen Source
That is why a proper Tory chancellor would call for its early break-up, not urge European colleagues to save it. A second group, among them lots of Tory MPs first elected in 2010, is less critical than _______ after a run of missteps from a man they had thought the political genius of their generation. A final group of worriers includes figures close to the Conservative leadership (as well as allies of Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democratic bit of the coalition)
crestfallen Source
Suggest he was influenced by the pelting, intellectual strain of bebop that took over jazz in the 1940s, and he would say nope, he didn’t listen to it; he only ever wanted to do his own thing. Call him the usher of a new jazz age, put him on the cover of Time magazine, where he landed in 1954, and he was _______ . Duke Ellington deserved all that, he said, but not him
crestfallen Source
The resulting sensitivity of interest-rate expectations to QE announcements makes the policy hard to unwind. The Fed is nervous about triggering another “taper tantrum”, the episode in 2013 when the suggestion that it might _______ its bond-buying shook markets. In the euro zone things are further complicated because QE has also had the side-effect of mutualising some of the debts of member states
curtail Source
The plan does far too little to boost efficiency. On the upside it would _______ the carried-interest loophole which lets investment managers class their fees as capital gains not income. It would reduce tax evasion by increasing enforcement, such as through audits of the tax-returns of high-earners, which more than pays for itself
curtail Source
Today’s most basic plans are about 80% cheaper, after adjusting for inflation. Users who let providers sell their personal data get hefty discounts, though some regulators are looking to _______ the practice. Employers, health insurers and governments are increasingly subsidising personalised-nutrition plans and offering vouchers and other perks to obedient users
curtail Source
Even if the distribution of women’s occupations matched that of men—“if women were the doctors and men were the nurses”—she calculates that at most a third of the pay gap would disappear. The most important cause is that women _______ their careers as a part of a rational household response to labour markets, which generously reward anyone, male or female, who is willing to hold down what Ms Goldin calls a “greedy job”. These are roles, such as those in law, accountancy and finance, that demand long and unpredictable hours
curtail Source
That is partly because the leading candidates are fairly new faces, and the Concertación, the centre-left alliance that dominated most of that period, is no more. But it is mainly because the winner will at first cohabit with a convention which is writing a new constitution and which could decide to _______ the normal four-year presidential term. All this is because Chile is still picking up the pieces after an explosion of massive and sometimes violent protests in late 2019 that shook what had been one of Latin America’s most stable and seemingly successful countries
curtail Source
To that end, cut out the jargon. The use of pretentious phrases and complex acronyms is generally designed to obfuscate rather than _______ . In Bartleby’s experience, the reason people use unclear language is that they have nothing clear to say
elucidate Source
That effort got a boost this week. Jennifer Doudna (pictured) of the University of California, Berkeley, who discovered CRISPR-Cas gene editing and is a leading scientist in the field, will collaborate with GSK, a drugs firm based in London, to _______ the basic science of gene editing. The new Laboratory for Genomic Research, based in San Francisco, is a $67m five-year collaboration that may ultimately be useful for drug development and would-be gene editors—whether they seek to make changes to adults or embryos
elucidate Source
And because market forces are softened in such a contract, it calls for an alternative form of governance: the firm. One of the first papers to _______ these ideas was published in 1972 by Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz. They defined the firm as the central contractor in a team-production process
elucidate Source
That sounds a lot, but it isn’t. The techniques, such as X-ray crystallography and nuclear-magnetic resonance (NMR), which are used to _______ such structures do not work on all proteins. Some types are hard to produce or purify in the volumes required
elucidate Source
The Three Million African Genomes (3MAG) project, a continent-wide endeavour, proposes to do for the place what has already been done for Europe, North America and parts of Asia—namely to catalogue and analyse the genetic diversity of those who live there. That will be scientifically fascinating, for it will help _______ how H. sapiens evolved
elucidate Source
One study that drew on it, published in 2018 by Sekar Kathiresan of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and his colleagues, worked out polygenic risk scores for five diseases, including coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes. By totting up scores from over 6m genetic variants, they were able to _______ SNP patterns that identify those who are at a threefold higher risk or worse than the general British population of developing one of these diseases. For heart disease, 8% of the population are at such risk
elucidate Source
The use of an offshore company to move money or buy property is not necessarily dodgy; a billionaire may mask a purchase made with legitimate wealth for privacy reasons. But shell companies registered in palm-fringed offshore centres (the British Virgin Islands is a favourite) are often used to avoid or _______ tax, or to launder ill-gotten gains. Individuals have various ways to avoid tax legally by using structured tax shelters or changing their place of residence
evade Source
window. env = {"ENV":"production"}; How protesters _______ digital censorship | The Economist {"@context":"http://schema. org","@type":"NewsArticle","url":"https://www
evade Source
Both their manipulation and their mass production are fundamental to modern pharmacology. The huge market for statins rests on the way they interact with the workings of a protein called HMG-CoA reductase; Keytruda, the world’s biggest-selling cancer drug, is a protein itself, a subtly tweaked antibody which turns off a mechanism that lets cancers _______ the immune system. Understanding the form and function of proteins is crucial to medicine, to agriculture and to replacing the petrochemicals currently produced from oil
evade Source
Dr Gupta says that, among other things, P681R, helped by two shape-modifying mutations elsewhere, makes it easier for the virus to inject its genome into host cells. Still other mutations make the virus more transmissible by helping it _______ the antibodies that the immune system throws at it in order to protect the body from infection. Just as a spike protein may be shifted by a set of mutations to bind better to ACE2, so too can other mutations in return make it harder for antibodies to bind to spike
evade Source
So far not much is known about how the existing vaccines will respond to Omicron. The large number of mutations on its virus spike protein could cause the virus to _______ antibodies made to fight other strains. But any booster should increase the number of antibodies in ways that should provide some extra protection
evade Source
The Texas law is ingeniously awful. Its novel enforcement mechanism was designed by a former clerk to the late Antonin Scalia, a justice who died in 2016, to _______ scrutiny by the court. Challenges to a state law’s constitutionality usually require someone to bring a case against the state officials
evade Source
After training the system on molecules with antimicrobial properties, they let it loose on huge databases of compounds and found one that worked. Because it operated in a different way, even bacteria that had developed a resistance to traditional antibiotics could not _______ the new drug. Behind the success was a deeper truth: the algorithm was able to spot aspects of reality that humans had not contemplated, might not be able to detect and may never comprehend
evade Source
This is why most closely watched gauges, including the Halifax and Nationwide indices, adjust transactions for characteristics such as the number of bedrooms. Still, some quality improvements (or degradations) will _______ even the most careful statistician. The Oxbridge archives are rich enough to allow for the construction of something like an ideal property index, however
evade Source
Wenzhou’s police say he had 12,000 agents serving 80,000 customers on the mainland. SunCity allegedly arranged underground banking services to help them _______ capital controls. Junkets are legal in Macau
evade Source
Progressives blame corporate fat cats. Conservatives finger _______ regulators. But there seems to be agreement across the ideological spectrum that American enterprise isn’t what it used to be: less dynamic and more monopolistic at home, and having its lunch unfairly nibbled by Chinese and other rivals abroad
feckless Source
TWO decades ago much of sub-Saharan Africa was frozen out of the global financial system. Reckless lenders had lent too much to _______ (and often unelected) governments. Crooked officials had stolen billions, stashed their loot abroad and left their fellow Africans with the bill
feckless Source
Post-independence socialism produced many mills but little steel. A partial privatisation in the 1990s created capacity, but also large firms fed by _______ state-backed lending. Many were subsequently exposed as bankrupt
feckless Source
Against this background, many Germans were alarmed when the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 13% of the vote in 2017, making it the third-biggest force in parliament. The party was founded to oppose EU bail-outs of debt-stricken countries like Greece, which many Germans saw as a transfer from industrious German taxpayers to _______ Greeks. In 2013 it fell short of the 5% of votes needed to enter parliament
feckless Source
This marks a shift in world-view towards that of Alexander Hamilton, the father of debt mutualisation in the early American republic. During the euro-zone crisis, the debate over bail-outs was steeped in the idea that diligent Germans were bailing out _______ Greeks (rather than the
feckless Source
Democrats, the logic goes, focus too much on helping the poor and taxing the rich, ignoring justified feelings of abandonment in the middle. But there is another half to the political argument: the potent charge that government redistribution also picks the pockets of the hard-working middle, offering welfare to the _______ poor. This suspicion of redistribution explains how Mr Trump could run simultaneously as populist insurgent and as champion of huge tax-cuts for the highest earners
feckless Source
Under the Kaiser, Germany dragged the world into war; America and the Soviet Union flirted with nuclear Armageddon. Even if China and America stop short of conflict, the world will bear the cost as growth slows and problems are left to _______ for lack of co-operation. Both sides need to feel more secure, but also to learn to live together in a low-trust world
fester Source
In the 69 years since China truly became India’s neighbour by grabbing Tibet, the world’s two most populous countries have played a similar game. Even as their leaders summited and trade thrived, the Asian giants left a mess of territorial disputes to _______ . Mostly these claims, over some 130,000 square kilometres on either side of their 3,488km- long border, have not mattered much
fester Source
The danger is that a narrow focus on the gas project does not address the root causes of the conflict. So long as the people of Cabo Delgado see few benefits from the development of local natural resources, and see a state unable to provide health care, education, jobs and security, grievances will _______ . Last year Mr Nyusi announced a new northern development agency
fester Source
Despite the disruption of covid-19, that is feasible, thanks to a combination of bednets, pills and genomic technology. A short drive from Dakar, in a district called Madina Fall, wide puddles _______ on an unpaved road. Malaria has ravaged the area for thousands of years, but now it has all but gone
