Worldcrunch
The arrest this week of top opposition leaders shows Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed is drifting ever farther away from basic democratic practices. Yet there’s no mass uprising, unlike in 2011, perhaps because economic factors are foremost on people’s minds.
Don’t be fooled by the explosion of Elon Musk’s Starship rocket. In reality, the U.S. is making giant strides while Europe keeps repeating the same mistakes.
The Madan Sara provide a vital service by collecting farmers’ produce and selling it in urban communities. But natural disasters and growing insecurity have threatened their way of life.
Gen Z, those 26 and younger, are entering the workforce. Their lives and values differ drastically from older generations, forcing employers to rethink how they work.
The African tech ecosystem is bouncing back after a slowdown during the pandemic, with local innovation fueled by increasing investment from foreign tech giants.
Convincing coca farmers to plant legal crops is better than spraying poisonous pesticides to wipe out the plants. And yet it turns out these crop substitution programs are problematic, disrupting livelihoods and unintentionally causing violence and deforestation.
Poland’s unilateral decision to ban imports of Ukraine’s agricultural products, in violation of EU agreements, has caused shock among Ukrainians. Nazar Bobytsky, head of the Ukrainian office of the Polish Union of Entrepreneurs and Employers, says Brussels must show Kyiv it is serious about Ukraine joining the EU.
The Brazilian president, back in power after more than a decade later, has not lost his vision of a post-Western world in which the BRICS would occupy a central place. Lula’s visit to Beijing puts such a vision front and center on the global agenda.
Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom has lost access to the European market and is rife with inefficiencies. Still, it isn’t going anywhere soon. The engine of Russia’s vast resources are fed into Vladimir Putin’s system for maintaining power.
The continuous increase of public debt and a tone-deaf president in France, the rise of authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world, the blindness to global warming: realities that we do not want to see and that will end up destroying us if we do not act.
China is still a manufacturing juggernaut and a growing power, but companies are looking for alternatives as Chinese labor costs continue to rise — as do geopolitical tensions with Beijing.
The pushing through of a bill to raise the retirement age in France has caused widespread, sometimes violent, protests. The government is worried the movement will spread, as unions warn the protests are just beginning.
The European Union has a new plan that challenges the long-established dogmas of globalization, with its just-in-time supply chains and outsourcing the “dirty” work to the developing world.
As material costs skyrocket, an old practice is becoming popular again: reusing building materials. In Germany, the first projects are already underway – and so far, results are promising as a model for sustainable cities.
China has become one of Argentina’s most important trading partners and is increasing its military bases in the country. As China seeks to challenge the liberal world order, Argentina risks rifts with other key allies.
German automobile giant Volkswagen will invest billions in China to manufacture electric vehicles. It has deemed the risk of China invading Taiwan “unlikely,” a peek into the calculations that private-sector conglomerates make, just like state actors.
The shoddy homes that collapse on their inhabitants in Turkey’s recent earthquake were badly, and hastily, built as part of a worldwide real-estate fever typically fueled by greedy governments indifferent to safety norms and common sense.
From Croatia to Spain, Portugal, Germany and France, revamped LNG gas routes are providing an agile European energy response to the cutting off of Russian gas since the war in Ukraine began.
China has invested billions in multiple African countries in order to expand its influence. But both sides have been quietly scaling back the relationship, as Africans resent one-sided deals and China fears defaults on debt.
Brazil and Argentina have raised the idea of a shared currency for the South American trading zone. But few believe this is possible without more economic harmonization in the region.
The cuts in funds for various welfare programmes in the latest budget reflect the lack of will on the part of India’s political class to uplift the poor. It is time a wealth tax and a more progressive tax regime are in place.
As debates and protests continue in France over increasing the pension age, many seniors are already voluntarily returning to work. Some do so to keep busy, but many are forced to by the cost-of-living crisis.
The oil and gas sector is counting its billions, and preaching renewables. The math doesn’t compute.
An Estonian e-residency that gives holders access to the country’s government services and business networks has growing takeup in both mainland China and Taiwan. For both business and political reasons.
Russians fled the war to neighboring countries, bringing with them billions of dollars worth of wealth. The influx of money is both a windfall and a problem.
The proposed UGC guidelines are ill-conceived and populist, and hardly take note of the educational and financial interests of foreign universities.
Belgium has lobbied hard for the past year to keep Russian diamonds off the list of sanctioned goods. Indeed, there would be a huge impact on the economy of the port city of Antwerp, if Europe finally joins with the U.S. and others in banning sale of so-called “blood diamonds” from Russia. But a 10th package of EU sanctions arriving this month may finally be the end of the road.
A brightly-lit flotilla of fishing ships has reappeared in international waters off the southern coast of Argentina as it has annually in recent years for an “industrial harvest” of thousands of tons of fish and shellfish.
By putting the economy on a war footing, Putin risks returning Russia to the days of Stalinist totalitarianism, where there will be no oligarchs or businesses left, only loyal administrators.
The news that China’s population has shrunk for the first time in 60 years, comes as India appears to be outperforming its giant neighbor on a number of fronts. But this reversal of fortune still has too many variables to predict the demise of one or the rise of the other.
The Davos Forum was once a true shaper of our collective future in a globalized world. Today it is beyond its expiry date, even if global solutions to global problems are needed more than ever.
The fight against hunger should be a top priority in Brazil — provided it’s addressed as a whole. And to do that, the country needs to face its structural racism issues, an issue newly-reelected President Lula da Silva vowed to tackle.
With the price of meat on the rise, Brazilians have turned to eggs. The country is now producing 55 billion eggs a year, presenting challenges for farmers and raising questions of animal welfare. And in Brazil’s “Egg Capital”, the climate crisis is complicating matters further.
More than a decade ago, with the economy growing and political capital committed to public research and development, Brazil was the poster child for investing in the future. It was all bound to drop out quickly once the winds changed.
By executing a protester after a rapid trial, Iran’s clerical regime has taken its clampdown on the once-in-a-generation uprising to a new level. Observers fear there are more to come soon.
The public sector has seen a revival in response to COVID-19. This can be a good thing, but must be checked carefully because history tells us of the risks of too much control in the government’s hands.
Germany’s ruling Social Democratic Party recently called for the introduction of a 25-hour work week, arguing that it’s the only way to end “self-exploitation.” What a strange understanding of work, argues one German expert in labor law.
Tech billionaires such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have lost far more money this year than ever before. Eccentric behavior and questionable decisions have both played a role. But there are examples in U.S. business history that have other clues.
Aid in its current form is expensive and inefficient. And it isn’t needed — Africa is now a dynamic and confident continent. Europe needs a change of perspective to understand that it needs Africa as much as Africa needs Europe.
Poland has announced plans to build its first nuclear power plant with the help of a U.S. firm. But it’s not the first time the country has tried to build such a plant. So, will it actually happen this time?