Paris – Brexit is a disaster for the United Kingdom. Given the risk that it will now lose Scotland and Northern Ireland to secession, the country seems to have accepted the idea of Great Britain turning back into “Little England.” Britain is that rare lion that chooses to become as small as a mouse.

The coronavirus crisis represents the single biggest challenge for Chinese President Xi Jinping since he became general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2012. Individuals and families across China are living in fear.

The outcome of the US Senate’s trial of Donald Trump, following his impeachment by the House of Representatives, was a foregone conclusion.

The world is at a turning point, with power shifting and dispersing in ways that signal the emergence of a new multipolar era.

This year marked the 50th anniversary of the World Economic Forum’s flagship meeting of the world’s business and political elites in Davos, Switzerland. Much has changed since my first Davos in 1995.

The panic generated by the new coronavirus, 2019-nCov, which originated in Wuhan, one of China’s largest cities and a major domestic transport hub, reminds many of the fear and uncertainty at the peak of the 2003 SARS crisis.

Science has revolutionised medicine and agriculture over the last 100 years, particularly for the poorest of the poor. Achievements ranging from the treatment of hookworm to the green revolution attest to its power.

As the world’s business elites trek to Davos for their annual gathering, people should be asking a simple question: have they overcome their infatuation with US President Donald Trump?

Foreign critics of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan deride him as a quasi-dictatorial megalomaniac. But Erdogan—who was Turkey’s prime minister for 11 years before being elected president in 2014—is now a reckless gambler, too.

Last month, on December 5, the world marked World Soil Day. The theme of the day—“Stop Soil Erosion, Save our Future”

It is commonly believed that the future of humanity will one day be threatened by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), perhaps embodied in malevolent robots.

It is increasingly clear that the European Union was not built to be a global actor.

"Not every-thing that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Rapid technological transformation will be a key feature of the economy well into the future. At the national, regional, and global level, frontier technologies are offering promising new opportunities, but are also introducing new policy challenges.

The world turned a corner in 2019. The problem is that the world order didn’t turn with it. This disconnect could have disastrous consequences. The biggest global change has been the start of the “Asian century”.

Every society rests on a web of norms, institutions, policies, laws, and commitments to those in need of support.

One of the most worrying news stories of 2019 did not receive the coverage one might expect from media outlets in the United States or Europe. But the economic slowdown in China, and the potentially steep deceleration in growth in India, will most likely receive considerably more attention in 2020.

The end of the year is a time for closure and new beginnings. As 2019 winds down, that is certainly the case with Brexit. Following the victory of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Tories in the general election this month, it is now clear that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union on January 31, 2020.

Judging by his appointment of a first-rate economist to his cabinet as Minister of Economy, Argentina’s new president, Alberto Fernández, is off to a good start in confronting his country’s economic problems.

December 11, 2019, was the 18th anniversary of China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation. It also marks the start of an era in which the WTO no longer has a functioning appellate body to adjudicate trade disputes among member countries. Why is the WTO imploding, and can it be resuscitated before it’s too late?