World

Is France flirting with the idea of Frexit again? Coronavirus is currently provoking a chorus of ‘reprendre le contrôle’ (take back control) across the political spectrum. The epidemic is laying bare France’s dependence on outside states for essentials such as masks, medicines, test kits and ventilators. Even arch-Europhile Emmanuel Macron visiting a French mask manufacturer declared this week: ‘We have to produce more in France, on our territory, from now on to reduce our dependency… we must rebuild our national and European sovereignty’. His reference to Europe is not unusual, but highlighting national sovereignty is. The second ‘take back control’ stimulant comes from growing irritation with the European Union. Images

If ever there was a time for the EU to show the benefit of belonging to an economic bloc with coherent cross-border cooperation you would think it would be now. But that is not quite how things are working out. On the contrary, the EU has erupted into open warfare between north and south. The rifts caused by the 2008/09 financial crisis have been torn open again, with Italy and Spain desperately pleading for help from a reluctant Germany and other northern countries. If anyone thought harmony would reign once troublesome Britain was out of the EU, there was not much evidence of it at a virtual summit held last week

One of the first things you need to learn abut Japan is the concept of honne and tatemae. ‘Hone’ refers to one’s true feelings, and ‘tatemae’ is what one says in public. It doesn’t take very long to learn that the two are very rarely aligned. In a bizarre time warp moment the official Olympic countdown clock that stands outside Tokyo station was reset on Monday (it reads: 478 days to Tokyo 2020(?)). It will no doubt soon be reported that ‘the people of Tokyo’ have been devastated by the postponement, that they had, as one, been passionately enthusiastic about the event, eagerly anticipating the chance to welcome the world for

‘How do you deal toughly with your banker?’ This was the not quite rhetorical question that Hillary Clinton asked Australia’s then-prime minister Kevin Rudd at a lunch back in 2010. In the prophylactic language of the diplomat she was then, Clinton was asking how the world should deal with an ever more aggressive China, and she was prescient. Ten years on, Beijing is ascendant. It holds over a trillion dollars of US debt (banker indeed); as of writing, one of its major companies is set to control Britain’s 5G network; and it has spent years hoovering up Africa’s resources with little care for the (admittedly scant) international condemnation it receives

As the world tries to understand more about the trajectory of the coronavirus, a study from the Engineering faculty of Imperial College London has produced a hypothesis that, they say, fits a large number of countries so far. Prof Tom Pike found that once lockdown begins, coronavirus follows a similar pattern seen by Wuhan in several countries surveyed. The model has significant – and grim – implications for New York The model has significant – and grim – implications for the state of New York. Until recently, the USA released nationwide figures on coronavirus infections and deaths. When the figures for individual states were released, it showed the virus was more widespread

It is said that the first casualty of war is truth. In the purported war on coronavirus, Rod Liddle rightly asks ‘how reliable are the coronavirus figures?’ and comes to the conclusion the answer is ‘not very’. He is right, for at least two important reasons.  Firstly, not all states are carrying out the same number of tests per million people. For Germany, it is 2,023; Britain, 960; and France, 560. That has a consequence on the number of positive infected cases. Given that the most widely-accessed world rankings of total cases per country used by the media, such as Worldometers (updated in live-time), are based on that figure, the results are not