标题: 2022.06.11美国的平均汽油价格达到每加仑5美元，为历史最高 [打印本页] 作者: shiyi18 时间: 2022-6-11 23:21 标题: 2022.06.11美国的平均汽油价格达到每加仑5美元，为历史最高 The world in brief
Catch up quickly on the global stories that matter
Updated less than 1 hour ago (16:10 GMT+1 / 11:10 New York)
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The average petrol price in America reached $5 per gallon, the highest ever. The record came as Joe Biden slammed ExxonMobil, an energy giant, for making “more money than God” last year. Data on Friday showed that consumer prices in America were 8.6% higher in May than one year earlier, the highest inflation rate in more than four decades. The news may prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more aggressively when it meets next week.
China would “not hesitate to start a war” if anyone tried to split Taiwan from the mainland, China’s defence minister told Lloyd Austin, his American counterpart. Mr Austin, meanwhile, asked China to “refrain from further destabilising actions”. In a speech at the Shangri-La security meeting in Singapore, he accused China of taking a “more coercive and aggressive approach to its territorial claims”.
Intense street fighting is ongoing in Severodonetsk, with both Russia and Ukraine likely suffering “high numbers of casualties”, according to Britain’s defence ministry. Britain said Russia is running out of high-precision missiles, forcing it to turn to inefficient weapons that carry a high risk of collateral damage. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials and military officers warned that their forces in the eastern Donbas region have run perilously low on artillery ammunition.
During an unannounced visit to Kyiv Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said that she would offer an opinion on Ukraine's bid to join the EU by the end of next week. The commission, the EU's executive arm, will reportedly say that Ukraine should become an official candidate (actual accession negotiations would take many years). But many of the EU's 27 governments, all of whom must approve a bid, disagree.
Australia said it would pay Naval, a defence company majority-owned by the French state, A$830m ($585m) to extricate itself from a submarine contract. The deal, for 12 Attack-class submarines, was scuppered last year when Australia agreed on the so-called AUKUS deal, under which America and Britain will help Australia obtain more advanced nuclear-powered submarines. The switch torpedoed Australia’s relations with France; Anthony Albanese, the new prime minister, has moved quickly to heal them.
Iran and Venezuela signed a 20-year cooperation plan, pledging to work together on oil, defence and agriculture, and announcing regular flights between Tehran and Caracas. The two autocracies have grown close in recent years, united by a dislike for America, which has imposed painful sanctions on both of them. Speaking in Tehran on Friday Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president, described the two countries as pioneers of a new world order.
Jeanine Áñez, briefly a president of Bolivia, was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for breach of duty. She had taken the helm of a hastily assembled caretaker administration after President Evo Morales resigned in 2019, whereupon she wrenched the country rightwards, away from the rest of left-leaning Latin America. Ms Áñez was arrested on charges of terrorism and sedition in March 2021, soon after allies of Mr Morales had defeated her side in elections.
Phrase of the week: the Octopus Doctrine, as described by Naftali Bennett, Israel’s prime minister, discussing his approach towards Iran. “We no longer play with the tentacles, with Iran’s proxies: we’ve created a new equation by going for the head.” Read the full article.
A possible gun deal has momentum
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
After a deluge of mass shootings, many Americans are fed up. On Saturday tens of thousands are expected to attend at least 450 March for Our Lives gun-reform demonstrations across the country and beyond. Organisers expect as many as 100,000 to march at the rally in Washington, DC. America has seen at least 254 mass shootings this year, notably at a supermarket in Buffalo, where a white supremacist targeted African-Americans, and in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at a primary school.
The anger may yield political results. A sweeping gun reform bill passed by the House of Representatives on June 8th will probably falter in the Senate, but negotiations for a more modest bipartisan Senate bill look promising. The model may be Florida, which changed its laws after a school shooting in 2018. A so-called “red flag” law there prevents dangerous people from accessing guns, and limits the purchase of some firearms to under-21s. That will not end gun violence—but it could help.
A raucous election in Alaska
PHOTO: EYEVINE
Alaska has been a state for just 63 years. For 49 of them its sole congressional seat was held by Don Young, before he died in March. Nearly 50 candidates have filed to run in the primary election to fill the remainder of his term. The vote will be held on Saturday.
The candidates include Josh Revak, a state senator endorsed by Mr Young’s widow, and a man called Santa Claus. A better-known aspirant is Sarah Palin, a former governor who served, notoriously, as John McCain’s running-mate in the 2008 presidential race. But although she enjoys the endorsement of Donald Trump, Ms Palin may struggle to convince Alaskans she is serious. A recent television appearance saw her rapping while dressed as a bear.
In August the four candidates who win the most votes will compete to determine who completes Young’s term, which runs until January. A separate primary and then, finally, a general election this November will be needed to decide who will occupy the seat after that. Alaskans could be forgiven if they are confused.
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Football’s corruption scandal drags on
PHOTO: REUTERS
Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini were once the most powerful men in football. Mr Blatter was president of FIFA, the world governing body, from 1998 until 2015. Mr Platini, a former captain of the French national team, ran UEFA, FIFA’s European subsidiary, from 2007 to 2016. Racked by allegations of corruption, the pair have since fallen from grace.
