“During the 1980s, most 18-year-old girls went from school to two-year “junior colleges” (with a heavy emphasis on home economics), rather than to the four-year university courses favoured by their male contemporaries. So among the generation now at the sort of age—typically 50-55—from which companies and other organisations pick their leaders, there are few women to choose from.”
…
“this changed during the 1990s, as families and the girls themselves decided that they too deserved a full four-year university education. Moreover, fewer professional women now decide, or are forced, to leave their jobs when they get married or have children (and the marriage rate itself has declined), so the drop-out rate has fallen. The pipeline of potential female leaders is increasing every year.
Will they be chosen? Certainly, too few companies, especially the big and famous ones, have altered their promotion and staff-deployment practices sufficiently to become family-friendly. The gender gap in admission to the best public universities, including Tokyo and Kyoto, from which top organisations recruit, remains wide. Nevertheless, many organisations have changed their ways, out of sheer necessity: with Japan’s population ageing and declining every year, there are not enough trained and experienced men to hog all the managerial jobs any longer.
“Diversity” has become a buzzword. Spending on child-care facilities, to make it easier to retain mid-career female staff, has climbed. Soon a critical mass of female managers will be in place, sufficient to change corporate procedures and cultures for their successors, as has happened in Europe and America.”
“For weeks, Syrian troops, backed by Russian air force, have been advancing in rebel territory as the cease-fire deal reached in 2018 unraveled. The offensive has displaced over half a million people, many of them arriving in open air and temporary shelters, often near the borders with Turkey. Idlib and nearby rural Aleppo are the last rebel-held areas in Syria and are home to more than 3 million people, most of them already displaced by previous rounds of violence.”
https://worldin.economist.com/edition/2020/article/17365/africas-economies-draw-closer-slowly
“the IMF recently reported that national governments spent a staggering $5.2trn in 2017 subsidising the fossil-fuel industry.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/macron-wins-battle-faces-long-war-over-reforms/
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/28/trump-israel-palestinian-middle-east-peace-plan-108078
“we don’t need a new agency that will disrupt and distract a system that has many of the pieces it needs to succeed already in place. What we do need is better coordination, accountability and leadership to make sure that the federal government’s existing cyber expertise, assets and partners are engaged at maximum capacity to address the many varied and variable threats that will continue to emerge from cyber space.”
“Following a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday in which she announced she’ll vote to acquit, Collins told Norah O’Donnell of CBS that she believes Trump “has learned from this case” and “will be much more cautious in the future.”
Getting impeached “is a pretty big lesson,” Collins said — the implication being that Trump will be chastened going forward from trying to pervert diplomacy into an opposition research opportunity, as he did with the Ukrainian government.”
…
“Trump has spent five months insisting that a phone call he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that’s at the heart of his impeachment — one in which Trump implicitly linked military aid to Ukraine with the country helping him with investigations of his political rivals — is “perfect.””
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“look at the circumstances surrounding the Zelensky call. It happened on July 25 — one day after special counsel Robert Mueller wound down his investigation of Trump by testifying to Congress and saying Trump could be indicted after his term for obstructing justice because of his interference with the Russia investigation.
But instead of responding to the end of the Russia investigation by cooling his jets, Trump was on the phone with the Ukrainian president the very next day trying to solicit political favors — the very same conduct that fueled suspicions about his Russia dealings in the first place.”
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“Trump told reporters during an off-the-record lunch on Tuesday that, indeed, he doesn’t feel he has any lessons to learn from getting impeached.”
“The two scientists from the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development had developed the vaccine against another coronavirus, SARS — but that epidemic ended before their vaccine was ready. And once the crisis was over, most of their funding dried up.”
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“That was a big missed opportunity. They and other scientists say SARS should have been seen as a coronavirus warning shot, not an isolated outbreak, and it should have triggered federal investments like the billions sunk into flu vaccines a decade or so earlier. They want the federal government to act rapidly now to declare a public health emergency, get a vaccine developed, have it approved by the FDA and ready to slow the Wuhan virus’ march across China and globe.
Based on past experience, though, the chances of all that falling into place fast enough to turn the tide aren’t great, many scientists say.”