照片。AFP via Getty images
在过去两周里，能源交易商难以置信地看着欧洲天然气和电力市场的爆炸。2022年第四季度的天然气期货短暂地触及每兆瓦时350欧元（350美元）（大流行前的典型价格为30欧元左右）。法国白天的电力--特别昂贵，因为白天的需求是最高的--达到2500欧元以上。作为比较，核电站的运行成本约为每兆瓦时30欧元，而法国有许多核电站，尽管大多数核电站因维修而关闭。价格泡沫缩小了，但仍停留在惊人的水平，天然气每兆瓦时250欧元，法国日间电力1750欧元。
The Russian-occupied nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia has been disconnected from Ukraine’s grid, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The UN’s nuclear watchdog said the plant is now relying on a reserve line. Russia and Ukraine blame each other for shelling near the plant, which has raised fears of a nuclear disaster. On Saturday Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, offered to mediate in the standoff.
Donald Trump called President Joe Biden an “enemy of the state” during a rally in Pennsylvania. The former president slammed Mr Biden for the FBI’s raid of his estate in Florida, calling it “one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history”. Mr Trump was in Pennsylvania to promote two Republican candidates ahead of midterms in November.
Sweden said it would provide liquidity guarantees to Nordic and Baltic energy companies ahead of a “war winter”. The guarantees will help firms meet the collateral requirements needed to trade electricity, which have risen because of surging energy prices. The announcement came after Russia said it would keep the Nord Stream 1 undersea gas pipeline shut beyond a three-day closure that was due to end on Saturday.
Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, executed five Palestinians on Sunday. Two of them had provided Israel with intelligence that led to strikes on Palestinian targets, Hamas authorities said. (The other three had been convicted of murder.) The executions were the first in the Palestinian territories since 2017. Human-rights groups have criticised Hamas’s court proceedings, as well as the retention of the death penalty.
Thousands of Russians paid their respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, at his funeral on Saturday. The ceremony, which the Kremlin offered only “elements” of a state funeral, was accompanied by heavy security. Gorbachev is hailed as a reformist hero by many liberal Russians. But Vladimir Putin has blamed him for allowing the USSR’s dissolution. Mr Putin did not attend the funeral, citing scheduling conflicts.
China extended its lockdown of parts of Chengdu, a megacity in the southwest, and expanded mass covid-19 testing there to contain a spike in cases. The country’s sixth-biggest city has been shut off since Thursday. Earlier much of Shenzhen, a tech metropolis, entered a weekend lockdown. Residents of six districts were told to halt “unnecessary movement and activities”.
NASA called off its second attempt to launch its Moon rocket, following difficulties fixing a propellant leak. This was NASA’s second launch cancellation in five days; the first effort was aborted by an engine glitch. The launch will now be delayed by several weeks at least, NASA said. The Artemis programme, which costs billions of dollars, has set a goal of sending humans to the Moon by 2025.
Word of the week: kwichon, a Korean term for the return to rural life, increasingly popular among young South Koreans. Read the full story.
Chile’s constitutional referendum
PHOTO: EPA
On Sunday Chileans vote on whether to reject or approve a new constitution. It would replace the current charter, which was drafted under a military dictatorship in 1980. The text was written by a convention of 155 representatives, assembled after protests against inequality in 2019. At 388 articles, it would be one of the world’s longest charters and include the most extensive rights enshrined in any constitution. In addition to housing, work, health care, education and sports, Chileans would have the right to abortion. Indigneous peoples would be granted autonomous territories.
Such sweeping changes have perturbed many Chileans. Polls show that most plan to reject the draft text. Yet one factor could still upend the outcome. For the first time in a decade, voters will be fined if they do not cast a ballot. If young people turn out in droves, analysts say the constitution could yet be approved.
The European energy rollercoaster
PHOTO: AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Over the past two weeks energy traders have watched in disbelief as European gas and electricity markets exploded. Gas futures for the fourth quarter of 2022 briefly touched €350 ($350) per megawatt-hour (the typical pre-pandemic price was around €30). French daytime power—particularly expensive because demand is highest during the day—hit more than €2,500. For comparison, the running costs of a nuclear plant, of which France has many although most are closed for maintenance, are about €30 per MWh. The price bubble deflated, but settled at still-alarming levels, of €250 per MWh for gas and €1,750 for French daytime power.
Where next for European energy prices? Germany’s decision on whether to keep its remaining three nuclear plants open beyond December is due soon, and France is working on restarting more of its plants. Luckily Russia’s closure of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany on August 31st, supposedly for maintenance, barely moved markets. The impact of Russia’s attempts at energy blackmail may be weakening.
Get the briefing in your inbox
Delivered before breakfast six times per week.
