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Год выпуска: October 2024
Автор: The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group
Жанр: Экономика/Политика
Издательство: «The Economist Newspaper Ltd»
Формат: PDF (журнал на английском языке)
Качество: OCR
Количество страниц: 80
THE EVERYTHING DRUGS
Not just for obesity—but addiction, Alzheimer’s and ageing too?
- Ozempic and its cousins will change the world: leader, page 7.
- Diabetes, obesity, heart disease, liver and kidney problems—maybe even drug addiction and Alzheimers. Is there anything GLP-1 drugs cannot treat? Briefing, page 14.
- Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly face heavy competition, page 54.
- Weight-loss drugs will transform what it means to be thin, page 62.
Our US election model: Trump ahead
- Initial turnout in early voting has been high, but Republicans have made gains, page 17.
- Kamala Harris's vision for America is nostalgic in its own way. Do enough Americans still believe in it? Lexington, page 22.
Inside Hizbullah’s finances
- Its sprawling empire looks newly vulnerable, page 65.
Putin’s plan to dethrone the dollar
- He hopes this week’s BRICS summit will spark a sanctions-busting big bang, page 49.
- The blistering rally in gold augurs ill for the power of the dollar: leader, page 8.
- What the surging price of gold says about a dangerous world, page 60.
Why Oriental hornets can’t get drunk
- They have a remarkable tolerance for alcohol, page 68.
The world this week Politics
- Hopes of a ceasefire in Gaza after the death of Yahya Sinwar,the leader of Hamas, seemed to fade. MrSinwarwas the mastermind of the attacks on October 7th 2023 which unleashed the war. He was killed in a firefight with an Israeli patrol in the south of Gaza. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister,said that the conflict was not over.
- Antony Blinken made his 11th visit to the Middle East in just over a year. America’s secretary of state told Mr Netanyahu that Israel needed to allow more humanitarian aid into northern Gaza. Earlier this month America warned Israel that it risked restrictions on military assistance if it did not increase food supplies and other aid to the strip.
- Israel escalated its offensive on its second front, in Lebanon, targeting institutions, including banks, linked with Hizbullah, the Iran-backed militia. It called for a broad evacuation before launching air strikes in Tyre, a historic port city where many displaced people had fled, and hit the suburbs of Beirut. America asked Israel to scale down its strikes on the capital to avoid more civilian deaths. Both sides confirmed that Hashem Safieddine was killed three weeks ago. He was the presumed successorto Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s former leader, who is also now dead.
- Saudi Arabia began building the Mukaab, a cube-shaped skyscraper in Riyadh, that would be the world's largest building. The giga-project is meant to be finished by 2030.
- Two prominent opposition figures, Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe, were murdered in Mozambique. Mr Dias had been preparing a legal challenge to the results of the country’s general election. Frelimo, in power since 1975, is likely to win; international observers said the vote had been plagued by irregularities.
- Egypt became the most populous African country (and the world’s fifth) to be declared malaria free by the World Health Organisation. Mummies show the illness, which jumped from great apes to people in the African rainforest and then migrated up the Nile valley, arrived there more than 5,000 years ago.
- Paul Biya reappeared. Cameroon’s 91-year-old president landed in Yaounde, the capital, returning from Switzerland. He had not been seen in public for over six weeks, prompting speculation that he had died.
A little help from my friends
- Donald Trump filed a legal complaint accusing Britain’s ruling Labour Party of sending staff to campaign for his opponent, Kamala Harris, in swing states. Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said the volunteers were travelling on their own time, and that the dispute would not tarnish his “good relationship” with the Republican candidate.
- Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of X, was criticised for launching a lottery that awards $im to a registered American voter every day in an apparent effort to rally Republicans in swing states.
- Maia Sandu secured a first-round victory in Moldova’s presidential election, which was marred by allegations of Russian meddling. The pro-Western president is expected to prevail in a run-off against Alexandr Stoianoglo, a Russophile. In a parallel referendum, Moldovans voted to enshrine ambitions to join the European Union in their constitution by a razor-thin majority of 50.46%. Ms Sandu called it an “unfair fight”, blaming Russian dirty tricks.
- At least five people were killed and many wounded in a suspected terrorist attack at a defence facility near Ankara, Turkey’s capital. No group claimed responsibility. Turkey’s interior ministry blamed the PKK. It conducted retaliatory airstrikes on targets linked with the Kurdish militia group in Syria and Iraq.
- Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, fought to save her scheme to divert asylum-seekers to Albania. After the first group of 12 migrants from Bangladesh and Egypt arrived at a processing centre last week, an Italian court ordered them to be transported to Italy. To overcome the legal hurdle Ms Meloni’s cabinet passed a decree that designated 19 countries as “safe” to return to.
- Austria’s president, Alexander Van der Bellen, asked the chancellor, Karl Nehammer, whose centre-right party came a close second in the parliamentary election in September, to form a government, after the other main parties said they would not join a coalition with the hard-right Freedom Party, which came top.
- President Volodymyr Zelensky presented his “Victory Plan” for Ukraine to European leaders in Brussels, making the case for his country to be invited into NATO. The five-point strategy argued for sustained funding and an expanded arsenal. It also laid out what Ukraine could offer the West if it were to win the war with Russia.
