Where is Afghanistan?

Where is Afghanistan?

Google searches for Afghanistan exploded by ten times in August as foreign affairs made a rare foray into mainstream news across the globe.  The Taliban stunned the world with its…
Read More Here
A break from tourism

A break from tourism

by Jesmond Saliba In just one year, global tourism dropped by 70 per cent, sending figures back to what they were 30 years ago.  One of the first actions by…
Read More Here
A place for the community

A place for the community

by Dr. Julian Zarb A fifth of the world’s population travelled for tourism purposes in 2019. That year, the United Nations World Trade Organisation estimated a record total international expenditure…
Read More Here
Travelling with Covid-19

Travelling with Covid-19

The International Air Transport Association declared 2020 as the worst-ever year for aviation globally. Operators are estimated to have lost $85 billion collectively, registering an unprecedented net profit margin of…
Read More Here
Going for universal gold

Going for universal gold

by Jesmond Saliba The world looked a different place when sports events were suddenly banned at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ironically, though, the fight against the virus became…
Read More Here
New tracks for sport

New tracks for sport

by Kevin Azzopardi KEVIN AZZOPARDI  Half a century ago, sport was generally considered a leisure activity pursued mainly for socialisation and recreation. Things have changed drastically since then, and virtually…
Read More Here
The state of play

The state of play

Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau actively promoted ice hockey as the country’s national sport in the 1970s and 1980s. His emphasis was more than a simple acknowledgement of a popular…
Read More Here
Intel might spend $30 bln to slim down

Intel might spend $30 bln to slim down

by Robert Cyran via Reuters Breakingviews Intel may buy chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries for $30 billion, says a Wall Street Journal report. That seems logical in light of Intel’s production problems,…
Read More Here
A new pitch to the world

A new pitch to the world

The world convened in the diameter stretching from Cornwall to Brussels in June. Not the entire world; quite a small part of it, actually. But the back-to-back meetings of the…
Read More Here
Cultivating an economy of wellbeing

Cultivating an economy of wellbeing

In the past two decades, there were various attempts to create new metrics that determine tangible ways how to translate macro-economic wellbeing into an improved quality of life. While the…
Read More Here
Not so quiet on the eastern front

Not so quiet on the eastern front

Founded in response to unease with the USSR, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has gone through years of wilderness since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.…
Read More Here
Seven nations and China

Seven nations and China

The group of seven summit in June was refreshingly dull. Leaders were careful to project a sense of stability to the world while playing to their domestic audiences with a…
Read More Here
Eating for your genes

Eating for your genes

From low-fat to low-carb and from ketogenic to paleolithic, there was no shortage of experimental diets in recent decades. Nutrition experts leveraged food science and human biology to develop healthier…
Read More Here
Holding the field

Holding the field

Most of the world’s food comes from the ground. Whether raw or infinitely processed, agricultural products are, by far, the largest source of nutrition.  But as countries become richer and…
Read More Here
The sweet and sour of hunger action

The sweet and sour of hunger action

With World War II still raging, in 1943, governments from over 40 countries convened to fight another cross-border threat: hunger. Within two years, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was…
Read More Here
Inglorious food

Inglorious food

by Jesmond Saliba Since at least classical antiquity, civilizations have been longing for an abundance of food. The symbol of the cornucopia was handed down from Greek god to French…
Read More Here
Shooting the messenger

Shooting the messenger

One night in a turbulent week, news outlets reporting from Gaza City were tipped off about an imminent air assault. The target was their offices. The Al-Jalaa tower housed eight…
Read More Here
The first Biden season

The first Biden season

These days, far fewer headlines quote the American president than the world had gotten used to in the last four years. To no one’s surprise, Joe Biden has kept a…
Read More Here
Crossing the Brexit minefield

Crossing the Brexit minefield

As spray paint sprawls across public walls and store shutters in Belfast, pronouncing the death of the Good Friday Agreement, the worst fears of the Brexit pact are coming back…
Read More Here
Vaccination of the fittest

Vaccination of the fittest

By mid-April, countries around the world administered almost 900 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines. Just a year earlier, confirmed cases of the new disease had risen to one million globally.…
Read More Here
One hundred & counting

One hundred & counting

by Jesmond Saliba This year started on the doorstep of change. Historic developments towards the end of 2020 meant that events that had become part of our lives, whether for…
Read More Here