This week both men went on trial in Switzerland. Under the spotlight is a payment of 2m Swiss francs ($1.8m) made in 2011 from FIFA to Mr Platini, authorised by Mr Blatter. Both men say the payment was made to settle a “gentleman’s agreement” over Mr Platini’s salary. But prosecutors allege it was fraud and embezzlement—and, even if legitimate, was paid well after it should have been. If found guilty Mr Blatter and Mr Platini would join an inauspicious group of other convicted former football executives, many of whom faced charges relating to evidence found during a raid on FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich in 2015. Sometimes the beautiful game leaves behind an ugly mess.
Traffic noise might affect intelligence
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
Arthur Schopenhauer called noise “the most impertinent of all interruptions.” Since the German philosopher was driven batty by the cracking of horsemen’s whips, one wonders how he would have managed in a cacophonous modern city. Not very well, if new research published in PLOS Medicine, a journal, is anything to go by.
In a study in Barcelona, nearly 3,000 children from 38 different primary schools were given a series of cognitive tests. The results were compared against recordings of road-traffic noise taken from their schools. They suggest that more traffic noise was linked to an impairment of cognitive development.
Average decibel readings were linked to worse outcomes. But the pupils’ cognition seems to have been more deeply affected by spikes in sound, such as cars honking horns or revving engines. Children exposed to more of those “noise events” suffered a slower development of memory and attentiveness, the tests showed. Noise regulations in cities are often based on average decibel levels rather than spikes. Rethinking that might serve children better.
Weekend Profile: the Gupta brothers
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta were not born in South Africa. But within 20 years of arriving they had allegedly pulled off one of the most remarkable corruption schemes in history. The three brothers stand accused of orchestrating a mind-boggling scam of “state capture” in the 2010s, in which at least 49bn rand ($3.2bn) in public money and contracts was apparently channelled into, or through, Gupta-linked firms—making the brothers fabulously wealthy. Last Monday Atul and Rajesh (pictured) were arrested in Dubai in relation to a case being pursued by South African authorities. (The Guptas have denied any wrongdoing, and described the allegations as politically motivated. Ajay has not been arrested.)
The trio grew up in Saharanpur, a sleepy town in northern India. Their father, a small-time businessman and trader, urged them to go out into the world to make their fortunes. Atul, the middle son, arrived in South Africa around the fall of apartheid, and began a business assembling cheap computers. Within a few years his brothers had joined him, and together they began to forge political connections in their adopted homeland. That soon paid off in the form of public contracts, such as one in 2002 to supply computers to government-run schools. They seemed quickly to settle on a modus operandi of pocketing cash while delivering little: journalists found that the computers did not work as promised.
Few friendships were as profitable for the Guptas as that with Jacob Zuma. The brothers met Mr Zuma in the early 2000s, when he was the country’s deputy president. The Guptas regularly invited Mr Zuma into their Johannesburg home, and employed his son as a director of some of their businesses. After winning the presidency in 2009 Mr Zuma repaid the favours in spades, ultimately handing over, in effect, the keys of state. The Guptas secured control of the boards of huge state-owned firms, including the electricity, rail and ports monopolies. Investigations by public watchdogs and a judge-led inquiry have reported that by around 2015 the Guptas were able to have cabinet ministers appointed and fired.
Yet the brothers seem to have made a fatal mistake. Most of the time bribe-payers follow an unwritten code: steal only as much as you can before attracting attention and getting caught. To the Guptas, this seemed to be just one more rule to be broken. Having left South Africa in 2016, two years before Mr Zuma stepped down, Atul and Rajesh—who now face a contentious extradition fight—may have an unhappy return.
Weekend crossword
Welcome to our new crossword, designed for experienced cruciverbalists and newcomers alike. Both sets of clues give the same answers, all of which feature in articles in this week’s edition of The Economist:
Factual clues
1 down Where Volodymyr Zelensky paid a visit on June 5th (10)
1 across City in Britain’s northern powerhouse (5)
2 across Established crop in Peru and Colombia; a newer one in Honduras and Venezuela (4)
3 across Home to the Medina bazaar neighbourhood (5)
Cryptic clues
1 down Classy, hunky but non-U, under attack in Donetsk (10)
1 across City’s on top, we hear? (5)
2 across Leaves when company about? (4)
3 across Lulu, baker back in part of capital (5)
Email all four answers by 9am BST on Monday to crossword@economist.com, along with your home city and country. We will pick randomly from those with the right answers and crown one winner per continent in Friday's edition.
The winners of this week’s quiz
Thank you to everyone who took part in this week’s quiz. (And sincere apologies to readers who were sent an old question in Friday’s email newsletter.) The winners, chosen at random from each continent, were:
Asia: Ahrum Kim, Bucheon, Republic of Korea
North America: Christian Hecimovic, Squamish, Canada
Central and South America: Michel Tanaka & Beatriz Fortes, Brasília, Brazil
Europe: Erik Mashkilleyson, Helsinki, Finland
Africa: Hasit Raja, Nairobi, Kenya
Oceania: Ian Hamilton, Perth, Australia
They all gave the correct answers of David Tennant, Earl Grey, Shirley Chisholm, Jane Fonda and “In the Heights”. The theme is novels by the Brontës: “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”, “Agnes Grey”, “Shirley”, “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights”.
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
欧盟委员会主席乌苏拉-冯德莱恩(Ursula von der Leyen)在对基辅进行暗访时表示，她将在下周末前就乌克兰加入欧盟的申请提出意见。据报道，作为欧盟的执行机构，该委员会将表示，乌克兰应该成为一个正式的候选国（实际的入盟谈判将需要很多年）。但欧盟27国政府中的许多人不同意，他们都必须批准一项申请。