World

An Israeli startup called Vocalis Health is working with the country’s National Emergency Team to conduct a trial using voice samples to identify coronavirus. It is one of many innovative approaches being trialled in Israel as the country is radically transformed by the battle against the virus. The Israeli Ministry of Defence’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development said this week that the study with Vocalis Health would look at voice recordings and use artificial intelligence to help identify carriers of the disease. ‘These recordings will then undergo data analysis using neural networks.’ The idea is that an algorithm that would identify characteristics associated with symptoms of the virus. The obvious

What does a leading U.S. presidential candidate do when a deadly and highly contagious virus is spreading throughout the mainland United States and hogging all of the news coverage? Well, build an in-home studio in your basement, of course. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is confronting a conundrum most candidates who run for high office don’t have to deal with. In normal times, candidates lose media coverage when they tumble in the polls, run out of money, or fail to excite voters (and reporters) on the stump. That’s an unfortunate part of the business, but it’s something candidates and their advisers anticipate and even control. If a candidate

There is no place on earth less prepared for a coronavirus outbreak than a Syrian refugee camp. In hindsight, the deliberate targeting of homes and hospitals in Idlib, displacing over a million people from their houses, seems even more heinous now that it has left north west Syria utterly defenceless to the impact of the virus. The only saving grace is that the hell-on-earth created here by the brutal Idlib campaign means that very few people are incentivised to visit and bring the disease with them. While the regime-held south confirmed its first case on Sunday, there are a few suspected cases in the rebel-held north west, but virtually no

There was a touch of schadenfreude as I heard that Britain has followed France, Italy and several other European countries in locking down. In the last week or so there have been a number of articles about how Britain would never impose on its people the draconian measures taken by Emmanuel Macron and others because their countries, unlike ours, have a history of authoritarian government. Boris Johnson was admirable in his wish to avoid locking down the country but the indiscipline of millions of his people left him no choice. Boris can’t be blamed for the packed pubs last week, the teeming parks at the weekend or the street barbecues

I got back to Tokyo on Friday morning having hastily rescheduled my flight from Britain to avoid new restrictions for entering Japan. When I landed, it was all quite normal: I wasn’t pounced on by men in hazmat suits at Haneda airport and forced into isolation. I wasn’t interrogated on my recent whereabouts, or even given extra forms to fill out. And it turns out that even if I had flown a few days as planned, all that the new restrictions amounted to was a ‘request’ (issued with extreme politeness no doubt) to self-isolate in your own apartment. Yet despite this relatively laid-back approach, Japan must be one of the best places in

In France there is a palpable sense of administrative and political panic in how to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. As I write from Perpignan on the French-Spanish border on the morning of 24 March, France has 19,856 coronavirus cases and 860 deaths; Britain 6,650 and 335. After Italy and Spain, France is the third worst affected country in Europe (Germany has more cases because it tests more, but only 123 deaths), but it has imposed and enforced the most severe lockdown. France went into lockdown on 17 March. The administrative state immediately generated an array of bureaucratic forms: a certificate to leave your house to walk the dog or go shopping; a

If President Donald Trump at first dismissed coronavirus as a menacing-sounding version of the sniffles, he is certainly taking the virus seriously now. One in ten coronavirus victims are in the United States and it’s clear the fallout from the virus is going to get much worse before it gets better.  ‘I want America to understand: this week, it’s going to get bad,’ the US surgeon general Dr Jerome Adams has said. Trump, who cares deeply about his legacy in US history as much as he cares about his public image, continues to watch as Wall Street falls down like a ton of bricks and as more depressing market indicators

In the name of God. These words define the Islamic Republic of Iran. They stretch across its official paperwork and correspondence; they drive its constitution; they drop from the lips of its Ayatollahs leading Friday prayers; and they imprison its people. In Iran, the Velayat-e Faqih, the ‘rule of the jurists,’ holds that those best equipped to interpret God’s laws are those best equipped to rule. Authority descends in a straight line: from God to Mullah to Man (and then woman). Iran’s laws render its citizens little more than children clutched in the paternal embrace of a near all-powerful clerical and military class. That this class is repeatedly subject to