Europe is stuck in a need-hate relationship with migrants | The Nobel prize in literature is prestigious, lucrative and bonkers | Gaza 'soon without fuel, medicine and food' - Israel authorities | The Big Nobel Prize Winners Were Short and Fast

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Europe is stuck in a need-hate relationship with migrants - The Economist

A surge of small boats is arriving on Europe’s southern shores, brimming with migrants willing to work, for example doing low-skilled jobs in construction or caring for the elderly. In entirely separate news, Europe has a mounting shortage of workers, especially in low-skilled sectors such as construction or taking care of the elderly. To some, that may suggest a solution about as complex as slotting the last piece into a jigsaw puzzle. Alas, migration is not amenable to such reasoning. Countries have borders for good reasons; economic needs are often subservient to political imperatives. Still, the end result is that Europe is nuttily deploying barbed-wire fences and “workers wanted” banners at the same time. Meanwhile, thousands are drowning as they try to reach a place that may soon realise it needs them.

So migration is, alas, back at the forefront of EU politics. The bloc is on track to receive over 1m asylum applications this year, the most since a rush of arrivals in 2015-16. Back then, in the midst of turmoil in Afghanistan and Syria, the mood was fairly welcoming: Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, had pronounced that in the wake of a large inflow of migrants “Wir schaffen das”—we can manage this. Now Europe no longer feels it can schaffen quite as much. Whether liberal or conservative, northern or southern, the feeling is of a continent at its limits. Millions of Ukrainians fleeing war into the EU have strained resources—and sympathy—that might have gone to those from farther afield. Countries that took lots of migrants in 2015 have not fared well: Sweden is calling in the army to help deal with a surge in gang violence, much of it related to its previously porous border. Migrant-hating populists have surged there, as they also have in Germany.

If one thing unites politicians in the EU, it is the certainty that a botched policy on migration will cost them their jobs. The continent anyway suffers from old divisions. Southern European countries such as Italy and Greece complain that they bear the brunt of EU rules which force countries where migrants arrive to bear the expense of processing them, even though most migrants want to end up in places such as Germany and Sweden. Those rich countries think southerners are flouting the rules by failing to intercept migrants as they set foot in the EU. One solution mooted for years is a pan-European grand bargain, whereby countries beyond the front lines of migration agree to take in some of the huddled masses. Such a deal was struck in June, and continues to be haggled over. But under the weight of new arrivals it seems to be wobbling. Another element was an agreement with Tunisia, which many migrants from across the world are using as a stepping stone before crossing the Mediterranean into Europe. The autocratic regime there was in essence to be bribed with EU cash to deter smugglers using its shores. A similar deal with Turkey helped stem the flow in 2016. But that too is not working well.

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The Nobel prize in literature is prestigious, lucrative and bonkers - The Economist

The announcement of the winner of the Nobel prize in literature usually prompts one of three reactions. The first is “Who?”; the second is “Why?”; the third—and by far the rarest—is “Hurrah!” This year, the reaction was firmly in the first two camps. On October 5th Jon Fosse, a Norwegian, was awarded the most prestigious writing prize in the world. Most literary buffs had never heard of him. Mr Fosse writes mainly in the Nynorsk language, which is, even among Norwegian writers, a minority pursuit. His best-known (but still little-known) trilogy is called “Septology”, which touts itself as a “radically other reading experience”.

In some ways awarding this prize is a simple process. As is customary, Mr Fosse was telephoned, just before 1pm Swedish time today. As is also usual, he picked up the phone to hear a Scandinavian voice telling him that he had won the coveted prize, which comes with SKr11m (around $1m). Like many Nobel winners, he may have assumed it was a hoax. Like many, he may then have opened the champagne. Or perhaps, as Doris Lessing did, he may simply have sighed and said: “Oh, Christ.”

In almost every other way the prize is a nightmare of complexity. Judging anything, even a 100-metre race, can be hard. Judging literature—a symphony, not a sprint— is much harder. Aristotle might have been briskly able to outline what makes a piece of writing great in his “Poetics”; few others have felt so confident. “Posh bingo” is how the writer Julian Barnes once described the Booker prize, another literary prize awarded annually for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom and Ireland. (He was shortlisted for it three times before his fourth proved to be the charm.)

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Gaza 'soon without fuel, medicine and food' - Israel authorities - BBC News

The Gaza Strip could be on the brink of a new humanitarian crisis if supplies are not allowed in, authorities say, as Israel responds to the Hamas attacks.

On Monday, Israel declared a "complete siege" on the territory, saying electricity, food, fuel and water would be cut off.

BBC footage shows deserted streets covered with rubble from collapsed buildings following Israeli airstrikes.

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The Big Nobel Prize Winners Were Short and Fast - The New York Times -

The awards for physics and chemistry were a reminder that the most important processes in nature unfold on a scale divorced from everyday human affairs.

“There’s plenty of space at the bottom.” So proclaimed the physicist Richard Feynman in 1959, heralding the new field of nanophysics, the study of the very, very small.

Feynman’s dictum kept running through my head last week after the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists who figured out how to produce bursts of laser light only one-millionth of one-trillionth of a second long — fast enough to track the movements of electrons in a chemical reaction.

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