Why the oil price is spiking again
May 31st 2022 (Updated Jun 2nd 2022)In the 1970s Arab states used the “oil weapon” of embargoes to punish Western governments for supporting Israel. On May 30th the heads of the 27 eu member governments agreed to turn the weapon on themselves, as part of a fresh round of sanctions against Russia following its invasion of…
Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war pushed poor families deeper into penury
Reyna was 17 when her boyfriend Gabriel was murdered in front of her. In October 2016 he returned to their home in Bagong Silangan, a crowded slum area in Manila, after a shift working as a rickshaw driver. She said it was a “normal day” until armed men burst in through the front entrance and…
China’s e-sports players are challenging South Korea’s dominance
Some 4,000 fans gathered at the bexco Centre in Busan, a big port city in South Korea, on May 29th. Another 2.2m tuned in online. They were there for the finals of the Mid-Season Invitational, a prestigious e-sports tournament. A dozen teams had been competing over the course of three weeks to show off their…
Men with guns disrupt a plan to link Congo to east Africa
Barely two months after the fanfare that greeted the Democratic Republic of Congo as the seventh member of the East African Community (eac), making it a bloc of 300m people stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, blood is being spilt again in the troubled north-eastern corner of that vast, mineral-rich but chaotic country.…
Somalia’s new president vows to beat back jihadists, then talk to them
When hassan sheikh mohamud entered Villa Somalia as president in 2012, his writ ran little farther than the sandbagged gates of the bullet-pocked, Italian-built, Art Deco palace of the head of state. Though the central government had recently wrested control of most of Mogadishu, the capital, and had recaptured some strategic towns here and there,…
KAL’s cartoon
This article appeared in the The world this week section of the print edition under the headline “KAL’s cartoon”From the June 4th 2022 editionDiscover stories from this section and more in the list of contents Explore the edition
What Working Women Want and How to Retain Them
Working women are a valuable asset to any company. They have proven themselves time and again as being reliable, dedicated, and hardworking employees. However, companies often struggle to retain these employees. In this blog post, you’ll explore what working women want and how to make them stick around. Image source:https://unsplash.com/photos/46bom4lObsA Revise Your Corporate Policies and…
A Beginner’s Guide to TikTok
It’s been over three years since the application for lip-syncing Musical.ly, now called TikTok, was first popularized among teens and tweens. According to estimates from research company Sensor Tower, the platform has expanded its reach to the generation of Z: TikTok has been downloaded more than one billion times, including more than 96 million users within…
China’s dilemma over a curious breed of financial firm
China’s local-government financiers have a complex identity. Tasked with developing land and doing public works, they act on behalf of, and with approval from, city and provincial authorities. Yet at the same time they represent large companies, known as local-government financing vehicles (lgfvs), which have the ability to raise billions of dollars from global investors.…
The return of the inventory cycle
Remember the Great Moderation? This refers to the period before the global financial crisis of 2007-09 during which there was a marked fall in the volatility of gdp growth in rich countries. Explanations for it ranged from wiser monetary policy (yes, really) to globalisation. In fact, much of it was down to something more mundane:…