fester Source
If it prevents a Senate trial, Congress must fall back on other, less satisfactory tools such as censure or banning Mr Trump from office under the 14th Amendment for having “engaged in insurrection or rebellion”. If it allows a trial to go ahead, then the Senate should proceed immediately rather than leave Mr Trump to _______ . Those who worry about impeachment obstructing Mr Biden’s plans for the first 100 days during a national emergency are miscalculating
fester Source
Its political system can suppress problems fast by mobilising everything in the pursuit of one goal. But it also creates crises—and lets them _______ . Trust is what binds the financial system together
fester Source
) Such “vaccine nationalism” is counterproductive, according to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general. Eradicating the virus in some countries, while allowing it to _______ in others, would only prolong the pandemic. But according to a new survey, plenty of people think that, when a vaccine does arrive, their country should get it first
fester Source
BRAC, a big Bangladeshi NGO that originally came up with this approach to tackle abject poverty, calls it a “graduation programme”. Given the many problems of the poor, the logic runs, it is useless to apply a sticking plaster to one while leaving the others to _______ . For example, various NGOs, including Heifer International, Oxfam and World Vision, give cows, goats or chickens to poor people in developing countries, to enable them to earn an income selling milk or eggs
fester Source
The virus has wreaked economic devastation: 10m fewer Americans are employed than before the pandemic; two-thirds of children cannot attend school in person; one in eight adults are skipping meals. Bitter divisions over racial justice _______ . And a partisan rancour has poisoned Americans’ faith in their democracy
fester Source
3% last year. Meanwhile, some troubling problems _______ . Foreign firms don’t always get fair treatment
fester Source
Ignorant and terrified, the villagers turn to their young, charismatic preacher, Michael Mompellion. He persuades the village to _______ itself in self-imposed quarantine in the belief that the scourge is a punishment sent by God. The heroine is the reverend's 18-year-old maid, Anna, a widow who quickly loses her two young sons
immure Source
Ignorant and terrified, the villagers turn to their young, charismatic preacher, Michael Mompellion. He persuades the village to _______ itself in self-imposed quarantine in the belief that the scourge is a punishment sent by God. The heroine is the reverend's 18-year-old maid, Anna, a widow who quickly loses her two young sons
immure Source
) But no doubt something similar could have been said about Helsinki three decades ago. Overwhelmed by the “Somali shock” in the early 1990s, and in the midst of recession, Finnish authorities had to _______ . Instant responses, like building reception centres and crackdowns on overt racism, gave way to integration policies such as language classes and measures to ease Somalis into the workforce
improvise Source
Foreign policy is guided by events as much as by strategy: Mr Bush ran on a platform of compassionate conservatism, not a war on terror. Mr Biden must _______ in response to an unruly age. But he should not imagine that a foreign policy subordinate to fraught domestic politics will revitalise America’s claim to lead the world
improvise Source
On the surviving footage, Brando can be seen dispensing gnomic advice on his craft to a group of enthusiastic, if somewhat bemused, Hollywood stars, including Leonardo Di Caprio and Sean Penn. Brando also recruited random people from the Los Angeles street and persuaded them to _______ (the footage is said to include a memorable scene featuring two dwarves and a giant Samoan). “If you can lie, you can act,” Brando told Jod Kaftan, a writer for Rolling Stone and one of the few people to have viewed the footage
improvise Source
But the power of mRNA was demonstrated on a global scale during the pandemic, paving the way for other treatments in the 2020s. Like the vaccines, these use carefully crafted mRNA messages to boost temporarily the production of needed proteins, or _______ the production of harmful ones—a technique often likened to using the patient’s own cellular machinery as an on-demand drug factory. This approach is now used to treat cancer, heart disease and neurological disorders
inhibit Source
Since the summer of last year when it bought the rights to the new molecule from Ridgeback, Merck has been looking for ways to make the drug widely available, such was its promise. Known then as EIDD-2801 the molecule had been shown to _______ the replication of RNA viruses including SARS-CoV-2 but had not yet been through trials in humans to test its efficacy. As part of its covid-19 response, Merck chose to work on two vaccines and two drugs
inhibit Source
Coronaviruses have genomes bigger than those seen in any other RNA viruses—about three times longer than HIV’s, twice as long as the influenza virus’s, and half as long again as the Ebola virus’s. At one end are the genes for the four structural proteins and eight genes for small “accessory” proteins that seem to _______ the host’s defences (see diagram). Together these account for just a third of the genome
inhibit Source
Even the most obsessive users should be able to do so. The neuroscientific study on Facebook found that the subjects’ cognitive ability to _______ their impulsive behaviour was less impaired than for drug or gambling addicts. And data from Moment, an activity- tracking app, show that it is possible for light social-media consumers to be content
inhibit Source
Its round, red cherries, for example, are carefully selected for export to China as symbols of luxury. The authors of the World Bank’s book worry that the covid-19 pandemic will _______ investment, shorten supply chains and breed insularity, all of which could hamper convergence. But they also note some potential silver linings
inhibit Source
Less radically, a value-added tax in America (which lacks one), higher taxes on land or inheritance, or new taxes on carbon emissions could be on the cards. Like inflation, however, tax rises _______ and distort the economy while producing a backlash among those who must pay. While the world’s chief problem is battling an economic slump in which inflation is falling, such choices are tomorrow’s business
inhibit Source
But if housing wealth is the biggest source of rising wealth then a more focused approach is called for. Policy-makers should deal with the planning regulations and NIMBYism that _______ housebuilding and which allow homeowners to capture super-normal returns on their investments. Just how inconvenient Mr Rognlie's argument is for Mr Piketty's overarching narrative is a matter of perspective
inhibit Source
If the new black boxes prove tricky, there will be time to toughen the rules. ","description":"Humans are _______ too. Existing rules and regulations can apply to artificial intelligence","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www
inscrutable Source
HUD, with its annual budget of $46bn, is a tiddler compared with other federal departments, but in several ways it is a sort of miniature version of the Trump administration. In the nine months since he took the post, Dr Carson has stayed inconspicuous and _______ . The agency seems directionless
inscrutable Source
FOR A MAN who apparently likes to keep a low profile, Daniel Kretinsky makes a lot of headlines. In March journalists of Le Monde battled to prevent the _______ Czech oligarch from taking control of the prestigious French daily. On June 23rd the management of Metro, a German retail behemoth based in Düsseldorf, rejected a €5
inscrutable Source
But gambling on a craze, even a highly dubious one, can be about more than blind greed. The ICO boom is an outgrowth of the emerging, occasionally _______ world of cryptocurrencies. These are a form of money (bitcoin and ether are examples) used in transactions which are recorded on a distributed public ledger called a blockchain
inscrutable Source
It would take almost a decade for Sweden to exhibit the work of Vasily Kandinsky, a Russian long credited with pioneering abstraction, though his experiments in the form began after af Klint’s. Even then, his technique was dismissed as pretentious and _______ . By the time some of af Klint’s daring and perplexing paintings were shown publicly for the first time, in Los Angeles in 1986, she had been written out of art history
inscrutable Source
In the teeth of a scourge on the scale of covid-19, the impulse to draw significance from suffering is again strong. However, as is clear from the first of what will surely be shelf-loads of books about the coronavirus, in a secular age a pandemic is principally seen not as a question of _______ divine will, but as a test of earthly powers. All these books have to grapple with the problem that they were written amid great uncertainty
inscrutable Source
Its daily rise and fall is their heartbeat, an unseen spectacle of planetary extent. That such a mass of animals should go undiscovered for so long shows quite how _______ the sea has always been. The subsurface ocean is inhospitable to humans and their machines
inscrutable Source
It is the perfect diversion for life under lockdown. Taking your cherished people into battle injects some drama into _______ days. The game’s makers try to take their cues from history, says Ed Beach, the lead designer
monotonous Source
To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub THE ADVICE governments around the world are giving their people has a _______ consistency: stay at home; shelter in place; maintain social distance; go out only for essential purposes. None of that is much use for people who spend their nights either sleeping rough or in a homeless shelter
monotonous Source
Rather than hailing martial bravery, it lambasted the era’s violence and paranoia, as well as bungling bureaucrats and capricious rules of a kind that are freshly recognisable today. Early reviewers called the book “repetitive and _______ ”, but younger readers appreciated Heller’s extravagantly constructed jokes, in which the punchline may come hundreds of pages after the set-up. Above all they identified with the authority- questioning Yossarian, the closest thing “Catch-22” has to a hero
monotonous Source
“The order of the day was to bury all dread,” wrote Norman Mailer (no wallflower himself) of the self-exhortations of Ali before the George Foreman fight in Zaire in 1974. “Ali breathed forth a baleful self-confidence, _______ in the extreme…Buried anxiety was transmuted into ego. The funk of terror was being compressed into psychic bricks
monotonous Source
For some young Japanese, being treated well no longer means eternal job stability. They want better pay, flexible work conditions and less _______ jobs. Keidanren, Japan’s business lobby, has recommended that its members move away from lifetime employment and towards merit-based promotion and compensation
monotonous Source
It requires cutting through a mountainous river valley and travelling past flat lakeland, frozen for much of the year. It is a bleak, _______ journey. But it is worth the trouble
monotonous Source
Today’s president browbeats his subjects to exercise more and work harder. Yet it is hard to imagine Egyptians a generation hence feeling nostalgic for Mr Sisi’s _______ lectures. In a way, though, this makes him a fitting avatar for modern-day Arabism: a leader who aspires not to reshape the region, but merely to hold his own country together
monotonous Source
They want more than just a 9-to-5 (or often 9-to-9) grind. Shunning _______ factory life, youths are piling into China’s informal economy. That leaves a big portion of the workforce with low wages, no benefits and little prospect of upward mobility
monotonous Source
But the Court is composed of well-versed lawyers. In a presentation to the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Mr Tiersma pointed out that juries have been caught looking up words in dictionaries (banned as an outside source), such as assault, battery, culpable, inference, insanity, legal cause, malice, motive, murder, negligent and _______ . Even when they think they know the word, they can get it wrong: death-penalty jurors have confused “mitigation” with “aggravation”
