Human trafficking continues to expand and evolve, often hiding in plain sight. This harsh reality is laid bare in the UNODC’s (United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime’s) Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2024, published at the end of last year. Reports such as this should wake us up to the brutal realities faced by too many and lead us to ask what can be done to stop this crime.

The report says that there was a 25-per-cent increase in detected trafficking victims globally in 2022, surpassing pre-pandemic levels in 2019. Alarmingly, this includes a 31-per-cent rise in child victims. At International Justice Mission (IJM), a global NGO working to combat trafficking, we witness these harsh realities daily. These are not just statistics, but individuals: sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers who deserve to live in freedom and safety.

The report identifies how climate change, conflict, and displacement are exacerbating trafficking risks. Loss of livelihoods, safety, shelter, and financial security leave vulnerable communities exposed to exploitation. Traffickers prey on those most at risk, taking advantage of crises to further their profits.

A significant shift in trafficking patterns is also evident. For the first time, victims of forced labour now outnumber those trafficked for sexual exploitation — which remains a significant issue, particularly for women and girls, who account for 61 per cent of detected victims.

Read it all.

A UN report identifies factors that are exacerbating the problem, writes Mary Sebastian @IJMhttps://t.co/4gvcqnU8mB

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 21, 2025

Last week the most important Anglican conference that you have probably never heard of took place in Plano, Texas. G25 was a mini-conference organised by Gafcon, a movement which begin in 2008, when the Global Anglican Conference (Gafcon) was organised in Jersusalem.

In 2008, over 1,000 archbishops, bishops, clergy and lay people gathered to discuss the future for faithful Anglicans in a Communion in crisis. A crisis caused by those Gafcon describe as having “led the flock of Christ astray, diluted the authority of Scripture and distorted the gospel, endangering many souls.” 

Archbishop Akinola, one of its founding members, described the original conference as representing “a new dawn, a new beginning”, a means of, “gathering authentic Anglicans”, to, “reform”, “renew” and “reorder” the Anglican Communion. The Communique from the G25 mini-conference acknowledges that some have, however, considered Gafcon to be more controversial, “a sectarian and schismatic movement that has sought to undermine the unity of the Anglican Communion”.

The focus of G25 was to equip the next generation, so Gafcon took time to revisit the history. There was archive footage from the first conference, a video presentation from Archbishop Peter Jensen (the first General Secretary), and a panel discussion from those who were in the room (room 1614 to be precise) when the idea for a global gathering was first suggested.  

Read it all.

If you're an Anglican this might be the year's most important conference you haven't heard of. Report from @AnglicanFutures https://t.co/42xdgT0BLp

— Dan Leafe (@DanLeafe1) March 23, 2025

Nearly four years ago, the Biden administration removed Nigeria from a list of countries whose threats to religious freedom are of “particular concern,” but continued attacks on Christians and other religious groups by Islamist militias have prompted calls from local faith leaders and members of the US Congress for the designation to be restored.

In Africa’s most populous nation, a deadly cycle of violence has unfolded for several years, with Christian clergy and laypeople as well as moderate Muslims falling victim to murder and kidnapping. The Christian nonprofit Open Doors recently reported that in 2024 some 3,100 Christians were killed and more than 2,000 kidnapped in Nigeria.

Last week, US Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, held a hearing on religious freedom violations in Nigeria that included testimony from Catholic Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the Diocese of Makurdi, in central Nigeria, and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a former US Commission on International Religious Freedom commissioner.

Read it all.

After thousands of deaths and kidnappings, Nigerian Christians call on the US to recognize their persecution.

“We live in fear, because at any point it can be our turn to be killed.”https://t.co/ciqtVMB2Ls

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) March 24, 2025

Global government borrowing is expected to reach a record $12.3tn this year, as a rise in defence and other spending by major economies and higher interest rates combine to push up debt levels.

The 3 per cent rise in sovereign bond issuance across 138 countries would take the total debt stock — which has been pushed higher by the global financial crisis, coronavirus pandemic and now the need for greater European defence spending — to a record $76.9tn, according to estimates by S&P Global Ratings.

Big economies’ focus on fiscal policy to “deal with crisis after crisis continues, and the outcome is you do have a much more indebted sovereign picture”, said Roberto Sifon-Arevalo, global head of sovereigns at S&P. This had been compounded, he added, by a rise in debt-servicing costs, as bond yields have moved substantially higher since the end of central banks’ bond-buying programmes.

Borrowing to fund higher spending “was fine and sustainable while you had the borrowing costs that you had before the pandemic, now it presents a much bigger problem”, Sifon-Arevalo said.

Read it all.

