For the fourth time in three decades, a divided Italy has named a technocrat as its leader. Is Mario Draghi a model for nations shouldering huge debts? Street art depicting Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi dressed as a magician pulling a rabbit out of the hat,...
Emboldened by the COVID-19 pandemic, autocrats are strengthening their grip around the world as democracy steadily loses ground. Police arrest a pro-democracy protester in Hong Kong, China, 29 September 2019. (EPA-EFE/FAZRY ISMAIL) If you live in a country fully...
Around the world, microbes are outsmarting drugs. If antibiotics against disease don’t work, bacteria could end up killing more people than COVID-19. A girl suspected of suffering from drug-resistant typhoid receives medical treatment at a hospital in Hyderabad,...
COVID-19 has upended the lives of billions of people, and for many, the end is not yet in sight. But in her thoroughly researched article, News Decoder correspondent Sarah Edmonds looks beyond the pandemic at an insidious epidemic that could, over time, kill many more people than COVID-19 ever will. The topic has a complicated name — antimicrobial resistance (AMR) — but Edmonds explains it in simple terms and demonstrates why all of us need to be concerned about AMR. Edmonds’s article, which is supported by interviews with top scientists, is not all gloom and doom. It makes the case that COVID-19 may make governments more prone to act in time to arrest AMR. Edmonds’s article is essential reading for anyone new to the important topic of AMR. Assign it and ask your students to identify lessons that can be drawn from COVID-19 to help the world in the future.
COVID-19 is not the world’s first pandemic, but the rush to develop vaccines for the disease is unusual for its speed and the big money for Big Pharma. A syringe in front of the logos of pharmaceutical companies that have developed COVID-19 vaccines, 29 January...
As COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out around the world, there’s an unanswered question: Should it be an obligation for all of us to be vaccinated? A man receives a COVID-19 vaccination in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 7 February 2021. (EPA-EFE/ALI HAIDER)...