premeditate Source
Isolating temporary effects is not an exact science, but the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, has had a go. The change in this measure, from the point when public spending was at its most _______ to the moment when it was most restrained (or the projected balance for this year if belt-tightening continues), provides a fairer measure of austerity (see chart). Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain—the PIIGS, as investment bankers’ shorthand has it—were in the direst fiscal straits in the crisis and, naturally, have been the most austere since
profligate Source
AMERICA has been warned many times in recent years that its _______ spending is dangerous, for itself and for the world economy. So far, however, Americans have ignored such doom-mongering, gleefully driving their current-account and budget deficits to record levels
profligate Source
For some, health-care and social spending rose just as the global economy tanked. In other cases, like Zambia’s, covid-19 provided an excuse for a _______ government to default. Others could run out of money in the months ahead
profligate Source
AMERICA remains the world’s most _______ spender on health care, according to a report published on November 4th by the OECD, a club of 34 mostly rich countries. In 2013 the United States spent, on average, $8,713 per person—two and a half times as much as the OECD average
profligate Source
In 2011 the euro area adopted a version in its fiscal rules. The constraint on _______ politicians was supposed to avoid frivolous spending that saddled future generations with debt repayments. It was also supposed to bolster confidence in the government’s ability to repay its debts, lowering borrowing costs
profligate Source
SUSTAINABLE development is a dangerously slippery concept. Who could possibly be against something that invokes such alluring images of untouched wildernesses and happy creatures? The difficulty comes in trying to _______ the “development” with the “sustainable” bit: look more closely, and you will notice that there are no people in the picture. That seems unlikely to stop a contingent of some 60,000 world leaders, businessmen, activists, bureaucrats and journalists from travelling to South Africa next month for the UN- sponsored World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg
reconcile Source
The pattern of Chinese assertiveness and Western disarray has become all too familiar. All democracies are struggling to _______ the conflicting objectives of doing business with a huge and vibrant economy, and protecting national security and human rights (see Chaguan). The Trump administration skewered Western complacency about China’s state-led model, but then detonated the global trading system without proposing an alternative
reconcile Source
It officially recognises past atrocities. It may also seek to _______ former adversaries. Some lead to prosecutions
reconcile Source
The fillip to productivity growth had other sources, like improvements in manufacturing techniques, better inventory management and rationalisation of logistics and production processes made possible by the digitisation of firm records and the deployment of clever software. The J-curve provides a way to _______ tech optimism and adoption of new technologies with lousy productivity statistics. The role of intangible investments in unlocking the potential of new technologies may also mean that the pandemic, despite its economic damage, has made a productivity boom more likely to develop
reconcile Source
Some studies are looking, for example, at changes in brain volume and structure. Knowing whether a long-covid symptom is caused by a specific sort of damage to blood vessels, the nervous system or other tissues will help _______ the search for treatments. For many sufferers, knowing what is causing their symptoms will provide some degree of relief—by proving that it is not all in their heads
refine Source
And it is not just Facebook. Google uses machine learning to _______ search results, and target advertisements; Amazon and Netflix use it to recommend products and television shows to watch; Twitter and TikTok to suggest new users to follow. The ability to provide all these services with minimal human intervention is one reason why tech firms’ dizzying valuations have been achieved with comparatively small workforces
refine Source
It was, they argued, already too late for governments to stop them. The group has since turned out to have members and sympathisers throughout the research community, who have helped _______ the process of delivering messages to human cells. Needles and syringes are no longer required
refine Source
Unless you can freely analyse causes and question orthodoxies you will not be able to solve problems. And unless you can criticise people and practices without fear of being called out, you will not be able to design effective policies and then go on to _______ them. The new race theory blocks progress in another way, too
refine Source
The more data, at least in theory, the better the systems perform. Tesla’s cars continuously beam data back to headquarters, where it is used to _______ the software. On top of the millions of real-world miles logged by its cars, Waymo claims to have generated well over a billion miles-worth of data using ersatz driving in virtual environments
refine Source
Andrew Leach, an economist at the University of Alberta, says once the price of diluent needed to move the heavy crude through pipelines is figured in, producers are almost paying people to take their oil. Why is Alberta’s oil so cheap? In normal times the heavy crude mined or extracted by steam from the oil sands costs US$10-US$15 less per barrel than West Texas Intermediate, because it is more difficult to _______ and must be transported longer distances to
refine Source
Calhoun, a virulent defender of the slaveholding South” who maintained that states have veto power over federal laws. And she noted that by foreclosing lawsuits against court clerks and the attorney-general, the court “effectively invites other states to _______ SB 8’s model for nullifying federal rights”. The slim victory for the clinic in Texas, as the liberal justices warn, carries ominous signs for the future of abortion rights
refine Source
Such luminaries were unafraid of challenging the status quo. Following suit, Mr Posner and Mr Weyl want to expand and _______ markets, putting them to work for society as a whole. In truth, the policies they advocate are so radical that they are unlikely ever to be adopted
refine Source
Opendoor expanded gradually. It offered i-buying services in only six markets after three years, taking its time to _______ its algorithms. It is now operational in 44 markets
refine Source
The 3bn pairs of nucleotide bases that make up human DNA were first fully mapped in 2003 by the Human Genome Project. Since then scientists have made publicly available the sequencing of around 1m genomes as part of an effort to _______ the “reference genome”, a blueprint used by researchers. But less than 2% of all sequenced genomes are African, though Africans are 17% of the world’s population (see chart)
refine Source
They should forge deeper and broader alliances, formally or informally. India, out of self-interest, should _______ the vestiges of non-alignment and draw closer to the Quad, with Australia, Japan and America. NATO cannot admit Ukraine, since the rules say an attack on one is an attack on all, and Russia has already occupied Ukrainian territory
relinquish Source
Purdue will be re-organised as a public-benefit company called Knoa Pharma, and its future profits will go towards alleviating the damage done by opioid addiction. Members of the Sackler family, who own Purdue, will _______ control of the firm and pay $4. 5bn to plaintiffs
relinquish Source
The snooping was unrelated to the management of internet addresses. But America’s Department of Commerce, which oversees ICANN, was provoked to announce in March 2014 that it would _______ its role if it were convinced that the organisation would be truly independent and able to resist power grabs by other governments and commercial interests. After ICANN agreed to implement a number of reforms earlier this year, the Department of Commerce decided to give the organisation full responsibility
relinquish Source
Purdue will be reorganised as a public-benefit company called Knoa Pharma, and its future profits will go towards alleviating the damage done by opioid addiction. Members of the Sackler family, who own Purdue, will _______ control of the firm and contribute $4. 5bn to the settlement
relinquish Source
Mr Orban has in effect become a dictator—in the heart of Europe. He may _______ some of his new powers after the pandemic, just to prove his critics wrong, but perhaps not all. Covid-19 is creating opportunities for autocrats and would-be autocrats to tighten their grip
relinquish Source
Yet there are also longer-term challenges, worth stressing if only because they have been so ignored on the campaign. Jump forward to 2017, when the next president will hope to _______ office. A combination of demography and the rising costs of America's huge entitlement programmes—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—will be starting to bankrupt the country (see article)
relinquish Source
That needs to change. More important, though, is to _______ control. Economists find that, in the developed world, more devolved systems tend to be more equal, probably because public services are more efficient when run by those who use them
relinquish Source
The first is that governmental control over the economy takes a large step up during periods of crisis—and in particular war. The second is that the forces encouraging governments to retain and expand economic control are stronger than the forces encouraging them to _______ it, meaning that a “temporary” expansion of state power tends to become permanent. The sinews of power In recent centuries government spending across the capitalist world has leapt
relinquish Source
, but little power of speech beyond grunting. Rather than _______ his position, he took to communicating through an iPad loaded with audio clips of him saying “yes”, “no” and “fuck you”. His daughter Shari now occupies the chair of the merged ViacomCBS
relinquish Source
“My mind works differently. I _______ much less, and my thoughts feel ordered, contextualised. ” The rehabilitation of psychedelic drugs, banned in most countries, is under way (see article)
ruminate Source
Then, suddenly this spring, after a bout of firefighting, the diary is bare. You sit in your study, hiding from the family, and _______—about what your firm lacks, about what it has too much of. You call a friendly investment banker and say: “I may need to do a deal soon
ruminate Source
Magnetic resonance imaging gives some clues to what is going on. Psychedelics seem to act in part through the default mode network (DMN), an interconnected group of bits of the brain that switch on when people remember the past, imagine the future or _______ on themselves, and which is overactive in depressed people. When people take psychedelics, the DMN switches off; at the same time, other bits of the brain communicate with each other more than they normally do, perhaps forging new neural pathways that override old, destructive patterns of thinking
ruminate Source
economist. com/printedition/2021-08-28","name":"Aug 28th 2021 edition"}}]} BritainAug 28th 2021 editionNo sex please, we’re _______OnlyFans U-turns on its porn banThe subscription platform wobbles under pressure from banksAug 25th 2021FacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppMARIE WORKED as a nanny for 14 years, until last October, when health problems made her switch to work she could do from home: selling amateur pornography. Today she makes $12,000 a month on OnlyFans, an online subscription platform where she updates a feed of “BBW” (Big, Beautiful Woman) photos and videos, and sells extras including knickers-by-mail
skittish Source