Also from the @FT:
“Global government borrowing is expected to reach a record $12.3tn this year, as a rise in defence and other spending by major economies and higher interest rates combine to push up debt levels.
The 3 per cent rise in sovereign bond issuance across 138… pic.twitter.com/y5ctXg3EcB

— Mohamed A. El-Erian (@elerianm) March 4, 2025

Sandra, a teenage girl who wears her curly brown hair tied back in braids, awaited the instant message on her mobile phone. The instructions were matter of fact: Wear makeup and a short skirt. If possible, don a crop top.

Like other girls in her neighborhood outside Medellín, Colombia, Sandra said she didn’t always have food for dinner, let alone trendy clothes and electronics. But a friend tipped her off to a sure-fire way to make money fast. This amiguita, she said, told her about the plentiful meals she could afford, the iPhone she uses, the motorcycle she’d soon be sitting astride. Sandra could enjoy this life too, her friend said. The cost? Her virginity. To a foreigner.

Sandra agreed. Her friend connected then-14-year-old Sandra and her younger sister Verónica (both of whose names Bloomberg changed to protect the siblings against reprisal), with a woman, who, on social media projected a youthful, fun-loving air. Known as la patrona, the woman posed in one photo in a white bikini, hand on hip, on a poolside lounge chair surrounded by palm trees.

The woman expeditiously gathered up the girls’ identity numbers and nude photos. She offered them an advance of 8.6 million pesos ($1,990) for jobs well done. The interchanges were carried out through Meta Platforms Inc.’s social media apps Facebook and Messenger, according to Sandra.

Recruitment and grooming of children are but the first in a multi-step process…

Read it all.

Sex trafficking in Colombia runs through a web of US apps like Facebook, Tinder and Airbnb https://t.co/0tD6KNvVJB

— Bloomberg (@business) March 3, 2025

The rupture of the post-1945 order is gaining pace. In extraordinary scenes at the UN this week, America sided with Russia and North Korea against Ukraine and Europe. Germany’s probable new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, warns that by June NATO may be dead. Fast approaching is a might-is-right world in which big powers cut deals and bully small ones. Team Trump claims that its dealmaking will bring peace and that, after 80 years of being taken for a ride, America will turn its superpower status into profit. Instead it will make the world more dangerous, and America weaker and poorer.

You may not be interested in the world order—but it is interested in you. America’s Don Corleone approach has been on display in Ukraine. Having initially demanded $500bn, American officials settled for a hazy deal for a joint state fund to develop Ukrainian minerals. It is unclear if America will offer security guarantees in return.

The administration is a swirl of ideas and egos but its people agree on one thing: under the post-1945 framework of rules and alliances, Americans have been suckered into unfair trade and paying for foreign wars. Mr Trump thinks he can pursue the national interest more effectively through hyperactive transactions. Everything is up for grabs: territory, technology, minerals and more. “My whole life is deals,” he explained on February 24th, after talks on Ukraine with Emmanuel Macron, the French president. Trump confidants with business skills, such as Steve Witkoff, are jetting between capitals to explore deals that link up goals, from getting Saudi Arabia to recognise Israel to rehabilitating the Kremlin.

Read it all.

A mafia-like struggle for global power has begun, with rules that do not suit America. Other countries are already planning for a lawless era https://t.co/DOIFBsgW0A pic.twitter.com/n36hVsuZir

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) February 27, 2025

Taiwan detained a cargo ship and its eight Chinese crew members after an undersea fiber-optic cable was severed, in a stepped-up effort to police such incidents, which are often seen as part of China’s pressure campaign targeting the self-ruled island.

Taiwan’s coast guard said the incident was being handled as a national security matter and that deliberate sabotage hadn’t been ruled out. A string of such episodes has called attention to Taiwan’s vulnerability as it works to ensure that it has secure internet services to keep the island online in the event of an invasion or blockade by China.

Similar incidents elsewhere, including the cutting of data cables beneath the Baltic Sea, have brought global attention to security concerns surrounding the critical infrastructure. 

Taiwan’s coast guard said it spotted the Togo-flagged cargo vessel in the area on Saturday evening. When it dropped anchor around 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday, the coast guard directed the ship to move away.

Read it all.

Taiwan detained a ship and its Chinese crew after an undersea fiber-optic cable was severed https://t.co/KuiViC3ePV

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) February 25, 2025

The pandemic response wasn’t perfect. But the pandemic itself was real, and punishing. Above all, it revealed our vulnerability — biological, social and political. And in the aftermath of the emergency, Americans have largely looked away, choosing to see the experience less in terms of death and illness than in terms of social hysteria and even public health overreach. For many, the main lesson was that in the world of humans, as in the world of microbes, it’s dog-eat-dog out there.

