Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

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

Southern Africa has mostly been spared the jihadist violence seen elsewhere on the continent.

In Mozambique, that is changing.

The cities are ramping up just as a huge natural gas project promises to change the country's fortunes.

And some of humanity's oldest stories were conjured to explain geological features,

with godlike figures shaping mountains, volcanoes and lakes.

Now scientists have linked a landscape to another story, and uncovered the oldest myth yet.

First up, though.

The news that broke while China slept on January 23rd was astonishing.

The Chinese government had quarantined an entire city at the center of a mysterious new viral outbreak.

Normally traffic jammed highway in the city of Wuhan, China, and you're empty.

Only of two cities at the epicent to River New coronavirus outbreak on lockdown on Thursday,

as health authorities in the city of Wuhan and nearby towns lockdown.

No trains, flights or mass transit.

As of today, lockdown restrictions have been lifted, and healthy residents and visitors are at last free to leave the city.

Even as much of the rest of the world now looks the way Wuhan did during the past 10 weeks.

We saw extraordinary scenes as the clock struck midnight early this morning.

A stream of cars leaving the city.

We saw people in the railway station heading out in their tens of thousands.

David Renny is our Beijing bureau chief.

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