Investors in the public markets like predictable short-term profits and strategic certainty. They are too _______ to invest in a corporate turnaround. If the boss of a listed company unveiled a 100-day plan, it might spark a run on the shares
skittish Source
Analysis by The Economist, drawing on Google data and work by Mark Muro and colleagues at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, found that in the summer and autumn people in pro-Trump areas were half as likely to avoid public places as people living in areas that had voted for Joe Biden (see chart 1). But now even people in the most pro-Republican areas appear to be getting _______ , too. In the week before Thanksgiving attendance at South Dakotan recreation-and-retail was 8% lower than normal
skittish Source
Emerging markets were therefore relieved by reassurances offered by Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chairman, on January 4th. He emphasised that American inflation remained “muted”, that the Fed will be “patient”, and that it will listen “sensitively” to financial markets, which have turned _______ of late. He reminded his audience of how “nimbly” the Fed bent to the markets in 2016
skittish Source
Rabi, a Nobel laureate who helped America develop the atom bomb, was reflecting physicists’ general surprise that muons, which are, to all intents and purposes, just heavy and unstable versions of electrons, actually exist. To an orderly physicist’s mind they somehow seemed _______ to Nature’s requirements. Establishing the muon’s nature was, though, an important part of the creation of what is known as the Standard Model of particle physics
superfluous Source
There is a difference between such truths as are merely of a speculative nature and such as are allied with practice and moral feeling. With the former all repetition may be often _______ ; with the latter it may just be by earnest repetition that their influence comes to be thoroughly established over the mind of an inquirer. ”—CHALMERS
superfluous Source
THERE is always resistance when new words are coined, or become modish; the offending term is attacked for being ugly, _______ or obfuscating. But sometimes a word illustrates a useful concept
superfluous Source
Diversity is the top justification for these hires, says Richard Vedder of the Centre for College Affordability and Productivity, a think-tank. Of more than 1,000 bureaucrats at Ohio University in Athens, 400 are _______ , he reckons. If let go, tuition fees could be cut by a fifth
superfluous Source
The Great Vowel Shift in the 15th and 16th centuries altered the pronunciation of many words but left their spelling unchanged; and as Masha Bell, an independent literacy researcher, notes, the 15th-century advent of printing presses initially staffed by non- English speakers helped to magnify the muddle. Second, misguided attempts to align English spelling with (often imagined) Latin roots (debt and debitum; island and insula) led to the introduction of _______ “silent” letters. Third, despite interest in spelling among figures as diverse as Benjamin Franklin, Prince Philip and the Mormons, English has never, unlike Spanish, Italian and French, had a central regulatory authority capable of overseeing standardisation
superfluous Source
The material for a monk’s clothing should be obtainable “fairly cheaply”, said St Benedict. Owning “two tunics and two cowls” was practical; anything more was clearly “excess” and “ought to be taken away as _______ ”. The holy orders also have a healthy respect for dress codes, however
superfluous Source
And declining cities have more than visual problems. Disused buildings deter investors and attract criminals; _______ infrastructure is costly to maintain; ambitious workers may refuse to move to places where the potential clientele is shrinking. Where cities are economically self-sufficient, a smaller working population means a fragile base on which to balance hefty pension obligations
superfluous Source
There is, however, an additional sign that a vulnerability injection may be lurking. Malicious coders often conceal these by writing _______ code intended to throw off reviewers, so Mr Srikant is also feeding MIT’s model with examples of this type of potentially telltale code, which he describes as “dangling” and “dead”. The clear destination of all this activity is the creation of software programmers which can, like the human variety, take an idea and turn it into code
superfluous Source
Now, a decade later, its archive contains a whopping 140 terabytes of information. A successor, the Large _______ Survey Telescope, due to come on stream in Chile in 2016, will acquire that quantity of data every five days. Such astronomical amounts of information can be found closer to Earth too
synoptic Source
A “searing and at times devastating analysis”, said the Sunday Times. The New York Times called it an “intelligent, _______ rejoinder to an idea that has swept across much of the liberal world”. Dohany Street
thorough Source
Journalistic experience is not necessary. The ability to write clearly and entertainingly is, however, crucial, as is a _______ understanding of economics and the ability to work with data. At first the writer will cover Europe
thorough Source
They can ruin careers and make it harder to board a plane or open a bank account. Many people wrongly assume that a red notice stems from a _______ investigation by an international body, rather than, say, a despot’s secret police. Interpol staff are trying harder to weed out the most egregious requests
thorough Source
He has since called for further investigations into it, as well as into other possibilities. The further unravelling of the joint study matters because, more than a year and a half after the covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, a city in Hubei, was first recognised as the work of a new pathogen, there has been nothing like a _______ international investigation of how that pathogen, SARS-CoV-2, got into humans and spread round the world. The pandemic’s death toll stands at 9m-18m, according to a model which The Economist has built on the basis of excess-mortality reports and other indicators
thorough Source
Economists talk broadly about a task switching from a human to a machine. But choosing what to automate, and how, requires a _______ understanding of how the business operates. “Automation is hard,” says one consultant, drily
thorough Source
95. Allen Lane; £30 How the Mediterranean became a net exporter of economic and cultural might and the _______ fare between the Atlantic and Asia. The author is an influential Cambridge historian
thorough Source
The Economist is “paid for by pharmaceutical companies,” reckons Ms Kain, adding that they would somehow stop this article being printed. Anti-vaxxers are “more _______ than ever,” says Saad Omer of Emory University in Atlanta. He sees a movement of two parts
vociferous Source
That looked to Einstein like information moving instantaneously—ie, faster than light, which his own special theory of relativity said was a universal no-no. In a letter to Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist with whom Einstein had his most _______ disagreements about the phenomenon, he called it spukhafte Fernwirkung: a “spooky remote effect”. In 1935 Einstein teamed up with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, a couple of fellow doubters, to devise a paradox meant to show that quantum theory was incomplete
vociferous Source
This is a shameful outcome, driven largely by ignorance. The fund’s most _______ congressional critics, mainly Republicans, misunderstand both the organisation and its reforms. They argue that the quota change would put more taxpayer money at risk and weaken America’s influence within the fund
vociferous Source
WHEN asked how he had persuaded Britain's senior doctors to withdraw their _______ objections to a National Health Service in the 1940s, Aneurin Bevan, the NHS's founding minister, replied: “I stuffed their mouths with gold. ” Australia's prime minister, Julia Gillard, born like Bevan in south Wales (the old one), this week took a leaf out of his book with her proposal for a carbon price (see article)
vociferous Source
On March 24th Mrs Merkel cancelled her plans for a hard lockdown over Easter, just one day after they were announced. Her reversal was caused in part by the _______ backlash from the public, business leaders and churches. Whether driven by frustration over lockdowns or fears of economic ruin, as long as the pandemic rages, it is likely the covid protests will too
vociferous Source
Only a handful of fanatics supported the deaths in Oklahoma. The vast majority of Americans supported McVeigh's execution—despite a chorus of disapproval from overseas and a _______ debate on the subject in the United States. No execution since that of Gary Gilmore in 1977, which re-opened the current era of capital punishment, has prompted the same degree of interest
vociferous Source
As well as hoping for a defence umbrella, supporters of autonomy want the continued link with the Netherlands to help prevent corruption. A small but _______ movement wants independence and closer ties with South America. “Why do we have to go across the Atlantic Ocean to talk to our neighbours?” asks Helmin Wiels of the Curaçao island council
vociferous Source
If young Hawaiians really want to succeed, he says, “they have to go somewhere else”. The telescope has also stirred up Hawaiian nationalists, a small but _______ group which laments the island’s annexation by America at the end of the 19th century, when marines removed Queen Liliuokalani from the Iolani palace. Some opponents of the TMT have links to Hawaii’s sovereignty movement, which the current debate has made more visible than before
vociferous Source
He did not win such plaudits as a politician or, for four years under Mr Obama, as secretary of state. A high-minded man with _______ features, Mr Kerry has a reputation for being less genial than Mr Biden, but almost as verbose. He has also been associated with some notable failures
lugubrious Source
THE BIGGEST mystery of Scandinavian crime fiction is how five countries with a combined population of around 27m produced so many hit novels that the region’s noir has become a genre in itself. Jo Nesbo, creator of the _______ Norwegian detective Harry Hole, has sold over 45m books worldwide. The Kurt Wallander novels, by Henning Mankell, have been turned into dozens of films and television episodes
lugubrious Source
He finds the typecasting frustrating: “I did a pilot in 1993 and now you’re telling me this is who I am until Doomsday?” “I did a pilot in 1993 and now you’re telling me this is who I am until Doomsday?”His attempts to redefine himself have included two new careers: as a musician and as a novelist. His _______ brand of rock music has drawn faint praise. One critic wrote that it was “by no means a total embarrassment”
lugubrious Source
Lithuanian policymakers insist that their country needs the euro all the same. Vitas Vasiliauskas, the _______ , waistcoated chairman of the central bank, and Rimantas Sadzius, the finance minister, both sing its praises. They think it will allow the government to borrow more cheaply
lugubrious Source
THE _______ strains of “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” waft across a sunny beach in Acapulco. If that song in that setting surprises you, then you do not know about the strange affinity between Mexicans and Morrissey, the morbid, underdog-loving front-man of The Smiths, a British band of the 1980s, who then went solo
lugubrious Source
“Farewell, worker comrades,” wrote Mr Yan in notices posted that day on his China-based websites, China Workers Net and Communist Net. Visitors could hear a _______ rendition of the communist anthem, the Internationale, through their computer speakers as they read. “Whether there is any hope of starting again, heaven knows
lugubrious Source
It has become a commonplace that human brains are lumbered with these limitations—cognitively, socially and politically. How surprising and gratifying, then, that humanity occasionally manages to use mathematics, observation and experiment to _______ its own limits so spectacularly. ■
transcend Source