But the consequences and aftershocks were also more subtle and diffuse: it isn’t easy to live in isolation and in fear, often largely online and surrounded by exceptional illness and mortality, as we watched aspects of the world and our own lives we’d long taken for granted be withdrawn or torn apart. And it isn’t easy to get over all that, however eager we thought we were to “return to normal.” We lived through as many deaths as some of the worst-case scenarios predicted, and without an initial spasm of inspiring solidarity and miraculous biomedical intervention, it could have been worse. But when we came out the other side — 1.5 million fewer of us — we were, as a country, exhausted, resentful, deluded and distrustful. A huge amount of the world in which we now reside was formed in that crucible. I will write more about that next week.

Read it all.

The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth Than Anyone Else https://t.co/431zklvB2r

— judy gitlin (@heyjudenyc) February 26, 2025

The “relevance to the 2020s” of Kindleberger’s [1973] book is greater and gloomier. We have two competing superpowers, the US and China. Both fancy themselves as hegemons; neither is willing to accept the responsibilities of the role. The US vows vengeance on anybody who threatens the primacy of the dollar even as its own actions put that primacy in doubt. China rails against its lack of status in the current economic system, even as it plays a prime role in destabilising it.

With luck, there will be no crisis on a scale that needs leadership and global co-ordination to resolve — but luck always runs out in the end. It makes sense to bolster the international institutions as much as possible. It makes sense, too, to run sensible domestic policies and not end up dependent on the kindness of strangers, an unhelpful truism, like advice not to let your house catch fire.

“If leadership is thought of as the provision of the public good of responsibility, rather than the exploitation of followers or the private good of prestige, it remains a positive idea,” wrote Kindleberger. The US, for all its failings, provided that kind of leadership. The world awaits, with trepidation, the experience of an economic or financial crisis without it.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Who will now stabilise the world economy? https://t.co/gAb7tUq1jd | opinion

— Financial Times (@FT) February 19, 2025

The Church of England will be “a little less central to the common life [of the Anglican Communion]” if proposed changes in its leadership and structure are approved, Bishop Graham Tomlin, who chairs the Inter-Anglican Standing Committee on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO), acknowledged at a webinar on the Lambeth Call on Christian Unity.

Discussions focused on the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals from IASCUFO, which would mean that the 42 Churches of the Communion would no longer be described as “in communion with the See of Canterbury”, but as having “a historic connection” with it (News, 6 December 2024).

Further reinforcing the autonomy and equality of each, the presidency of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), traditionally held by Archbishops of Canterbury, would rotate around the Communion, a move made “in service of a de-centred, polycentric understanding of the mission of the Church. . . The leadership of the Communion should look like the Communion,” the report suggests.

Read it all.

Anglicans envisage ‘polycentric’ future https://t.co/50poLLNkZr

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 14, 2025

Big Tech’s massive spending on artificial intelligence is set to continue unchecked in 2025 after Amazon topped its rivals with a planned $100bn-plus investment in infrastructure this year.

Spending by the four leading US tech companies had already surged 63 per cent to historic levels last year. Now executives are vowing to accelerate their AI investments, dismissing concerns about the vast sums being bet on the nascent technology.

Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta have reported combined capital expenditure of $246bn in 2024, up from $151bn in 2023. They forecast spending could exceed $320bn this year as they compete to build data centres and fill them with clusters of specialised chips to remain at the forefront of AI large language model research.

The scale of their spending ambitions — announced alongside their fourth-quarter earnings — has surprised the market and exacerbated a sell-off caused by the release of an innovative and cheap AI model from Chinese start-up DeepSeek in late January.

Read it all.

Big Tech is set to spend over $300 billion on AI this year. pic.twitter.com/7AL7J7i5mY

— Brew Markets (@brewmarkets) February 7, 2025

Edgar met Rita on LinkedIn. He worked for a Canadian software company, she was from Singapore and was with a large consultancy. They were just friends, but they chatted online all the time. One day Rita offered to teach him how to trade crypto. With her help, he made good money. So he raised his stake. However, after Edgar tried to cash out, it became clear that the crypto-trading site was a fake and that he had lost $78,000. Rita, it turned out, was a trafficked Filipina held prisoner in a compound in Myanmar.

In their different ways, Edgar and Rita were both victims of “pig-butchering”, the most lucrative scam in a global industry that steals over $500bn a year from victims all around the world. In “Scam Inc”, our eight-part podcast, The Economist investigates the crime, the criminals and the untold suffering they cause. “Scam Inc” is about the most significant change in transnational organised crime in decades.

