Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economists.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Of all the dangers posed by nature, earthquakes have the highest ratio of peril to predictability.

Now some research on slow, gentle quakes is giving insight into the biggest kind,

and it's hoped forming the basis for an early warning system.

And Hamams, the traditional bathhouses across the Arab world, have long been in decline.

But even against the challenge of COVID, they've survived,

because there's still a place for rites and rituals, and still a place to get a bracingly vigorous scrub up.

First up, though. Today, America marks Martin Luther King Day to commemorate the civil rights leader and his fight for, among many other rights, equality at the ballot box.

It was also meant to be the deadline for a Senate vote

on legislation designed by Democrats to protect voting rights. A package of two bills in Congress

has become a central focus for the party, from its activists to its very leaders.

Across the country, it's voter suppression, GOP, gerrymandering of our districts, right-wing court

packing and judicial activism to destroy the Voting Rights Act in cases like Shelby County.

In the United States of America, we need federal laws that guarantee the freedom and right of every American to have access to the ballot to be able to vote.

The voter suppression epidemic that has been unleashed by the radical right is unacceptable,

unreasonable, unfathomable, unconscionable, and un-American.

The whole matrix of GOP democracy suppression today.

It's time to protect the right to vote here on earth.

They point to Republican state legislatures tightening rules on voting by post,

on early voting, on photo ID requirements.

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