Obstacles remain. Most designers still struggle to _______ the logistical and financial bottlenecks that hamstring African trade. Despite attempts to broaden fashion education to a wider audience, the latest styles will remain largely the domain of an educated, well-travelled elite
transcend Source
When people are part of the process, their values can influence the work, such as devising common labour and environment standards. Together, the initiatives _______ refugee resettlement, company ownership and trade policy. They show how personal agency and control can be harnessed as mechanisms to shape perceptions not just outcomes—and that both matter
transcend Source
The main driver of all this activity is investor demand. Deborah Winshel, boss of BlackRock Impact, points to the transfer of wealth to women and the young, whose investment goals, she says, _______ mere financial returns. Among institutions, sources of demand have moved beyond charitable foundations to hard-bitten pension funds and insurers
transcend Source
Over the past 30 years, football has become more commercial. Players who _______ the team uniform and establish themselves as an individual brand may attract millions of pounds in sponsorship, as ambassadors for anything from shoes and sportswear to razors and energy drinks. The barber behind Phil Foden’s metamorphosis wrote on Instagram: “We done a madness”A haircut is a quick way to stand out: footballers sometimes attract as much attention now for their tonsorial statements as for their on-pitch accomplishments
transcend Source
Caste, far from being purged, became a characteristic of Indian Christianity and Buddhism. Indeed, no religion in India was able fully to _______ the social divisions entrenched by Hinduism. Consequently, almost every religion in India cultivated its own caste system
transcend Source
The six tracks on the record date back to Khusrau; the album’s title summarises Mr Saami’s intention for the work—to offer a more nuanced view of Pakistan. Mr Brennan remembers being awed by the complexity of Mr Saami’s art: “I feel like he _______ s musical forms in the same way Luciano Pavarotti was able to
transcend Source
Economists, by contrast, are at their best—and there are few better than Mr Summers—when they are thinking the unthinkable, challenging conventional wisdom and doing other things that are anything but reassuring. Public statements by Mr Summers occasionally _______ the markets when he was Treasury Secretary, and that was during unusually upbeat economic times. Mr Obama was surely wise to leave provocative economic thoughts to the NEC
flustered Source
Labour, once famed for its highly tuned rebuttal machine, claimed that company chiefs had been “deceived”. When they insisted that they had not, the party was left _______ . The rallying of bosses to the Tory cause was particularly painful since Labour had rebuilt its economic credibility in the 1990s in large measure by getting the support of business
flustered Source
He hangs around airports in Europe, mostly Frankfurt or Prague, and tells sympathetic strangers that he has missed his flight home and needs a small amount of cash to rebook—maybe 30 or 40 euros. Many travellers, with a handful of local currency in their pocket, have graciously parted with the cash, assuming the plausible, rather _______ man will repay them. He doesn’t
flustered Source
The school tends to favour those who apply in the first rounds, and in any case, she says, the essay question is unlikely to be the "make or break” component of an application. Which is just as well for those of us who are camera shy and get _______ the moment we see a red light. But herein lies an interesting point
flustered Source
Unlike the Norwegians, who plan to mark Mr Liu's absence with the understated eloquence of an empty chair, the organisers of the Confucius prize ceremony recruited a six-year-old girl as a stand-in for Mr Lien. The young Miss Zeng Yuhan (pictured above) seemed somewhat _______ by the proceedings, in which she was thrust before cameras and handed a beribboned stack of Chinese currency in the amount of 100,000 yuan, worth about $15,000. The event's organisers seemed
flustered Source
For his part, Mr Sanders struggled. After months of adoring Bernie-mania at campaign rallies, he seemed _______ under fire on the debate stage. He was testy when defending his Senate record of opposing curbs on the gun trade—a record that he ascribed to the political realities of representing a rural state, rather than to principle
flustered Source
Consider the energy crunch first. The causes of the coal shortage fall into two categories: structural and _______ . The unlucky contingencies include floods in Henan province in July and in Shanxi this month, which forced some mines to close
incidental Source
A paper published last year by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco finds that real wages tend to rise. In some cases this is through a _______ mechanism: the disease culls workers, leaving survivors in a stronger bargaining position. In other cases, however, rising wages are the product of political changes—the third big lesson of historical booms
macabre Source
President Jair Bolsonaro should be tried for “crimes against humanity”, its authors say. His “ _______ ” approach to the pandemic, including organising large gatherings of his supporters and disparaging scientists, constitutes a “crime against public health”. Some 65 others are also implicated and could face criminal proceedings
macabre Source
“The desperation caused by the virus has only made it worse. ”■","description":"The _______ gobble steroids and anticoagulants","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
gullible Source
A Mexican state with a tradition of giving children odd namesThe saints didn’t march all the way inPatient, don’t heal thyselfSelf- medication increases pandemic deaths in PeruThe _______ gobble steroids and anticoagulantsPrevious1.
gullible Source
When helping customers work out a financing plan, he would trick them by getting them to focus on the monthly payment, not the length of the contract. Half the profits, others conceded, came from 10% of their customers—the most _______ ones. Although these vignettes are interesting, the book also has flaws
gullible Source
A HACK, as it is commonly understood, is when someone stealthily gains access to a computer system using vulnerabilities in the code or by tricking a _______ user into revealing their credentials. Asking a user of a computer or social network to click on an “I agree” button and then harvesting their data in order to influence them is not a hack
gullible Source
Famous bubbles include tulip mania in Holland during the 17th century, when the prices of tulip bulbs reached unheard of levels, and the South Sea Bubble in Britain a century later, although there have been many others since, including the dotcom bubble in internet company shares that burst in 2000. Economists argue about whether bubbles are the result of irrational crowd behaviour (perhaps coupled with exploitation of the _______ masses by some savvy speculators) or, instead, are the result of rational decisions by people who have only limited information about the fundamental value of an asset and thus for whom it may be quite sensible to assume the market price is sound. Whatever their cause, bubbles do not last forever and often end not with a pop but with a crash
gullible Source
But it gets more difficult as you grow older. Attitudes harden; habits become _______ . There are many things which Bartleby finds puzzling about modern life
ingrained Source
The abbreviation is already everywhere, and, as the opening sentence says, officials from the foreign ministry and a secretariat in the prime minister’s office are preparing this occasion for the president. The preference of the French for abbreviations is so _______ that they scarcely notice it. Britain may have its NHS, or America NASA
ingrained Source
Why do Europeans take off August en masse? The idea that summer is for play, not work, seems hard to shake for many Europeans. The habit is especially _______ in old manufacturing sectors. During and after the industrial revolution, entire factories in northern England would decamp to the same beachside resorts
ingrained Source
Many fintech groups do business in the billions, but banks often deal in trillions. Banks have _______ advantages, not least the ability to create credit more or less at whim. And banking incumbents do some things remarkably well—notably the current account, which allows people to store money in a way that keeps it safe and permanently accessible
ingrained Source
Unless you can freely analyse causes and question orthodoxies you will not be able to solve problems. And unless you can criticise people and practices without fear of being called out, you will not be able to design effective policies and then go on to _______ them. The new race theory blocks progress in another way, too
ingrained Source
It caused a tremor in American television history. As one CBS reporter put it, “The NFL was _______ in the walls of CBS like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite
ingrained Source
There are few people of colour in academia in the West partly because entry tends to require social capital that favours white people. Advocates argue that legal protections are not enough when deeply _______ cultural discrimination persists. On the other side of the argument are those who believe that identity politics (that is, political interests based on belonging to a particular race, sex or religion rather than an ideology) and political correctness have run amok
ingrained Source
GENDER-BASED financial exclusion is deeply _______ across the world. According to a recent paper* by the World Bank more than 1
ingrained Source
Boston Latin School in Boston and Lowell High School in San Francisco, which have a fine record of getting their pupils into Ivy League universities, are being forced to drop entrance examinations and admit by lottery, which will probably mean an end to academic excellence. Even as America’s _______ belief that it is a meritocracy is taken as licence to behave in a flagrantly anti-meritocratic fashion, Britain’s anxiety about being class-bound seems to have made it hypersensitive to unearned privilege (excepting a few institutions granted special status, such as the monarchy). This anxiety may finally be producing positive results, rather than, as so often in the past, nothing more useful than self-doubt
ingrained Source
economist. com/printedition/2019-03-23","name":"Mar 23rd 2019 edition"}}]} United StatesMar 23rd 2019 edition_______ privilegeWhy legacy places should be abolishedGiving the children of alumni a leg-up makes no senseMar 23rd 2019FacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsApp“I AM SIMPLY thrilled about all the folks you were able to admit,” David Ellwood, the then dean of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, wrote to the then admissions dean, William Fitzsimmons, in a 2013 email entitled “My hero”
exorbitant Source
UNSCRUPULOUS TRADERS use a crisis to charge _______ prices. Politicians, wanting to protect consumers, crack down on profiteers
exorbitant Source
Leaders of other economies bristle at this. During the heyday of Bretton Woods, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a French finance minister (later president), complained about the “ _______ privilege” enjoyed by the issuer of the world’s reserve currency. America’s return on its foreign assets is markedly higher than the return foreign investors earn on their American assets (foreign governments hold vast amounts of safe but low-yielding dollar assets, like Treasury bonds, as reserves)
exorbitant Source
It cherishes discretion. And its fees are _______ compared with the services it provides. If anything covid-19 has made it even more exclusive
exorbitant Source
Folk wisdom has it that high tuna-auction prices signal future economic buoyancy. Mr Kimura has said that he pays the _______ prices to “encourage Japan”. But that rationale seems fishy
exorbitant Source
Belgium offers a lesson in stability through chaos. Even its demise would be _______ . It is the world’s most successful failed state
serene Source
” How restful he would find it today. The building in which he slept has been turned into _______ apartments, their patios dotted with deckchairs. An outdoor pool, surrounded by plants, glints in the sun
serene Source
