This interactive map gauges the economic and political risks of doing business in various countries around the world. www.marsh.com/content/marsh/political-risk-map-d3/prm-2018.html
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Providing aid in conflict zones is beset by difficulties, from security for your people to the political permissions to operate there at all. This article looks at the International Committee of the Red Cross's work in Syria, most recently in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta.
"[ICRC head Peter] Maurer is confronted daily with how fraught the task of providing humanitarian can be. His latest struggle is to get medical aid into Eastern Ghouta: The Syrian government periodically allows flour bags and food parcels but blocks trauma kits and basic medicine, such as insulin, from entering the area. At the same time, he must contend with hostility from critics in the Syrian opposition, who contend that aid organizations have abandoned their principles in dealing with the Syrian government and serve to strengthen Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power. ... The ICRC’s fundamental principles dictate that aid should be delivered without discrimination based on political belief and that the organization should remain neutral in conflicts — but the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. resolutions creating the humanitarian system all begin by acknowledging the primacy of states. 'So it’s no surprise that our first address is always governments and to try to seek to negotiate with them on what we are able to do,' he says. Maurer acknowledges that this has 'led to a certain imbalance' when it comes to aid delivery. However, he is quick to point out the lengths that the ICRC goes to push the Syrian government to expand the scope of aid delivery. ... Doing good, in Maurer’s world, means working with those who are complicit in the problems he’s trying to solve. It’s not only in Syria, after all, where he has to weigh his words carefully." https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/27/syria-is-threatening-to-break-the-aid-world/ Antarctica is our most challenging continent to study, but what's going on there (or isn't) is pivotal to accurate estimates of sea level rise, which in turn are pivotal to the tens of millions of people living within a few meters of sea level. This TED Talk discusses how researchers are using radar and radio to peer through 3 km of ice to better understand how Antarctica may be changing.
www.ted.com/talks/dustin_schroeder_how_we_look_kilometers_below_the_antarctic_ice_sheet Despite the current uptick in tensions, distrust of Russia is nothing new. This map from 1957 shows areas (in pink) and specific sites (in red) that were off limits to anyone with a Soviet passport. news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/russia-cold-war-travel-ban-maps-red-scare
Not an April Fools' joke: if you've decided you might actually be interested in the "brain in the vat" experience to extend your natural life, here's a new company that might interest you:
"Nectome is a preserve-your-brain-and-upload-it company. Its chemical solution can keep a body intact for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, as a statue of frozen glass. The idea is that someday in the future scientists will scan your bricked brain and turn it into a computer simulation. That way, someone a lot like you, though not exactly you, will smell the flowers again in a data server somewhere. This story has a grisly twist, though. For Nectome’s procedure to work, it’s essential that the brain be fresh. The company says its plan is to connect people with terminal illnesses to a heart-lung machine in order to pump its mix of scientific embalming chemicals into the big carotid arteries in their necks while they are still alive (though under general anesthesia)." www.technologyreview.com/s/610456/a-startup-is-pitching-a-mind-uploading-service-that-is-100-percent-fatal/ |
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