Pig-butchering, or sha zhu pan, is Chinese criminal slang. First the scammers build a sty, with fake social-media profiles. Then they pick the pig, by identifying a target; raise the pig, by spending weeks or months building trust; cut the pig, by tempting them to invest; and butcher the pig by squeezing “every last drop of juice” from them, their family and friends.

The industry is growing fast….

Read it all.

Online scamming is a vast, sophisticated and fast-growing global enterprise that compares in size and scope to the illegal drug industry. Except that in many ways it is worse. As our investigation finds, nobody is safe from Scam Inc https://t.co/MMKm0TeOIW pic.twitter.com/QIUMvOCjDW

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) February 6, 2025

If investment in data centres is about to slow, nobody told Mark Zuckerberg. On January 29th, during an earnings call, Meta’s boss boasted that the social-media giant had plans to build an artificial-intelligence (AI) data centre “so big that it’ll cover a significant part of Manhattan if it were placed there”.

His timing was conspicuous. Only two days earlier the share prices of firms from Nvidia, a chipmaker, to Dell, a manufacturer of servers used in data centres, had nosedived in response to the release of a new AI model created by DeepSeek, a Chinese firm. Its training costs were a fraction of those for similarly powerful Western models, raising questions over how much computing power—and investment—is needed to develop ai systems.

Although many of those share prices have since recovered, the episode has brought increased scrutiny to the huge sums of money that are being spent on data centres. Meta and America’s three big cloud-service providers—Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft—forked out a combined $180bn on data-centre infrastructure last year. Add in spending by smaller tech firms, telecoms providers, big enterprises and data-centre operators such as Digital Realty and Equinix, and the figure rises to around $465bn. Land, buildings and peripheral gear such as electrical equipment make up about 30% of that, with chips, server racks, networking kit and the like accounting for the rest. Cashed-up private-equity firms such as Blackstone have been lured in by the spending boom, undertaking a record $70bn-worth of data-centre deals last year.

Read it all.

The data-centre investment spree shows no signs of stopping https://t.co/SckehPpeGp

— Marc Baronnet (@baronnet) February 5, 2025

A key determinant of becoming a global leader in AI is the ability to build an efficient, sustainable and resilient infrastructure that ensures energy is available, reliable and constant. The state of national power grids in China, the EU, and the US remains a significant barrier. China’s creaking grid represents a major constraint to progress and the government is planning to invest more than US$800bn over the next six years. The investment will support Beijing’s Eastern Data, Western Computing initiative, which aims to tap into China’s energy resources in the west and transfer computing power to economic hubs along the coast.

The European power grid is one of the oldest in the world. Moreover, around 40% of the grid is around ten years off its expected lifespan, while over half of the physical grid needs to be repaired or replaced. It remains uncertain whether the estimated US$584bn in European grid investments needed this decade will materialise. In 2024, the EU’s Modernisation Fund handed out almost US$3bn to modernise member states’ energy systems, amongst other activities.

The ageing and fragmented US grid comprises three main regions (Western, Eastern and Texas), which remain inefficient, especially for interconnections between regions. The US Department of Energy (DoE) estimates that power outages cost the US economy US$150bn annually. Modernising the US grid will cost trillions over the coming decades.

Read it all.

Building AI infrastructure is only one part of the story, as sovereign AI capabilities may prove more decisive.

Read the latest analysis by Charlie Edwards: https://t.co/5y4Hb1bd1o pic.twitter.com/HWb7vskEoL

— IISS News (@IISS_org) January 31, 2025

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Athens Mayor Haris Doukas, several ministers, MPs, and representatives of the political and military leadership attended the Divine Liturgy at the Church of Dionysios Areopagite and the Blessing of the Waters at the Athens Reservoir.

“The sunlit Greece celebrates Epiphany with grandeur, drawing strength and hope from its message,” Prime Minister Mitsotakis remarked after the ceremony.

Read it all.

(Tovima) Believers Celebrate the #Epiphany Around the World- Photos https://t.co/o2b2sVuNLG 'President of the Republic, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, attended the celebrations in Kilkis, where she participated in the Divine Liturgy at the Holy Metropolitan Church of the…

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) January 10, 2025

There are 26 in total,

take a look at them all.

A man takes a dip in icy waters during the #Epiphany celebration, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in #Kyiv, #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/6oG9kLwKt9

— Hans Solo (@thandojo) January 7, 2025

Slowing China’s progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has been a top priority for Washington for the last three years. To achieve that goal, the Biden administration has escalated controls on the sale of advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China, including a fresh salvo of restrictions earlier this week.