OF ALL THE innovations that sprang from the trenches of the first world war—the zip, the tea bag, the tank—the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” must be among the most elegant and humane. When the conflict began, this short _______ was a jumble of ideas in the head of a young Austrian soldier and erstwhile philosophy student called Ludwig Wittgenstein. By the time he was released from a prisoner-of-war camp during the Versailles peace conference, it had taken rough shape over a few dozen mud-splattered pages in his knapsack
treatise Source
I know what you’re thinking. Literal is the word we use when we mean exactly what we say, and metaphorical or _______ is what we say when we’re playing around. When we’re being
figurative Source
Growing disillusion with Europe is not the only point of Franco-German divergence. The French are far more _______ than their neighbours across the Rhine. Although 57% of Germans think their country is heading in the right direction, only 19% of the French do
morose Source
Fully four-fifths of the French tell pollsters that they think “things are getting worse. ” But the opening quotation, seemingly so apt for _______ France today, is not about that country at all. It was written in 1979 by Isaac Kramnick, an American political scientist, and refers to Britain
morose Source
Sufferers obsess over an imagined or exaggerated body flaw. This can be magnified by a _______ mood and a lack of normal social interaction—not to mention more time spent comparing oneself to others. As a result, Dr Cirillo says, cosmetic surgeons must work harder to turn down those with a pathologically confused self-image
morose Source
css-1676f3j . _chapters{grid-column-end:span 5;}}FranceThe art of the impossibleSpecial reports - Oct 28th 2006The art of the impossibleA _______ France has fallen behind its competitors. But there is nothing inevitable about its decline, argues Sophie Pedder: all it needs is political willInsider and outsidersBy trying to protect jobs and welfare benefits, France has created a two-class societyLessons from the campusIn higher education, a free-for-all does not workReforming the unreformableSome of France's big companies have shown the wayMinority reportThe trouble with integrationBeyond these shoresFrance's foreign relations need a rethinkWhere there's a willNext year's elections offer France the chance of a fresh start
morose Source
It’s different for our kids. One advantage of being a teenager during the crisis is that – as long as you’ve kept up with schoolwork and don’t seem completely _______ – there’s little pressure to treat the global health emergency as a kind of self-help retreat. “No, we’re not 50, we don’t do that,” my 15-year-old daughter snapped
morose Source
But it would be a sad reflection of shrivelled ambitions if that were the only standard it set for itself. ","description":"The French are feeling _______ about their future. The thrusting energy of their digital entrepreneurs suggests they should not","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www
morose Source
FOR the past few years, the _______ French have at least been able to console themselves with one thought: while their economy may be lacklustre, Germany's is far worse. Now even that consolation is fading
morose Source
Binyamin Netanyahu, its prime minister (pictured left), is unchallenged. The Palestinians demanding a state are weak, divided and quiescent; _______ as they are, few favour a return to suicide-bombing. Yet Israel cannot afford to be complacent in the longer run, for this stalemate poses a real threat if the country is to preserve its essence as both Jewish and democratic
morose Source
That is just as well, because foreign participation in China’s stockmarkets is still circumscribed. China’s precocious economy has, however, turned sullen and _______ of late. The preliminary results of HSBC’s August survey of over 420 manufacturing firms, many of them private, showed orders falling and inventories backing up
morose Source
IDEALISTS SEE leadership as steering the ship of state in the right direction (Plato), or embracing the “ethic of responsibility” (Weber). Realists see it as the ability to seize the horse of history by the tail and lever yourself onto its back (Machiavelli), or to sell a coherent vision to a _______ public (Schumpeter). But whatever its nature, everyone can agree when it is absent
fickle Source
In order to assess which places face the biggest squeeze from a tightening Fed, The Economist has gathered data on a few key macroeconomic variables for 40 large emerging economies (see chart 1). Large current-account deficits, high levels of debt (and of that owed to foreigners especially), rampant inflation and insufficient foreign-exchange reserves are all indicators that can spell trouble for countries facing _______ capital flows as American monetary policy tightens. Combining countries’ performance on these measures yields a “vulnerability index”, on which higher scores translate into greater fragility
fickle Source
2% less than it paid for them. This problem is exacerbated by the _______ economics of adverse selection. Even if the algorithms of i-buying firms are excellent at pricing homes at a fair value on average, they only need to be a little off for the risk to skew to the downside
fickle Source
Something had to give. ","description":"The spring proved _______, but Arabs are still yearning for it, says Max Rodenbeck","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
fickle Source
The first cotton mill in Rothesay opened in 1779, using the water that flowed out of Loch Fad to power a new type of spinning machine which was transforming the textile industry: Richard Arkwright’s water frame. But the stream proved _______ and underpowered. By 1800 the mill was running on steam engines based on James Watt’s design
fickle Source
The original reason for the invasion—to dismantle al-Qaeda’s main base of operations—was largely achieved, though that achievement could now be reversed. The claim that America is showing itself to be a _______ ally by allowing the Afghan government to fall is also overblown, given the duration, scale and expense of the American deployment. The defunct regime in Kabul was not an ally in the way that Germany or Japan is
fickle Source
Some economists argue that limits on withdrawals and on issuance might help avoid some of these effects. In any case, the policy _______s are the stuff of monetary fiction for now. A more practical concern is whether central banks can succeed in building sturdy, easy-to-use CBDCs
ramification Source
When asked to sum up their mood in another survey, the French favoured three words: uncertainty, worry and fatigue. Like others, the French have some good reasons for _______ . Lockdowns have been wearing
apprehension Source
Left-wing leaders, such as Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, want less private capital in the economy, not more. Peru has recently elected a far-left leader, Pedro Castillo, who has been seeking to calm the market’s _______ about his economic policies, with only some success. Partly as a result, Latin America has failed to transform itself economically as East Asia has done over the past generation
apprehension Source
The countries had signed a “guest-worker” deal in 1961, and a brief spell earning Deutschmarks would suffice for an Opel or VW Beetle. A few months later Mr Demirbilek was on a three-day train to Cologne, his head full of excitement and _______ . As with so many Turkish guest workers, his brief German sojourn turned out to last a lifetime (and several cars, he chuckles)
apprehension Source
Mixed in with this is some embarrassment that, as with the scandals over FIFA and the World Cup, it is falling to America to enforce rules that Europeans have been breaking. There is also a certain _______ . Sigmar Gabriel, the vice-chancellor and economics minister, said on September 21st that he hoped the export brand of Germany as a whole would not be tarnished
apprehension Source
Twenty. Heck, why not one hundred? “The [real] liberal,” by contrast, Hayek wrote, “accept[s] changes without _______ , even though he does not know how the necessary adaptations will be brought about. ” No one in 1960 anticipated the internet
apprehension Source
Mr Kabila's men say that the president is in no position to grant immunity should Mr Bemba lose. ","description":"Excitement and _______ ahead of the presidential election","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
apprehension Source
Multinationals are taking eastern Europeans for a ride. Do not be surprised to see the same _______ surface inside the EU itself. Viewed from much of the east, the agenda taking shape in Brussels, from a fresh wave of integration for the euro zone to proposals for social legislation, looks decidedly unappetising
apprehension Source
But, he says, “€9. 99 [$12] fares will cure an awful lot of customer _______ . ” Mr O’Leary’s second assumption is that the need to restore Europe’s battered tourism industry, combined with pent-up demand for travel, will mean fewer curbs on airlines, as they did after 9/11
apprehension Source
” Unsurprisingly, losing the war didn’t change Forrest’s mind about black people, and he soon became the KKK’s first Grand Wizard. Forrest defended the Klan in Congress in 1871, arguing that black people were being “ _______ ” and ladies were being “ravished. ” The KKK had simply been formed to “protect the weak
insolent Source
” Mr Macron smiles, a lot. This _______ popularity is not to everybody’s liking, especially within government. “He oversteps the mark, because he lacks a political sense,” says one source
insolent Source
For 250 years, since the Tokugawa shogunate kicked Christian missionaries and traders out, only a tightly controlled trade with the Netherlands and China was tolerated in the southern port of Nagasaki, with a further licence for Koreans elsewhere. Though British and Russian ships had from time to time prodded Japan's carapace, an edict in 1825 spelled out what would happen to uninvited guests “demanding firewood, water and provisions”: The continuation of such _______ proceedings, as also the intention of introducing the Christian religion having come to our knowledge, it is impossible to look on with indifference. If in future foreign vessels should come near any port whatsoever, the local inhabitants shall conjointly drive them away; but should they go away peaceably it is not necessary to pursue them
insolent Source
BITCOIN, to its most _______ fans, is more than a useful way to pay for drugs. It is also a technological marvel that could disrupt much of the consumer-finance industry
ardent Source
I have been sitting in the pit of this cavernous townhouse in Belgravia, London, for two hours with a meaty 15-year-old who has a passion for £3,000 ($3,800) Turkish vodka and ethno-nationalism (the one, I imagine, fuels the other). So far, Yusuf has discussed his distaste for British women, the way he gets around masturbation (“It’s not allowed in my culture, so I pay someone to do it for me”) and his _______ belief in a resurgent Ottoman Empire. I am meant to be preparing him for his GCSEs, national exams taken in a range of subjects at the age of 16, as well as the interview process for entry to a new school at sixth form, the final two years of secondary education
ardent Source
Most businesses fall somewhere in the middle. The most _______ supporters of the status quo ante can be found on Wall Street. David Solomon, boss of Goldman Sachs, has called remote work an “aberration”
ardent Source
The Biden administration has paused but not rescinded planned retaliation to European digital services taxes. Even _______ multilateralists in the European Commission recognise that, if such a threat re-emerges, they cannot wait 18 months for the result of a WTO action. China’s harsh treatment of Australia has not gone unnoticed, nor its threats to EU members for their negative attitude to Huawei
ardent Source
It outsourced the logistics to an outfit called the Cyber Ninjas with no prior election- auditing experience and led by an enthusiast of Mr Trump’s “stop the steal” movement. The majority of the $6m raised for the recounting, which took place in a cavernous convention hall in Phoenix, was raised privately by _______ partisans. Republican lawmakers in other states that Mr Trump had narrowly lost—like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—visited and returned inspired to start similar efforts
