Philippa Kaur

The gridlocked streets of India’s big cities are not blocked to everything. Tiny scooters laden with packages slip past cars, jump traffic lights and bounce over what pavements exist. Goods range from a tub of ice cream or a handful of pomegranate seeds to a coffee pot or even an iPhone. Such two-wheeled delivery services have taken off over the past four years, often promising to bring items in ten minutes in cities where it can take that time to cross a busy street. More

TO WESTERN PALATES baijiu is an acquired taste—and most never acquire it. China’s national fire water, at first whiff redolent of cheap potato vodka with a soupçon of fish sauce, is just too pungently unfamiliar. But whatever foreign investors plied with the stuff by their Chinese business partners make of the flavour profile, they appear to be lapping up shares in its makers. More

Two big shifts are under way in the world of software development. Since the launch of Chatgpt in 2022, bosses have been falling over themselves to try to find ways to use generative artificial intelligence (AI) productively. Most efforts have so far yielded little, but one exception is software programming. Surveys suggest that developers around the world find generative ai so useful that already about two-fifths of them use it. More

THE 2015-16 season was an epic one for Nike’s athletes. LeBron James led the Cleveland Cavaliers to basketball glory in the NBA play-offs and the Denver Broncos, quarterbacked by the Nike-shod Peyton Manning, triumphed in American football’s 50th Super Bowl. In proper football, Cristiano Ronaldo won both the UEFA Champions League (with Real Madrid) and the European championship (with Portugal). In tennis, Serena Williams secured her seventh Wimbledon singles title. At the Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro, 89 track-and-field medallists plus the entire male marathon podium wore Nikes, and Simone Biles, who had clinched an endorsement deal with the sportswear giant the year before, tumbled her way to four gymnastics golds and a bronze. More

The competition to be the worst two words in the English language is extremely hard-fought. Surprise party. Cruise holiday. Rice pudding. Keen golfer. The list goes on and on. But right up there is “sandwich lunch”. Separately, each of these words contains lots of promise. In combination they spell unmitigated disaster. More

In May Equinox, a luxury gym, launched a membership that costs $40,000 per year—half the median household income in America, where the chain is based. The plan includes blood tests, a sleep coach and a nutritionist, as well as access to the group’s swanky clubs. Julia Klim of Equinox explains why people pay: “You can buy a Chanel bag every year, but health and looking well is the ultimate luxury symbol.” More

Northvolt had all the trappings of an industrial champion. Capital had poured in from Wall Street titans such as Goldman Sachs and BlackRock. Assorted governments had blessed its plans with generous grants and big customers had vouched for its technology. But on September 23rd the seven-year-old Swedish battery-maker announced that it would suspend work on one of its new manufacturing plants, slow the expansion of its research and development (R&D) unit and lay off a fifth of its workforce. It was the second round of cutbacks in a month. More

A few weeks ago people within OpenAI were keen to assure your correspondent that the maker of ChatGPT had matured, following the coup almost a year ago against Sam Altman and the counter-coup shortly afterwards that reinstated him as CEO. But on September 25th not even Mr Altman could sustain the fiction. “We are not a normal company,” he tweeted, admitting he was caught out by the abrupt decision to quit by Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer (pictured with Mr Altman last year). More