Policymakers may be flummoxed to learn, then, that Chinese companies aren’t just keeping up in the AI race: some believe they could overtake American industry leaders as soon as next year.

The latest breakthroughs came late last month, when two Chinese AI companies released new models that perform as well, if not better than their American peers. Developed by tech giant Alibaba and High Flyer Capital Management, a Chinese quantitative hedge fund, the technologies compete directly with OpenAI’s latest o1 model, which can “reason” through problems — a process some researchers have described as a new paradigm.

These achievements by Chinese firms underscore how formidable a competitor the country remains in the global AI race. Buoyed by a wealth of engineering talent and intense domestic competition — plus ample chip supply for now — Chinese AI firms are unlikely to fall back in that race as easily as some in Washington may hope.

Influential figures in the AI community are taking note. On Monday, Clement Delangue, chief executive of HuggingFace, a popular platform that offers tools and data to AI developers, predicted on LinkedIn that China would “start to lead the AI race in 2025.”

Read it all.

A single cell.

A global business worth billions.

A trade that can bring rewards—or human costs that cannot be measured.

The human egg is a precious resource, exchanged in markets open, gray or black. To tell its story, we follow a teenage girl in India, lured into selling her eggs; a model in Argentina whose genetic makeup is prized; a mother in Greece, told by police that her eggs were stolen; and two “egg girls” from Taiwan who have put themselves at risk to earn money in the US.

Read it all.

Women around the world are increasingly part of a very human global supply chain.

In @BW investigation, we learned how they’re paid—and sometimes exploited—in the multibillion-dollar fertility industry. I made this key takeaways free to read:https://t.co/ax7Nco65xc

— Marika Katanuma (@marikakatanuma) December 13, 2024

As in previous years, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) Religious Liberty Commission (RLC) calls on the church worldwide to unite for the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Christians (IDOP).

“The reality of persecution today is sobering. In the past year, around 5,000 Christians were murdered simply because of their faith. Over 14,000 Christian properties were attacked, and more than 4,000 have been detained, often in harsh and inhumane conditions”, says WEA Ambassador for Religious Freedom, Godfrey Yogarajah.

For Yogarajah, “in a world where religious freedom is under threat, our prayers are more crucial than ever. We stand with our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ, encouraged by their example and committed to supporting them in their time of need”.

Read it all.

Christians worldwide are called to join for International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church on November 10th.https://t.co/4UQcNcRC1B

— Evangelical Focus (@Evan_Focus) November 7, 2024

Data centers are the factories of AI, turning energy and data into intelligence. Industry leaders estimate that a few major U.S. technology companies alone are expected to invest more than $600 billion in AI infrastructure, particularly in data centers, between 2023 and 2026. The countries that work with companies to host data centers running AI workloads gain economic, political, and technological advantages and leverage. But data centers also present national security sensitivities, given that they often house high-end, export-controlled semiconductors and governments, businesses, and everyday users send some of their most sensitive information through them. And while the United States is ahead of China in many aspects of AI, especially in software and chip design, America faces significant bottlenecks with data centers.

Data centers are critical for the digital economy and AI. But the data center buildout is hitting a wall. The United States is home to the plurality of the world’s data centers, numbering in the thousands. Yet America’s aging energy grid, which powers those data centers, is under enormous strain from a complex set of factors, including rising electricity demand, delayed infrastructure upgrades, extreme weather events, and the complex transition to renewable energy. Meanwhile, surging data center demands driven by rapidly increasing AI workloads are exacerbating the grid’s vulnerabilities.

It’s not just a question of how those energy needs can be met, but where. When it comes to data centers, the shortage of powered land in the United States—or more specifically, the shortage of powered land with the connectivity required to support large-scale data centers—combined with supply chain challenges and lengthy permitting timelines for new infrastructure—presents a challenge to realizing both the public and private sectors’ AI ambitions.

Read it all.

There are a lot of known unknowns about AI, but “The Next AI Debate Is About Geopolitics.” In my latest @ForeignPolicy piece, I argue that data might be the “new oil,” but nations—not nature—will decide where to build data centers. Source: Foreign Policy https://t.co/CHLEzhY9I6

— Jared Cohen (@JaredCohen) October 28, 2024

Lisa slides a Hellcat pistol into her backpack, slinging it over her shoulder. She jumps out of the driver’s seat of her massive Ford F-250 as we head into a barbecue joint for lunch. Steel brass knuckles glint in the console beside a pencil-shaped, pronged object. She sees me looking at it. 

“That’s my stabby-stick,” Lisa says before I even ask. “In case I can’t bring my gun somewhere. These guys are dangerous.”

