qz

2016 showed a more ruthless and aggressive—but also more fragile—China. It was a China that hardened its crackdown on allegedly corrupt officials, dissidents, activists, and ethnic groups to ensure the communist regime’s stability on the eve of a major leadership reshuffle. It was a China that bullied its Asian neighbors in territorial disputes and other […]Read More

Indian entrepreneurs may have found an unlikely source of inspiration: stand-up comedian Tanmay Bhat. The year 2016 has been nightmarish for the Indian startup community. From devaluations and layoffs to a funding crunch and shutdowns—bad news engulfed some of the mightiest players in the sector. But in stark contrast, Mumbai-based comedy group All India Bakchod […]

The toxic air that’s shrouded Beijing in a haze the past week has finally subsided. At midnight on Dec. 22, the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection department lifted (link in Chinese) its red alert, the country’s highest pollution warning. At the time, the Air Quality Index (AQI) was still at 466, a hazardous level, according to […]

Six weeks ago, when prime minister Narendra Modi announced his government’s decision to demonetise Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes, it wasn’t just Indians who were taken aback. World leaders, economists, and international organisations watched the bold experiment with a mix of wonder and worry. Would it work as a means to crack down on unaccounted cash […]Read More

First, there was the shock demonetisation, then came the advertising blitzkrieg. In the weeks and days after prime minister Narendra Modi’s decision to pull Rs500 and Rs1000 notes out of the economy, some Indian companies went for the kill, as cash-strapped citizens struggled to find a way around the note ban. In particular, online wallet […]

While 2016 has been a pretty terrible year on many fronts, Bill Gates is choosing to focus on the positive. Reflecting on the year that went by in a newsletter to subscribers of his blog, Gates says that 2016 held some “incredible experiences” for him. Here’s what made 2016 “a year to remember” for Gates: […]Read More

Fretting over holiday flight delays? Consider this: Traveling across the United States once took two days, nine flights, two trains, and double-digit stopovers. Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT)—renamed Trans World Airlines (TWA) when it merged with Western Air Express in 1930—was the first US passenger airline to offer an itinerary connecting the east and the west […]

When America’s credit hung in the balance, representative Mick Mulvaney headed to the congressional chapel to pray. Now he’s headed to the White House to lead Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, the nerve center of government activity and a key voice in American fiscal debates. It’s not a big surprise that Trump would […]Read More

Where do common cuckoos spend their winter holidays ? There’s no way to know for sure—Yelp doesn’t track avian piña colada hotspots—until now. Led by conservationist Terry Townsend and ecologist Chris Hewson, a group of conservationists in July launched the Beijing Cuckoo Project, which handpicked birds from the outskirts of Beijing to record their epic […]Read More

Antimatter—the fictional power source in countless sci-fi stories—isn’t just a great source of energy; understanding it could tell us why we exist at all. That’s why a recent Nature paper outlining the results of an experiment at CERN with the antimatter version of hydrogen is so important to physicists. Called the ALPHA experiment, it involves […]Read More

Christmas Eve is around the corner. If you’re anything like me, you haven’t finished your shopping—and can think of better ways to spend those precious hours of the holiday season with friends or family. Don’t ditch your loved ones to drive to the mall or log on to Amazon Prime to panic shop, just so […]Read More

If data on death sentences and executions is any indication, capital punishment is on its way out in the United States—although voters in some parts of the country showed in the 2016 election they still back the death penalty. According to a new report (pdf) from the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), death sentences imposed […]