Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
It’s been a turbulent year for the fintech industry. The pandemic had its effect on the sector, just as it did on many others, in strange and contradictory ways. Experts are predicting that COVID-19 will drive more people into the fintech market while simultaneously slowing down the...
During last year’s presidential election campaign, candidate Joe Biden promised “absolutely” and “positively” to support the waiver of US patents to permit the unencumbered manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines in the rest of the world. Once Biden was elected, the words “absolutely” and...
As if the Biden administration was lacking in pretexts to start a new war with Russia, Donald Trump’s former Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller has stepped up to lead a campaign more reminiscent of a tale from the “Twilight Zone” than the USA’s strategic rivalry with the Soviet...
Since the United Nations Convention Against Corruption was adopted in October 2003, International Anti-Corruption Day is observed annually on December 9. In the context of the ongoing pandemic, António Guterres, the UN secretary general, had a clear message: “Corruption is...
The Guardian’s wealth correspondent, Rupert Neate, is an unrelenting fan of philanthropist Bill Gates. On April 11, he effusively praised the fact that “billionaires — including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey — have committed huge amounts of their money to...
Visibly weakened following a hunger strike in prison yet full of his usual verve, Alexei Navalny appeared before a court via videoconference on April 29 to appeal his fine for the defamation of a World War II veteran just as branches of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) were being shuttered...
Here’s the strange thing in an ever-stranger world: I was born in July 1944 in the midst of a devastating world war. That war ended in August 1945 with the atomic obliteration of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the most devastating bombs in history up to that...
The political faction of the Catholic Church known as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is facing a major problem. Though it was never meant to play a political role, for historical reasons, it has allowed itself to do what all individual Americans find themselves compelled to do:...
America has a serious infrastructure problem. Maybe when I say that what comes to mind are all the potholes on your street. Or the dismal state of public transportation in your city. Or crumbling bridges all over the country. But that’s so 20th century of you. America’s most urgent...
In recent months, the United Arab Emirates has adopted a number of stances inimical to Turkish ambitions in the Mediterranean. This has taken the form of closer relations between the UAE, Greece and Greek Cyprus, more joint military exercises, and increased energy collaboration with Israel via the...
One inevitable consequence of the rise of the consumer society and the ever more sophisticated technology it requires to survive and expand is the progressive replacement of every aspect of natural human culture by consumable simulacra. When the process involves linking the increasing variety of...
