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.

Big oil and gas firms have fast experience with complex, expensive, cross-border infrastructure projects.

That's just the kind of expertise the world needs as it transitions to renewables.

In order to survive, oil majors need to put those skills to use.

And winters in Mongolia are no walk in the park,

but extreme winters that follow dry summers

have catastrophic effects on livestock

and on the herders who depend on them.

Those climate conditions are getting more and more frequent.

But first... The coronavirus continues to spread around the world and has now been found in every mainland province in China.

Infections have been found in at least 15 other countries. In all, there are already

more cases than there were in the 2002 outbreak of the related SARS virus, and international

responses are ramping up. This morning, Russia's prime minister said the country would be closing

its border with China. Authorities in Australia and Britain have quarantined returning travelers,

and British Airways and other airlines have cancelled flights altogether into and out of China.

Today the World Health Organization will meet to discuss whether the outbreak constitutes a global

health emergency. In any case, it's certainly a national one.

So where I am in China, we have had 38 more deaths announced today.

So we're now at 170 dead.

David Rennie is our Beijing Bureau Chief and has been visiting villages on the edge of Hubei,

the province which is the epicenter of the outbreak.

...