Junio de 2022 (Continuación)

Can Africa grow without fossil fuels?

In Hell’s Gate, a two-hour drive north of Nairobi, steam gushes out of the earth’s crust, generating a renewable form of energy that supplies almost half of Kenya’s current electricity needs. The steam is captured in miles of green pipes, which coil across the hillsides like giant pythons towards power stations that convert the volcanic energy into electricity.

What started as a quirky experiment 40 years ago is now a serious industry. Kenya has sufficient geothermal reserves to multiply its current installed capacity by at least eight times, according to the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority, the country’s energy regulator. In theory that would give it the opportunity to massively ramp up renewable-powered industries from green manufacturing to green hydrogen.…  Seguir leyendo »

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss (left) and members of Bosnia and Herzegovina's tripartite Presidency Sefik Dzaferovic (center) and Milorad Dodik (right) pose before a meeting in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on May 26. Elvis Barukcic/AFP via Getty Images

The visit of U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss to Sarajevo last week was a landmark event in the politics of the contemporary Western Balkans. Truss’s appearance in the Bosnian capital was the culmination of a quiet campaign by the United Kingdom for the last year to buttress London’s posture in the region. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.K. now believes that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina are the linchpin to the region’s stability, an opinion in sharp contrast with Washington’s and Brussels’s long-term policy of accommodating the Kremlin-aligned regime in Serbia.

While discussion about the growing geopolitical salience of the Western Balkans had become familiar following the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, U.K.…  Seguir leyendo »

Afghan news presenter Lima Spesaly, her face covered by a veil after a Taliban edict, takes a break during a live broadcast at the TV channel station in Kabul on May 28. Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images

Since seizing power in Afghanistan in the wake of the disastrous U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, the Taliban have repeatedly reneged on promises to restore education for Afghan girls over sixth grade, reinstated requirements that women have a male escort when they leave their homes for any reason, segregated women from public accommodations, placed restrictions on women’s workforce participation, and severely censored media representation of women.

Most recently, the Taliban have reinstated wearing the burqa, using collective punishment to enforce this mandate. At the same time, they have accelerated reprisal killings, refused to allow Afghans to leave the country, and deepened the ongoing humanitarian disaster through their incompetent and regressive rule.…  Seguir leyendo »

Roads are empty during a citywide lockdown to halt the spread of COVID-19 in Shanghai, China on March 31. Xiang Xinrong/VCG via Getty Images

It is becoming increasingly clear that China’s economy is facing significant headwinds. Most of this is Beijing’s own doing. A draconian zero-COVID-19 policy has locked down swaths of the economy, severely hit consumer spending, and curtailed factory output. Aggressive regulation of the technology sector, driven by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s retreat from private enterprise and embrace of Maoist socialism, has paralyzed a once-dynamic industry. A debt bubble in the country’s overinflated real estate sector has led to spectacular crashes, including the default of Evergrande, a gigantic property developer. Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is pushing up global prices of food, energy, and other commodities imported by China.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ukrainian fighters of the Odin Unit, including some foreign fighters, survey a destroyed Russian tank in Irpin, Ukraine, in March. Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

In the Paris daily Le Figaro this month, Henri Guaino, a top adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy when he was president of France, warned that Europe’s countries, under the shortsighted leadership of the United States, were “sleepwalking” into war with Russia. Mr. Guaino was borrowing a metaphor that the historian Christopher Clark used to describe the origins of World War I.

Naturally, Mr. Guaino understands that Russia is most directly to blame for the present conflict in Ukraine. It was Russia that massed its troops on the frontier last fall and winter and — having demanded from NATO a number of Ukraine-related security guarantees that NATO rejected — began the shelling and killing on Feb.…  Seguir leyendo »

¿Cómo combatir la viruela del mono? Aprendamos de la covid

Cuando los casos de COVID-19 se disparaban por todo Estados Unidos a principios de 2020, las autoridades sanitarias se mantuvieron en las sombras, en gran medida porque cometieron errores importantes en el desarrollo de una prueba para detectar la enfermedad.

Los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC, por su sigla en inglés) fabricaban la única prueba de COVID-19 disponible en ese momento en el país y, por desgracia, se descubrieron errores considerables en el diseño y la fabricación de las pruebas distribuidas por esta agencia en febrero de 2020. Este descalabro, sumado a la reticencia inicial de la Administración de Alimentos y Medicamentos de Estados Unidos (FDA, por su sigla en inglés) a permitir que algunos laboratorios autorizados desarrollaran o utilizaran sus propias pruebas de COVID-19, provocó que fuera prácticamente imposible tener acceso a pruebas en Estados Unidos en las primeras semanas de la pandemia.…  Seguir leyendo »