John le Carre, (born David Cornwell) master of the spy novel, died on December 12th, aged 89 约翰勒卡尔（出生时叫大卫康威尔）间谍小说大师，于12月12日去世，享年89岁 The house in Gainsborough Gardens was tall and elegant...
Meanwhile, Ping An's approach is being put to the test. When covid-19 first struck in January the company was a year into restructuring its life-insurance business. That involves improving its force of over 1m agents, who are still the main channel f...
When large financial firms do develop systems in-house, they jealously guard them from competitors. Mr Ma has turned that notion on its head by transforming Ping An's technology division into a sales unit and profit centre. When the company developed...
First, having established them as seedlings, they starved their charges of phosphorus until signs of deficiency such as yellow leaves appeared. Then they scattered desert dust on the leaves of half of the specimens of each species, while taking steps...
Evolution and agriculture 进化和农业 Good catch 丰收 Some crops can absorb phosphorus from dust 有些作物能从尘土中吸收磷 Wheat was among the first plants to be domesticated and is now the most widespread crop in the world. It thus...
In the end, prejudice against accents betrays bad manners and small minds, and says more about the listener than about the put-upon speaker. But often it is itself a sign of poor education. As it happens, Mr Campbells swipe at Ms Patels g-dropping wa...
And French leaders face more than just condescension. When Jean Castex, who has a notable south-western accent, became prime minister, reactions were predictably patronising. But such snobbery can have serious consequences, notes Jonathan Kasstan of...
Books arts 文艺板块 Johnson 约翰逊专栏 Eiffel power 埃菲尔力量 The rights and wrongs of a French bid to ban accent discrimination 法国禁止口音歧视的是非曲直 In the early 1790s French revolutionaries commissioned a priest, H...
The USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School at Muroc, now Edwards air force base, which he ran from 1962, offered a state-of-the-art simulator that covered every stage of a space flight, from take-off to landing. Applicants swarmed in, and a bare 1% mad...
At 74,700 feet (22,800 metres), and at 2.44 Mach speed, it began to roll uncontrollably, then spin upside down. Completely disoriented, battered by plus and minus g-loads, he remembered his helmet cracking the inner canopy, and not a lot else. At las...
