LIKE many constructions, it started small. But now thousands of children with autism are making friends and learning social skills by playing a version of online building game Minecraft. Stuart Duncan got the idea through a popular blog he ran about his own experiences with autism as well as bringing up a son with autism. Other parents with autistic children started telling him that their kids were crazy about a game that let them explore a randomly generated wilderness. However, despite loving the game, many of the children were being bullied by other players. So, in 2013, Duncan, a web developer in…

Fought on 7 October 1571, the great sea battle between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire was seen as a pivotal moment in history. Have its consequences been exaggerated? The message arrived at Philip II’s pharaonic complex at El Escorial, still under construction, at 2pm on 31 October 1571, having travelled 3,500 kilometres at an average of 150 kilometres a day: a record. The king was at prayer, since it was All Souls Day, and, on his orders, the choir immediately sang the Te Deum. Philip’s chief minister hailed it as ‘the greatest naval victory since Pharaoh’s army drowned in the…

China’s energy infrastructure is simply not yet ready for Beijing’s concerted efforts to curb emissions, which opens up new opportunities for Russian hydrocarbon exporters. While the world discusses the unprecedented rise in gas prices in Europe, another energy crisis is unfolding on the other side of Russia’s borders. In China, electricity shortages have forced several provinces to effectively introduce power rationing. At the end of September, the Chinese authorities asked the Russian power generator Inter RAO to increase supplies to China. It seems that the transition over to green energy will not only change the market conditions for Russian hydrocarbon exporters in…

he pandemic downturn has heightened one of the gravest challenges facing Africa on its development path—the high costs of perception premiums—the overinflated risks perennially assigned to Africa, irrespective of its improving macroeconomic fundamentals, the global economic environment, and individual countries’ growth prospects. The global nature of the pandemic downturn offers an opportunity to scrutinize the extent to which perception premiums are shaping the distribution of sovereign risk across countries and regions; the disproportionately larger number of African nations affected by procyclical downgrades further supports the premium hypothesis. Over 56 percent of African countries rated by at least one of the big…

Army leaders continue to struggle to find a way to address suicide in the ranks as the problem worsens, with 2020 marking the highest rate of suicides among active-duty soldiers in years. Army leaders say they are looking to try just about anything to better respond to and prevent suicides. In the Army Reserve, that includes giving commanders the ability to put a soldier on paid, active duty status to respond to a teammate in crisis. “[I]f one of our junior noncommissioned officers or officers become aware that somebody’s reaching out for help, our commanders have the ability to say…