- America and NATO confirmed that North Korea is sending troops to help Russia fight in Ukraine. America’s secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, said the escalation would be a “very, very serious issue” with possible repercussions in the Indo-Pacific region. Ukraine estimated that Russia’s ally had committed 11,000 troops to the conflict. South Korea said that it might supply Ukraine with weapons in response.
- China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, held their first bilateral meeting in five years on the sidelines of the annual BRICS summit, in Russia. Mr Xi urged co-operation between the two powers to promote “the multipolarisation of the world and the democratisation of international relations”.
- Days earlier the two countries reached a truce around patrolling their disputed Himalayan border—an issue that has overshadowed their relations since 2020.
Clean government
- The first stage of the trial of Singapore’s opposition leader, Pritam Singh, for charges of lying under oath in parliament, wrapped up. Mr Singh, who heads the Workers’ Party, has pleaded not guilty.
- Alejandro Toledo, Peru’s former president, was convicted of corruption in connection with the Lava Jato scandal that erupted in Brazil a decade ago. A court found him guilty of taking at least $35m in bribes in a highway-construction deal. He was sentenced to 20 years and six months in prison.
- Power was restored to much of Cuba after several days of countrywide blackouts. The island gets its electricity from unreliable Soviet-era power plants and generators on ships rented from Turkey. The government has admitted that it can no longer afford the oil.
The world this week Business
- Even as many countries’ stockmarkets hover near all-time highs, investors are feeling jittery. The gold price broke a new record this week, hitting nearly $2,750 per troy ounce. Meanwhile, government borrowing costs have been rising sharply on both sides of the Atlantic. Ten-year American Treasury bonds now yield 4.2%, up from 3.6% in midSeptember; ten-year British gilts also yield 4.2%. The same period saw a slide in the value of the Japanese yen. One dollar now fetches ¥152, up from ¥140.
- Investors in corporate bonds are feeling much more chipper. The spread between the yield on investment-grade debt and American Treasuries fell to 0.8 percentage points, its lowest in nearly 20 years.
- The Tokyo Stock Exchange hosted its biggest initial public offering since 2018. Tokyo Metro, which runs the Japanese capital’s underground railways, raised $2.3bn and saw its share price soar by 45% on the first day of trading.
- The stockmarket debut of Hyundai Motor India, the world’s second-largest in the year to date, went less well. Retail traders spurned the offering and the share price fell a little on its opening day.
Open, sesame
- America’s consumer-finance regulator finalised a set of open-banking rules. Open banking forces lenders to share financial data, fostering competition and the development of new fintech apps. It is already in place in Britain and the European Union. The Bank Policy Institute and the Kentucky Bankers Association, two lobbyists, responded by suing the regulator.
- Deutsche Bank announced its highest-ever profit for the third quarter of a year. It made €2.3bn ($2.1bn) before taxes, though the bank’s chief financial officer also warned that its provisions forbad loans would rise to €1.8bn, from €1.5bn in 2023. Deutsche Bank’s share price has had an unusually good run of late, rising by 30% since the start of the year. Lloyds Bank also reported strong earnings. It made a pre-tax profit of £1.8bn ($1.4bn) in the third quarter, beating the £1.6bn expected by the market.
- HSBC is restructuring its business, according to plans drawn up by Georges Elhedery, its new chief executive. The lender will soon have four distinct units: its British and Hong Kong outfits, plus international divisions for corporate banking and wealth management. Ping An, a Chinese insurer and one of HSBC’s biggest shareholders, has long been trying to force its management to break up the banking group entirely. It would prefertwo separate companies, one operating in Asia and the other in the rest of the world.
- Tesla reported an unexpectedly profitable quarter. Its net income was $2.5bn, up 8% from a year previously and well above the $2.1bn analysts had pencilled in. The carmaker’s share price rose by 12% in after-hours trading on the day of the announcement.
- The share price of McDonald’s fell sharply after America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention traced an outbreak of E.coli to the fast-food chain’s restaurants. The publichealth authorities found 49 people who had been infected, in ten different states, one of whom died. All reported having eaten at McDonald’s before becoming sick. The chain has stopped selling “quarter-pounder” burgers, thought to be behind the outbreak, in a fifth of its American outlets.
- James Gorman, the former boss of Morgan Stanley, has been appointed as the new chairman of Disney. Mr Gorman’s biggest task is to find a replacement for Bob Iger, the chief executive whom Disney has been trying to replace, on and off, for nearly a decade.
- Boeing’s woes continued. It reported a loss of $6bn for the three months to September, its biggest since the covid-19 pandemic, and will burn through more cash next year. The same day, a labour union representing 33,000 of the firm’s staff rejected a new pay deal, extending a strike that has been running for six weeks. Boeing’s boss called for a “fundamental culture change” at the company. It might need a bit more than that.
Made to order
- Walmart said it would expand its same-day delivery service for prescription drugs to 49 American states by January. Amazon is planning to offer a similar service to around half of its American customers by the end of 2025.
- The new boss of Starbucks surprised investors by publishing preliminary results for its most recent fiscal year a week early. Store sales during the three months to September were 7% lower than a year previously, but the firm still raised its quarterly dividend, from 57 to 61 cents per share.
скачать журнал: The Economist - 26 October 2024
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