ardent Source
Giovanni Favara of the Federal Reserve Board and Jean Imbs of the Paris School of Economics find that, though looser finance has led to higher house prices, that was true “to a lesser extent in areas with elastic housing supply, where the housing stock increases instead”. Even the most _______ demand-siders agree that building more would reduce housing costs. In policy terms, that matters
ardent Source
Made by a local sculptor and muralist whose work graces the police headquarters, the international airport and the Saudi ambassador’s residence, among other prominent spots, it had been installed in front of the supreme court only months before. But a puritanical Islamist movement, Hefazat-e-Islam (“Protectors of Islam”) had denounced the sculpture as a depiction of a living creature—something the most _______ strands of Islam abjure. Sheikh Hasina Wazed, Bangladesh’s prime minister and leader of the theoretically secular Awami League, averred that she, too, disliked the statue
doctrinaire Source
There are far more Muslims in South and South-East Asia than there are in the Middle East. And Muslims in Asia are traditionally much less _______ than Middle Easterners. Indonesia is a case in point: many local Muslims follow practices that would cause riots in Arabia, making offerings to saints and spirits, say, or worshipping at shrines shared with Hindus and Buddhists
doctrinaire Source
But the Ethiopian junta has forbidden that. In place of a bad old regime run by grasping and incompetent landlords, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam and his colleagues have installed a bad new regime run by _______ and incompetent soldiers. Saving food from good years is called hoarding
doctrinaire Source
The scene would horrify most orthodox Muslims, who abjure votive offerings, idolatry and above all spirit-worship, with its connotation of polytheism. What is more, complain _______ locals, the Wetu Telu hold boozy parties to celebrate the prophet's birthday, despite Islam's strictures against alcohol, and their mosques have such low ceilings that they cannot stand up during prayers. Indeed, the very name Wetu Telu, which means “three times” in the local Sasak language—a reference to the number of daily prayers—highlights the sect's divergence from mainstream “five times” Islam
doctrinaire Source
“Attention students!” she wrote. “Many _______ teachers will be disconcerted or revolted” by the election of Mr Bolsonaro, a politician of the right. “Film or record all partisan manifestations that
doctrinaire Source
He has also refused to blame the American economic embargo for problems which he rightly says are self-inflicted. His pragmatism has finally won out against his brother's _______ Utopianism. Apart from the economy, the other big task facing Mr Castro, who is 79 (and Fidel 84), is to start handing over power to a younger generation
doctrinaire Source
His book is the third in a series. The first, “Before the Storm”, covered the 1964 presidential run of the harshly _______ Barry Goldwater, whose thumping defeat concealed the swelling power of the New Right. “Nixonland” followed
doctrinaire Source
While expressing its allegiance to the monarchy, the PJD has called for further progress in democratic reforms that would empower political parties and help to give the political system more credibility among the public. The party advocates government based on Islamic principles, but has sought to avoid being seen as _______ . In the leadership contest at the end of the congress, Mr Benkirane received 684 votes, comfortably beating his nearest competitor, the outgoing secretary-general, Saad Eddine Othmani (495 votes), who had been expected to win
doctrinaire Source
A better source of humour are the shared gripes that most workers face. Everyone can appreciate a quip about the cramped commuter trains, the _______ security guard, the sluggish lifts or the dodgy canteen food. In that sense, workers can feel they are all (bar the security guard) “in it together”
officious Source
The idea, the censors said, is to “protect the physical and mental health of minors”. A particular worry, familiar to parents and gamers themselves, not just to _______ Chinese censors, is that at least some video games can be addictive. Can they? No-one doubts that video games can be compelling
officious Source
That, in turn, means that although Russia's factories are too big to be efficient, its companies are too small: there are no western-style carmakers or electrical-goods firms, say, with networks of manageably sized plants. Yet there are also too few small businesses, which have more trouble than big ones getting bank credit and fighting off the predations of criminal gangs and corrupt, or merely _______ , bureaucrats. The economy's other big weakness is its dependence on natural resources, especially oil
officious Source
The idea, the censors said, is to “protect the physical and mental health of minors”. A particular worry, familiar to parents and gamers themselves, not just to _______ Chinese censors, is that at least some video games can be addictive. Can they? No-one doubts that video games can be compelling
officious Source
The music rocked. ","description":"Buskers learn to cope with _______ cops and cashless commuters","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www. economist
officious Source
Out of truancy came a hit. Never too serious, they renamed their list Yahoo!, for “Yet Another Hierarchical _______ Oracle”, and soon were smiling for the cameras through piles of old pizza boxes. They personified everything young and fun about the fledgling web, a loveable antidote to that darker technological force, Microsoft, which was stifling the first popular web browser, Netscape, just as Yahoo! went public in 1996
officious Source
Yet the silence around him was filled with chairs, tables, animals, trunks and escalators. It swarmed with lounging waiters, _______ policemen, dog-walkers pulled to right and left of the path, old ladies knitting. Railway trains roared through, and Bip, bouncing and swaying in his seat, struggled to keep his suitcase from falling out of the rack
officious Source
MARK BITTMAN, the New York Times' resident food guru, wants the government more heavily involved in engineering Americans' diets by taxing bad and subsidising good food. I'm not going to pretend this sort of _______ paternalism doesn't annoy the hell out of me, but for Xenu's sake if we're going to do this, we ought to do it right. Which is to say, not as Mr Bittman proposes: Simply put: taxes would reduce consumption of unhealthful foods and generate billions of dollars annually
officious Source
ANY pretence of holding to the _______ fire brokered by Kofi Annan, the joint UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, has gone. Violence spiked across the country on June 11th when the regime's forces shelled Homs, towns in Idleb, Deir Ezzor, and al-Haffeh in Latakia province, in some cases following up with helicopters
cease Source
Governments are not keen to extend costly benefits to foreigners. For most foreigners, life in the Gulf involves a string of short-term work visas: _______ to be productive, and you
cease Source
For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter. This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline "_______ and delist"Reuse this contentThe Trust Project. css-1hnead5{padding-bottom:1
cease Source
Luxury-goods firms or makers of fancy sound equipment may ban retailers from discounting their goods as a way to spur them to compete with rivals on the quality of their shops, service and advice. Inside the cubicle If one of the challenges set by Coase was to explain where the boundary between firms and markets lies, another was for economic analysis not to _______ once it reached the factory gate or office lobby. A key issue is how agreements are structured
cease Source
That was the name of an oil platform that exploded in April 2010, coating the Gulf of Mexico and the reputation of BP, the firm responsible, in a toxic slick. Yet just how damaging are “Deepwater” incidents for firms and their owners over time? Perhaps they _______ to matter after the initial burst of media purgatory, grovelling by executives, celebratory cant from competitors and politicians’ grandstanding. To answer this, Schumpeter has looked at eight of the most notable corporate crises since 2010, including those at Uber and Wells Fargo
cease Source
A second reason is uncertainty. After lockdowns _______ , much about the disease will remain unknown, including the chances of a second peak, whether immunity endures and the prospects for a vaccine or a cure. This inhibits those who fear the disease
cease Source
Netflix, the world’s leading video-streamer, will launch the fourth season of its sci-fi hit, “Stranger Things”. Amazon Prime Video, the online retailer’s entertainment arm, will unveil a _______ “Lord of the Rings” spin-off which cost nearly half a billion dollars to make. These are among the next salvos in the competition for eyeballs known as the streaming wars, in which the entertainment giants of Hollywood and Silicon Valley vie to outspend each other on content
lavish Source
With “Better Call Saul”, maestros Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have produced a series that can rival even the best schemes of the fabled Heisenberg and Slippin’ Jimmy. “The Crown” The fourth season of Netflix’s _______ drama about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II was the best yet. Peter Morgan, the show’s creator, had compelling material to work with: the premiership of Margaret Thatcher (and her clashes with the queen), the assassination of Lord Louis Mountbatten by the IRA and, of course, the tumultuous marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer
lavish Source
IT IS CUSTOMARY for new American presidents to _______ attention on their closest neighbours, Canada and Mexico. But since Joe Biden took office a much more distant country has hogged the limelight: Japan
lavish Source
He leaves a much more impressive legacy than his muted exit suggests. Abenomics was supposed to banish deflation and spur growth through _______ spending, radical monetary policy and structural reforms. Mr Abe never met his own, ambitious target to pump up inflation to 2% a year, but he did at least turn it positive
lavish Source
WHAT DOES Saudi Arabia, with an income per head of $23,000, _______ public services and oodles of oil, have in common with Zambia, where incomes are 94% lower and the government is on the brink of default? Not much, on the face of it. But the two countries are lumped together, along with 71 others, in JPMorgan Chase’s definition of “emerging markets”
lavish Source
Partly through religion, however, Western Europe developed a system of values that favoured all of the above. Other cultures, it seems, were less _______ to growth. The ruling elites of antiquity, for instance, prized military prowess and intellectual achievement above all; the mundane business of getting and spending was beneath their dignity
conducive Source
com/international/2000/07/27/pay- packets","datePublished":"2000-07-27T00:00:00Z","headline":"Pay packets","image":"","publisher":"The Economist"}}]} InternationalOver the sea to SpainThe short stretch of water between Morocco and Europe is an irresistible lure to many sub- Saharan Africans as well to the Moroccans themselvesIranStill banging on that doorAlthough Muhammad Khatami and his reformers control Iran’s presidency and parliament, they remain outside the power structure, trying to get inSouth Africa’s collapsing pyramidsIsraelPeople against the eliteAn imperilled Arabian paradiseJerusalemEmbassy snagDancing in Kenya to the donors’ tunePresident Daniel arap Moi has got the loan he wanted, but on stringent termsNot quite paradise, but lostCôte d’IvoireThe old enemiesAlgeriaThe image, and the realityAlgeria’s president is well-received abroad. But the army still calls the shotsHome from Camp DavidAs Israelis and Palestinians return from their failed summit, the talk is more _______ to gunfire than further negotiationSouth AfricaPay packetsPrevious1.