“These guys” are sex traffickers, and dangerous doesn’t begin to describe them. 

Many traffickers are members of Mexican or Salvadorian gangs, part of Cuban rings or the vicious Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua. Their modus operandi is luring migrant women and girls across the southern border, promising them good jobs once they get to America, and then forcing them into prostitution once they’re here, ostensibly to pay off the debt they incurred to get into the U.S. Hunting down sex traffickers is not for the faint of heart, and Lisa is not about to take any chances. 

An athletic, no-nonsense blonde in her 50s, Lisa runs a small nonprofit foundation called Shepherd’s Watch, dedicated to bringing down sex-trafficking rings. Prior to starting Shepherd’s Watch in 2016, Lisa had been a telecom engineer and an expert at analyzing cell phone data used in court cases. In that job, she says, she saw a “disturbing” amount of child exploitation. “I couldn’t ignore it anymore.”

Read it all.

NEW Migrant crime story: I shadowed a private investigator in Dallas and saw firsthand how easy it is to “order” a migrant girl off one of dozens of sex solicitation websites. @ShepherdsWatchF is doing great work trying to stop this kind of crime. https://t.co/RJ29TzMKtv

— Maddie Rowley (@Maddie_Rowley_) October 14, 2024

The action is now moving beyond America. With over two-fifths of the world overweight or obese, demand for glp-1 drugs is voracious. Pharma companies are racing to make them work as pills, which would be cheaper to produce than jabs, and to reduce their side-effects. Generic versions for older GLP-1 agonists are entering the market. Semaglutide is to come off patent in Brazil, China and India in 2026; eight such drugs are in the works in China. That is just as well. As incomes in the developing world have risen and life has become more sedentary, people’s waistlines are catching up with those in the West.

Curbing obesity would be consequential. Yet glp-1 drugs promise to do much more. Overweight patients on semaglutide have been found to suffer fewer heart attacks and strokes; the benefits, astonishingly, seem to be largely independent of how much weight is lost. Tirzepatide improves sleep apnoea. Trials show that glp-1 agonists reduce chronic kidney disease in diabetics; and there are signs they may lessen brain shrinkage and cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s. Studies of health records suggest that they may help with addictions, too; people already on glp-1 drugs in America were less likely to overdose on opioids or abuse cannabis or alcohol. Researchers are even talking, in hushed tones, of their anti-ageing effects.

How can one class of drug do so much? As our briefing explains this week, not only do the drugs act in the gut, but they also bind to receptors all over the body and in the brain. 

Read it all.

I’ve been saying this for quite some time: GLP-1 agonists are miracle “everything drugs”! it’s likely there’ll be more of these types of drugs soon

“It’s not just obesity. Drugs like Ozempic will change the world
As they become cheaper, they promise to improve billions of lives” pic.twitter.com/61tc17dKRE

— Derya Unutmaz, MD (@DeryaTR_) October 24, 2024

Less than a mile from Singapore’s luxurious Changi Airport sits a rather less glamorous business park. Residents of the industrial estate include freight and logistics firms, as well as the back offices of several banks. One building is a little different, however. Behind a glossy onyx facade, layers of security and imposing steel doors, sits more than $1bn in gold, silver and other treasures. “The Reserve” hosts dozens of private vaults, thousands of safe deposit boxes and a cavernous storage room where precious metals sit on shelves rising three storeys above the ground.

After four years of retrofitting, the complex is almost complete. Its grand opening will come at an opportune moment: gold is in the midst of an extraordinary renaissance. Over the past year investors have piled into the metal, driving its price up by 38% to over $2,700 per troy ounce—a record high (see chart 1). The buzz has reached unusual places: gold bars have hit the shelves of Costco, an American retailer, and CU, a South Korean convenience-store chain, as the resurgence of inflation and fears of war drive consumer enthusiasm. Central bankers are also getting involved, as financial fragmentation increases appetite for an ancient asset. The world has entered a new golden age.

Read it all.

What the surging gold price says about a dangerous world https://t.co/2oLSBR8QCy

— YD (@Enhance___) October 23, 2024

The Economist has spoken to a range of people with first-hand knowledge of Iran’s oil system. To check and verify what they told us, and flesh out the detail, we then sought information from other sources, including former sanctions officials, Iranian insiders, intelligence professionals and WikiIran, a third-party website soliciting leaks. Our investigation shows that the country has built sprawling shadow financial channels, which run from its oil rigs to the virtual vaults of its central bank. China, Iran’s main buyer, is an architect of this system, and its chief beneficiary. Global banks and financial hubs, often unknowingly, are used as vital cogs. A source familiar with Iran’s books says that, as of July, it had $53bn, €17bn ($19bn) and smaller pots of other currencies lying abroad.

