China’s workers are not convinced by their government’s new stance, that low economic growth is “normal.” It’s a nightmarish scenario for China, warns International Affairs columnist Jonathan Manthorpe in his new column, Labour unrest surges as China’s economy slows. An excerpt: As China’s economy slows
The death today of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia sets in motion what will be one of the most important successions in that country and the Middle East for many years. It is an involved and complex process involving at least two
The World Economic Forum, AKA the “annual summit for the one per cent,” kicks off in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, tomorrow. Subjects range from bicycles for African kids to global trade, Ebola to climate change, “honey laundering” to oil markets. Switzerland’s tourism industry is delighted
By Alessandro R Demaio, Harvard University January 19, 2015 The World Health Organization (WHO) has just released its Global Status Report on Noncommunicable Diseases, the second in a series tracking worldwide progress in the prevention and control of cancers, lung disease, diabetes
A spat of major new global reports on health, climate, and inequality contain warnings that can be met only by joint action, the kind of community response that has fallen out of favour lately in much of the West. Today Oxfam released, in
By James Dyke, University of SouthamptonJanuary 16, 2015 The Earth’s climate has always changed. All species eventually become extinct. But a new study has brought into sharp relief the fact that humans have, in the context of geological timescales, produced near instantaneous
Worth reading: A joint American-British report today prescribed new policies aimed at reducing the growing gulf between haves and have-nots in Western democracies, using case studies from several countries. The middle class has not fared well lately in advanced economies roiled by globalization,
A research breakthrough in a report in Nature this week, A new antibiotic kills pathogens without detectable resistance, may turn out to be the biggest and most hopeful medical news of the year. It’s been decades since scientists made significant progress on new weapons against
Are We at Peak Civilization? By Chris Wood (subscription required) Will 2015 be the end of our capitalist consumer cornucopia world? That world cannot go on. And as some bright person once said (the words are variously attributed to Henry Ford and economist
Politics are heating up in Saudi Arabia, a key player in the three-cornered contest in the Middle East between modernity, theocracy and absolutism, a contest waged between warring proxies in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya, and felt in corners of the world from