conducive Source
That suggests a sense of anxiety, of hoping for the best while fearing the worst. What's missing isn't enthusiasm—German fervour was unmistakable—but perhaps joy, a sense of expectation and even entitlement that is _______ to victory. You'd also drücken die Daumen for someone undergoing an operation
conducive Source
The Wild Horse Saloon, a dark and smoky room connected to a legal brothel, is the only sit-down restaurant for miles. It is not an area that immediately seems _______ to hosting a business park. Yet Storey County in Nevada is home to the world’s largest by some measures: the Reno Tahoe Industrial Centre (TRI)
conducive Source
Mr Trump has sucked confidence out of global institutions as his casinos suck cash out of punters’ pockets. With a prospective president of the world’s largest economy threatening to block new trade deals, scrap existing ones and stomp out of the World Trade Organisation if he doesn’t get his way, no firm that trades abroad can approach 2017 with _______ . In defence of openness Countering the wall-builders will require stronger rhetoric, bolder policies and smarter tactics
equanimity Source
Recent scholarship culminated in a substantively revised entry in the “Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy” in August. The editor, Dale Miller of Old Dominion University in Virginia, analysed Mill’s three most famous works and—with the _______ of a sage and delicacy of a diplomat—came to a balanced view. Mr Miller concluded that her greatest contribution was probably to turn Mill’s attention to a set of progressive ideals which she was passionate about: socialism, women’s rights, individual liberty and a “utopian” view of humanity’s improvability
equanimity Source
It can be a burden. Around sunset on the second day of his seclusion in speechlessness, your correspondent realised that for all the _______ offered by Buddhism, the psychological acuity of its founder’s teachings and the hospitality of the Mingaladon monks, he would rather be in one of the cars he could hear passing by on Highway Number 3, wherever it was going, than inside the dhamma hall, where he was supposed to be meditating. Having booked a seven-day retreat, he lasted a bit less than 70 hours
equanimity Source
They see it as an obstacle to innovation. Ms Gayrel treats that with _______ : “I don’t think it is a bad thing to think slower, especially in health. ” As well as worries over what researchers or companies might do with personal data, there are reasonable concerns over how safe they can keep it
equanimity Source
Kerry McCarthy, in a biography of Byrd, also points out that in the 1590s he fitted lead pipes to Stondon Massey, his house in Essex. This “may not have contributed to the sanity or _______ of the Byrd family,” she notes. But plenty of artists are grumpy and mad
equanimity Source
A shop offered Tama bags, notebooks, key-fobs and figurines. She took all this with _______ . According to the Japanese principle of promotion by seniority, she rose effortlessly to super-stationmaster and honorary division chief
equanimity Source
A rice shortage would have geopolitical implications. No Indian or Chinese government could contemplate the possibility with _______ . They would do whatever it takes to ensure they have enough rice
equanimity Source
The fact that the summit took place at all is a win for Mr Moon, who has made the peace process on the Korean peninsula a central issue of his presidency. That does not mean that the cancellation of the military exercises was met with _______ . A later statement from the president’s office said that Mr Trump’s press-conference remarks required a “clearer understanding”
equanimity Source
Wells and Gilman saw no problem with deliberately exterminating species; it was a reasonable, even natural, imposition of beneficial order. Today such possibilities are being discussed for real, but with a lot less _______ . “Gene drives”—genetic systems which, seemingly paradoxically, use sexual transmission to spread sterility—offer a way that CRISPRtechnologies might be used to try to wipe out disease vectors, such as the species of mosquito that spread malaria
equanimity Source
Why Chinese leaders came to think the time was ripe to challenge US pre-eminence is a particularly interesting topic in it. After assessing the underlying sources of Chinese strength—military, commercial and technological —the module then concludes by asking whether China really can _______ the US as the world’s hegemonic power. Module 4: “The Role of Technology”How much the US-China rivalry is also a competition for technology is assessed in this module
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There are three plausible paths for marrying up the DeFi economy with a real one. First, it might _______ the established financial system, perhaps by the adoption of a token as a means of payment. El Salvador adopted bitcoin as legal tender in September, introducing its 6
supplant Source
” He passed over how Britain’s economic muscle had helped sterling’s dominance—perhaps because by then that muscle was wasting. Yet it is implacable economic might that leads many today to conclude that the yuan, China’s currency, will _______ the dollar, just as sterling gave way to the dollar after 1945. The yuan is already one of five constituents of the Special Drawing Right, a basket of reserve currencies created by the IMF
supplant Source
Another IMF study showed that the dollar’s share has not decreased in step with America’s declining share of overall trade. The euro’s creators had hoped that it might _______ the dollar’s status. But even though almost half of trade is invoiced in euros, that is mostly because of how much trade involves countries that use the currency
supplant Source
He compares Mr Barber’s amalgams to the interwar work of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who blended tradition with modernism, notably at Battersea Power Station. Some thought such synthesis would _______ radicalism, says Mr Hughes—though in the event, radicalism took off. Perhaps such hopes were merely a bit early, he muses, and “in the end, modernism will merge back with the traditions”
supplant Source
When Emmanuel Macron took to the stage in the wood-panelled Sorbonne amphitheatre shortly after his election in 2017 and pleaded for “European sovereignty” and a “capacity to act autonomously” in security matters should Europe need to, his was a lone voice. In Germany and points east, Mr Macron’s plea was regarded with irritation: yet another pesky Gaullist attempt to undermine NATO and _______ America as the guarantor of European security. Minds have moved a bit since, as Mr Macron has sought to reassure friends that his idea is not to replace but to complement the transatlantic alliance
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Long and slow, as so many Netflix productions are, it can’t quite muster the ever- increasing antic energy that its literally Earth-shattering scenario demands. But the fact is that a project which started life as a mordant, science-fiction-heavy _______ of environmental shilly-shallying now comes across as a sober, accurate chronicle of the handling of the coronavirus by the media, politicians and society at large. You don’t watch the grim absurdity and laughingly exclaim: “People probably would be as ridiculous as that in the circumstances!” You are more likely to watch it and sigh: “Yes, people really were as ridiculous as that—and they still are
lampoon Source
“Love, Gilda” (pictured, top), a new documentary about Gilda Radner, is the latest to fall short of capturing the complexity of one of comedy’s most important and tragic figures. It uses interviews with colleagues and relatives, archive videos and excerpts from her writings to tell the story of her rise to fame: her early theatre work, her time with the Second City comedy group in Chicago, her role in the “National _______ Radio Hour” in 1974 and her casting in the inaugural season of “Saturday Night Live”. Working with celebrated performers such as Bill Murray and John Belushi, Radner’s electrifying talent made her the breakout star of the show’s earliest years
lampoon Source
A squirrel jumps out of the replacement tree, running amok and making a grandmother faint. There is a lot of wisdom in “National _______ ’s Christmas Vacation”, not least about Christmas trees. Bringing the country into the home, they are a topsy-turvy symbol of the carnivalesque holiday—when work is suspended, adults act like children, and everyone eats and drinks too much while pretending to get along
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It features characters who go to the heart of modern Britain: Millie Tant, a ranting feminist; Sid the Sexist, who gives Millie plenty to rant about; Roger Mellie, a disgusting television personality; and dozens more whose names cannot be mentioned in a respectable newspaper. This columnist would like to suggest a new subject for Viz to _______ : Geordie Tory. It seems odd, to say the least, for the north-east’s premier publication to remain silent about a political revolution that is turning a former Labour stronghold Tory blue
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Although it is far from a democracy—all of the parties support Mr Mirziyoyev and some critics remain behind bars—some of the candidates have offered mild criticisms of the government, which would previously have been unthinkable. Ordinary Uzbeks, too, feel free to _______ the campaign and grumble about the political class, without fear of being dragged off in the middle of the night. Uzbekistan still has a long way to go, but no other country travelled as far in 2019
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IN THE West, suburbs could hardly be less fashionable. Singers and film-makers _______ them as the haunts of bored teenagers and desperate housewives. Ferguson, Missouri, torched by its residents following the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager, epitomises the failure of many American suburbs
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A HOLIDAY is a pleasurable experience, generally, a chance to slip the surly bonds of the office for a couple of weeks (three if you’re lucky, a month if you’re French), clear the head and rejuvenate the body. And if your trip was less like “A Year in Provence” and more “National _______ ’s Vacation” there is always the delight of looking forward to posting a scathing write-up on TripAdvisor. It is clear by glancing through some of the reviews of terrible hotels on the internet that sometimes it really is best to settle on a staycation (spending by Britons choosing to stay at home on their holidays rose by 18% between 2008-12)
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FOR years now, Henry Beard, the founder of National _______ , has been pursuing a rollicking crusade to put Latin back in everyday life. As he explains, Latin is widely used by lawyers to cheat you, by doctors to scare you witless and by houseplant sellers to shift their wares
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I may have just played the best chess player of my life. ” The seven-episode drama has received universal _______ from critics: of the 58 reviews gathered by Rotten Tomatoes, an entertainment website, every one was positive. But it has also been praised by chess aficionados for its accuracy (doubtless helped by having Garry Kasparov, a former world champion, as a consultant)
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“The Benedict Option” was a bestseller. So warm and widespread was the _______ that its Manichean pessimism seemed to have been disproved. But Mr Dreher has not mellowed
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True to Mr Fergusson’s belief that the experience of living with inflation is “forgotten or ignorable when it has gone”, his book fell out of print. It was republished to _______ at the end of the 2000s, when post-financial-crisis stimulus packages increased government debt prodigiously, and “quantitative easing”, the process by which trillions of new dollars would be created, started to hit its stride. Many worried that the stage seemed set for prices to surge in a way which had not been seen for a generation
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The solution seems obvious: provide more financial education. The British government just added financial literacy to the national school curriculum, to general _______ . But is it possible to teach people to be more financially savvy? A survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland (see sources below) reported that: “Unfortunately, we do not find conclusive evidence that, in general, financial education programmes do lead to greater financial knowledge and ultimately to better financial behaviour
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Lennon, he says, “never had anything like my interest in literature”. It was cynicism that secured his bandmate’s _______ : “It’s easier to get critical approval if you rail against things and swear a lot. ” Frequently he contrasts Lennon’s tough childhood, in which guardians absconded or died, with the jolly, loving family who gave Sir Paul an optimistic outlook
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Then, during the civil war, Serge Hochar of Chateau Musar in Ghazir, near Beirut, started blending reds and selling them abroad. The brand took off after winning _______ at the Bristol Wine Fair in 1979. Today about half of Lebanon’s wine is exported
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There have been plenty of claims of breakthroughs in recent years, accompanied by so- called solutions ranging from haptic gloves that capture the wearer’s finger movements to software that detects distinct hand shapes. Many of these have won _______ while alienating the very people for whom they are ostensibly designed. “The value for us basically is zero,” says Mark Wheatley, the executive director of the European Union of the Deaf (EUD)
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