Although enforcement has weakened in recent years, Iran is subject to the broadest sanctions America has imposed on any country. Aimed at forcing Iran to curb its nuclear enrichment and funding of terrorism, they target swathes of its economy, as well as the government. No other country imposes such stringent sanctions, so, in theory, most can deal with Iran. In practice, few do so openly, as America bans its firms not just from trading with Iran, but also with foreigners that knowingly do so. It is especially tough for Iran to receive and move dollars, as every such transaction, almost anywhere in the world, must eventually be cleared by an American bank.

But our report shows that, with patchy enforcement, determination and help from a greedy partner, a country under a de facto global embargo can end up flouting it on a cosmic scale. Many of Iran’s tactics are reminiscent of those a drug cartel would use to market products and recycle proceeds into other dark enterprises, often via seemingly legitimate businesses. Iran’s subterranean oil system is governed by rules as much as by threats. The task is to construct an elaborate charade that will dupe sanctions-enforcers.

Read it all.

Iran's money laundering network (simplified by the Economist) https://t.co/oIUs0Pjo3A pic.twitter.com/qI1FZb8okf

— Dr. Paul J. Sullivan (@DrPJSullivan) October 17, 2024

Today, almost 700 million people (8.5 percent of the global population) live in extreme poverty – on less than $2.15 per day. Progress has stalled amid low growth, setbacks due to COVID-19, and increased fragility. Poverty rates in low-income countries are higher than before the pandemic.

Around 3.5 billion people (44 percent of the global population) remain poor by a standard that is more relevant for upper middle-income countries ($6.85 per day), and the number or people living on less than this standard has barely changed since the 1990s due to population growth.

In 2024, Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 16 percent of the world’s population, but 67 percent of the people living in extreme poverty. Two thirds of the world’s population in extreme poverty live in Sub-Saharan Africa, rising to three quarters when including all fragile and conflict-affected countries. About 72 percent of the world’s population in extreme poverty live in countries that are eligible to receive assistance from the International Development Association (IDA).

Based on the current trajectory, 622 million people (7.3 percent of the global population) are projected to live in extreme poverty in 2030. This means, about 69 million people are projected escape extreme poverty between 2024 and 2030 compared to about 150 million who did so between 2013 and 2019. In addition, 3.4 billion people (nearly 40 percent of the world’s population) will likely live on less than $6.85 per day.

If growth does not accelerate and become more inclusive, it will take decades to eradicate extreme poverty and more than a century to lift people above the $6.85 per day poverty line

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Global #poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill. At the current pace of progress, it could take more than a century to eradicate poverty at the $6.85 per day poverty line used for upper-middle-income countries.

More in our new report: https://t.co/62jsHp7rxf | #3PR pic.twitter.com/8PpEhOZ0S9

— World Bank Data (@worldbankdata) October 15, 2024

Imagine if having children came with more than $150,000 in cheap loans, a subsidized minivan and a lifetime exemption from income taxes.

Would people have more kids? The answer, it seems, is no.

These are among the benefits—along with cheap child care, extra vacation and free fertility treatments—that have been doled out to parents in different parts of Europe, a region at the forefront of the worldwide baby shortage. Europe’s overall population shrank during the pandemic and is on track to contract by about 40 million by 2050, according to United Nations statistics.

Birthrates have been falling across the developed world since the 1960s. But the decline hit Europe harder and faster than demographers expected—a foreshadowing of the sudden drop in the U.S. fertility rate in recent years. 

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Worldwide Efforts to Reverse the Baby Shortage Are Falling Flat: "Demographers suggest the reluctance to have kids is a fundamental cultural shift rather than a purely financial one" https://t.co/GDF4fuEAA8

— Jim Russell (@ProducerCities) October 14, 2024

Ever since Hamas’s slaughter of Israelis on October 7th 2023, violence has been spreading. One year on, the Middle East is an inch away from an all-out war between Israel and Iran. Israel’s skilful decapitation of Hizbullah, a Lebanese militia backed by Iran, prompted the Islamic Republic to rain missiles on Israel on October 1st. Israel may retaliate, perhaps striking Iran’s industrial, military or nuclear facilities, hoping to end once and for all the threat it poses to the Jewish state.

Iran is certainly a menace, and use of force against it by Israel or America would be both lawful and, if carefully calibrated, wise. But the idea that a single decisive attack on Iran could transform the Middle East is a fantasy. As our special section explains, containing the Iranian regime requires sustained deterrence and diplomacy. In the long run, Israel’s security also depends on ending its oppression of the Palestinians.

