Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. 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 they're still a place

for rights and rituals and still a place to get a bracingly vigorous scrubber.

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, for its

activists to its very leaders.

Across the country, its voter suppression, GOP, Jerry Mandering of Art 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.

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