Trump budget's cuts to international aid put global health security at risk
May 27, 2017 04:20 am UTC| Insights & Views
US President Donald Trumps first budget request for fiscal year 2018 includes drastic cuts for diplomacy and overseas aid (-32%), and slashes US$4.6 billion from humanitarian assistance and global health spending. In...

Is China the potential driver of a new wave of globalisation?
May 27, 2017 04:19 am UTC| Insights & Views Economy
Since the 2008 global financial crisis and with a particular impetus after Xi Jinping became president in 2012 Chinas foreign policy has been characterised by a departure from a keeping a low profile approach to one of...
Three ideas on how the new WHO DG can build health systems from the bottom up
May 27, 2017 04:14 am UTC| Insights & Views Health
Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus Adhanom is the first African to become the director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO). He is also the first non-physician to head up the United Nations body. He has big challenges...

The problem of treating play like work – how esports can harm well-being
May 27, 2017 04:13 am UTC| Insights & Views Sports
We are mid-way through the annual esports calendar and South Korean team SK Telecom 1 recently scored a resounding victory at the Mid-Seasonal Invitational. The MSI, as its known, is a tournament where teams compete to win...
Google’s latest Go victory shows machines are no longer just learning, they're teaching
May 27, 2017 04:10 am UTC| Insights & Views Technology
Just over 20 years ago was the first time a computer beat a human world champion in a chess match, when IBMs Deep Blue supercomputer beat Gary Kasparov in a narrow victory of 3½ games to 2½. Just under a...
Fighting for your knife: law, religion and parmesan in multicultural Italy
May 27, 2017 04:08 am UTC| Insights & Views Life
On May 15 2017, the Italian Court of Cassation, the highest court of appeal, issued a verdict ruling that Sikh men in Italy cannot carry the kirpan, the sacred dagger that represents one of the five holy customs Sikhs must...
Are we really seeing the rise of a 'new jihad'? It's just not that simple
May 27, 2017 04:04 am UTC| Insights & Views
In a BBC interview just after the recent Manchester suicide bombing, French scholar Gilles Kepel offered a three-stage chronology of the development jihadi activism. The first stage he identified emerged in 1979, around...