Iran’s latest direct attack on Israel consisted of 180 ballistic missiles. Unlike an earlier strike in April, this time Iran gave little warning. But as before, most of the projectiles were intercepted. The salvo was a response to the humiliation of its proxy, Hizbullah, which until two weeks ago was the most feared militia in the region. No one should shed tears for a terrorist outfit that has helped turn Lebanon into a failed state. For the past year Hizbullah has bombarded Israel, forcing the evacuation of civilians in its northern belt. Israel’s counter-attack, unlike its invasion of Gaza, was long-planned. It has made devastating use of intelligence, technology and air power, killing the militia’s leaders, including its chief, Hassan Nasrallah, maiming its fighters with exploding pagers and destroying perhaps half of its 120,000 or more missiles and rockets.

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The year that shattered the Middle East pic.twitter.com/6YqtHxDnDQ

— Ibrahim Hamidi ابراهيم حميدي (@ibrahimhamidi) October 3, 2024

The long-feared “wider war” in the Middle East is here.

For the last 360 days, since the images of the slaughter of about 1,200 people in Israel last Oct. 7 flashed around the world, President Biden has warned at every turn against allowing a terrorist attack by Hamas to spread into a conflict with Iran’s other proxy force, Hezbollah, and ultimately with Iran itself.

Now, after Israel assassinated the Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, and began a ground invasion of Lebanon, and after Iran retaliated on Tuesday by launching nearly 200 missiles at Israel, it has turned into one of the region’s most dangerous moments since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

The main questions now are how much the conflict might intensify, and whether the United States’ own forces will get more directly involved.

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A Wider War in the Middle East, From Hamas to Hezbollah and Now Iran – The New York Times https://t.co/JjU4OyZeLr

— cecilia ballesteros (@ceciliab) October 2, 2024

The illicit fentanyl that kills tens of thousands of Americans a year is largely produced from Chinese chemicals cooked up in clandestine Mexican laboratories, according to U.S. authorities. This requires drug traffickers to transport the necessary chemicals halfway around the world. But cartels have found a clever way to smuggle these chemicals from China to Mexico – by first importing them into the United States.

Master carton shipping has become an indispensable way for delivery companies to move vast quantities of merchandise around the world quickly. It’s legal, it’s practical, and in the era of e-commerce, it’s key to our everyday lives, whether we realize it or not.

Still, the practice makes it a snap for traffickers to sneak fentanyl chemicals into the country, hidden in small boxes packed inside other boxes. On top of that, a little-known U.S. trade regulation has made this smuggling easier still.

The de minimis rule exempts low-value parcels from taxes, duties and stringent customs reporting rules. It’s meant to keep U.S. Customs and Border Protection from wasting time and effort when the cost of collecting tariffs on cheap imports exceeds the revenue gained.

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A tweak in a trade rule fueled America’s online shopping habits. It also helped Mexican narcos smuggle vital fentanyl-making chemicals from China Here’s how: https://t.co/ahkIC9QfdB by @draz_DJ @gottesdiener @kristinacooke @SEisenhammer via @specialreports pic.twitter.com/aXnl1Yfpkw

— Reuters Investigates (@specialreports) October 1, 2024

Reconciliation is not an event; it is a process taking generations. In 1945, Europe was a hopeless and bankrupt slaughterhouse of hatred and cruelty. Today, there are huge struggles, but the only place we ever truly express rivalry and hunger for victory is on the football field. And France is remarkably successful.

Reconciliation requires human participation. It happens through the brilliance of leadership, de Gasperi, Adenauer, Monnet, Schumann, de Gaulle, Churchill, General Marshall. Defying the bloodshed of the past, it beats swords into ploughshares. Reconciliation means history that is true. It means healing past hurts and admitting wrongs.

Reconciliation is not only agreement, although agreement is necessary; reconciliation is the transformation of destructive conflict into creative rivalry underpinned by mutual acceptance and love. It is a cycle of peace, justice, and mercy, building up a structure shining in the love of God. A moment of peace opens the way to truth telling. Truth telling sows the seeds of relationships. They allow a gram more of peace. In this thin soil of peace, justice can be sown. Amidst justice a fragile confidence appears. From confidence the next and better circle can begin.

But the foundation of it all is prayer, for in prayer we commit ourselves to partnership with God.

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In a world of conflict, we must imagine peace – and that begins by partnering with God in prayer.

It was a great privilege to address the #SantEgidio International Meeting for Peace in Paris today.

You can read my address here: https://t.co/wker09gmcy #PeaceIsPossible pic.twitter.com/9MBNzjGmb7

— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) September 22, 2024