Sign up
The talented Patricia Highsmith
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
In her final home in Switzerland, Patricia Highsmith cultivated a booze-soaked solitude. Fans still pursued her, eager to meet the author of “Strangers on a Train”, “The Talented Mr Ripley” and dozens of other haunting books, but Highsmith preferred her cats, snails and the people she invented on the page. “The difference between dream and reality is the true hell,” she once wrote.
Yet Highsmith was once young, hopeful and sexually irresistible. “She had a staggering amount of conquests,” recounts one former female lover in “Loving Highsmith”, Eva Vitija’s new documentary about the author’s secret love life, which opens in cinemas this weekend. Drawing from diaries, notebooks and conversations with former paramours, all of them women, the film depicts a fascinating woman at odds with herself. Although Highsmith wrote “The Price of Salt” (1952), the first novel about a lesbian love affair with a happy ending (better known now as “Carol”), her own relationships left her mired in self-loathing. In the end, her most beloved companions were her typewriter and her diaries, in which she once wrote: “Writing, of course, is a substitute for the life I cannot live, am unable to live.”
Test-tube babies and cancer risks
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
In frozen-thawed embryo transfer (FET), an increasingly popular method of in-vitro fertilisation, embryos are temporarily iced before being implanted in the uterus. Some evidence suggests this makes conception more likely than transferring them straight in. But children conceived using FET may also be more susceptible to cancer than those born through other means, according to a study in PLOS Medicine, a journal.
Some 8m children were studied across Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Almost 23,000 of them had been conceived through FET. Of that group, 48 had been diagnosed with cancer, most commonly leukaemia and tumours of the central nervous system.
The number of cases is too low to prove a definitive link. And when researchers analysed all children born through IVF as one group, they found no increased cancer risk. But as more people use assisted reproduction, further investigation of FET is warranted.
Weekend profile: Liz Truss, Britain’s likely next prime minister
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
If Rishi Sunak becomes leader of the Conservative Party on September 5th, it will be the greatest upset for the political polling industry since Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton to win the American presidency in 2016. At present Liz Truss appears overwhelmingly likely to win the poll of Conservative members and succeed Boris Johnson as the party’s leader—and with it become Britain’s prime minister. Betting markets imply she has a 95% chance of prevailing. Who is she?
Ms Truss is one of the most experienced members of the British government. First elected in 2010, she joined the cabinet as agriculture secretary in 2014 under David Cameron. She continued at the top table under Mr Cameron’s successors, holding the posts of justice secretary, chief secretary to the Treasury, trade secretary and most recently foreign secretary.
She has adopted the mantle of her hero, Margaret Thatcher. Her overriding priority is improving Britain’s low productivity through a combination of tax cuts and regulatory reform. She plans to cut payroll taxes and cancel a planned raise in corporation tax. Ms Truss brushes aside warnings that fiscal loosening would be inflationary.
A large part of her appeal to Tory members is a relentless optimism. And also a loyalty to Mr Johnson who, despite being ousted by his colleagues in July after two scandal-plagued years, retains the affection of rank-and-file party members—not least for delivering Brexit. She is a forceful advocate of a new doctrine of muscular cultural conservatism in the modern Tory party: pro free speech, against revisionist historians and new gender theories.
Ms Truss’s critics regard her as an oddity and a lightweight, not least for her invocations of Thatcher’s legacy. She is best known outside of Westminster for a gawky speech delivered as agricultural secretary, pledging to open up “pork markets”. Yet she has been repeatedly underestimated—including by Mr Sunak.
Weekly crossword
Our crossword is 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:
Cryptic clues
1 down Bad taste to snore like an old rock star? (7,5)
1 across Stray picked up by last hitchhiker in country (6)
2 across Pernicious jerk grabs a hug and a kiss (5)
3 across Eastern power stuck in boggy bit of territory (6)
Factual clues
1 down A tedious edict about tax (7,5)
1 across Where five-times as many children should be fed meals in schools
2 across The type of bacteria that crabs’ blood clots around
3 across What is not worth saving if built on lies
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 the winners in next week’s edition.
The winners of this week’s quiz
Thank you to everyone who took part in this week’s quiz. The winners, chosen at random from each continent, were:
Asia: Masnoon Bujand, Kuching, Malaysia
North America: Ina Tavena, Tucson, America
Central and South America: Alejandro Jara, Santiago, Chile
Europe: Steve Rayner, London, Britain
Africa: Naren Narismulu, Durban, South Africa
Oceania: John Wright, Auckland, New Zealand
They all gave the correct answers of Juno, Utah, Sword, Omaha, Gold. The theme was the names of the D-Day landing beaches in June 1944.