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Denmark and the UK both have strong drinking cultures, with historically high teenage and binge drinking rates, though these have declined over time. Younger generations in both countries now drink less than their parents, contributing to a decrease in alcohol-related liver disease cases, which peaked around 2009 in Denmark due to heavy drinking by the baby boomer generation. This decline reflects shifting social norms rather than strict policy measures. Alcohol sales and consumption have decreased overall, and demand for non-alcoholic alternatives is rising. However, slight recent increases in drinking among younger adults may reflect post-pandemic normalization. The future trend hinges on whether younger generations continue to reduce alcohol use or revert to higher consumption.
How do Denmark and the UK compare when it comes to alcohol and drinking habits?
Fiscal decentralization aims to improve public services by giving local governments more responsibility for spending and, sometimes, revenue collection, allowing better alignment with local needs and increased accountability. Successful decentralization links clear responsibilities with fair financing, effective coordination among government levels, and strong local institutional capacity. Poorly designed fiscal transfers can undermine local authority and incentives for responsible spending. Effective models, such as Australia's tailored transfers and France's joint planning contracts, foster collaboration and shared goals. Capacity building is critical, as increased funding alone does not guarantee better services, especially where administrative skills or governance are weak. Gradual transfer of authority aligned with local capabilities optimizes decentralization benefits.
Financial services
Asian Development Blog: Why Local Governments Need More Than New Responsibilities to Improve Public Services
Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions fundamentally involves economic considerations centered on the cost of avoiding one ton of CO₂ equivalent (tCO₂e), known as the abatement cost. Costs vary widely across mitigation measures and country-specific contexts. Low- and negative-cost options (from -$100 to $20/tCO₂e) include industrial energy efficiency improvements, methane leak reduction, and efficient appliances, which often save money over time. Moderate-cost options ($20 to $100/tCO₂e) include utility-scale renewables, avoided deforestation, and energy-efficiency retrofits. Higher-cost solutions, such as green hydrogen, carbon capture, and direct air capture, can exceed $100 to $300/tCO₂e, with some carbon removal technologies exceeding $1,000/tCO₂e. Effective allocation of resources requires comparing these costs against plausible baseline emissions scenarios.
Health
Development Asia: The Economics of Avoided Emissions: The Cost of Keeping 1 Ton of CO₂ Out of the Atmosphere
Countries in Asia and the Pacific can develop inclusive and resilient social protection systems that reduce poverty and vulnerability, promote social inclusion, and strengthen resilience to shocks and long-term stresses. Drawing on global and regional evidence, a practical framework presents nine guiding principles for policymakers and development partners. These principles address policy, program design, and implementation, offering actionable recommendations to strengthen social protection systems across the region.
Africa | Health
Guiding Principles for Developing Inclusive and Resilient Social Protection Systems in Asia and the Pacific
Cyber incidents involving state and state-controlled actors are increasing globally, notably within the OSCE region. The OSCE and other regional bodies have implemented confidence-building measures (CBMs) to foster multilateral cooperation in cybersecurity. However, these measures may not fully address evolving threats, and cyber diplomacy faces structural challenges amid differing regional threat perceptions. A key issue remains the balance between state cooperation on cyber incidents and the prioritization of national sovereignty.
Africa | Financial services
Multilateral Cooperation and Confidence-Building in Cyberspace
Large Language Model (LLM)-based data science agents, or "data agents," are transforming traditional data analysis by simplifying complex tasks and enabling users without specialized expertise to engage in data-centric problems. These agents incorporate features such as planning, reasoning, reflection, multi-agent collaboration, user interfaces, knowledge integration, and system design, allowing for minimal human intervention. Case studies demonstrate their practical applications across various real-world scenarios. Key challenges remain, and future research aims to evolve these agents into intelligent statistical analysis tools.
A Survey on Large Language Model-based Agents for Statistics and Data Science
Open Science, traditionally grounded in transparency, accessibility, and collaboration, faces new challenges in the era of generative AI, as researchers confront issues of unwanted large-scale data extraction and decontextualization. Researchers navigate ethical and political tensions when their open data is repurposed for proprietary AI, leading to a re-negotiation of openness norms. Through qualitative interviews, this study reveals that openness is a relational practice shaped by institutional and community contexts, prompting researchers to recalibrate openness via selective sharing, alternative infrastructures, and advocacy for commons-based governance to balance care, accountability, and collaboration.
Education
AI, open science, and the extraction imperative: A situated approach to the normativities of open research data
Data sovereignty has emerged as a key governance issue in the digital era, with diverse definitions from governments, individuals, indigenous groups, tech companies, and regional blocs. True sovereignty involves aligning legal authority with technical control over data storage, computation, models, and identity, rather than relying solely on data localization. Achieving credible data sovereignty requires balancing legitimate control with the need for trusted, equitable cross-border collaboration among multiple stakeholders.
Africa | ICT, Health
Data Sovereignty in Practice
Artificial intelligence is recognized as a transformative general-purpose technology comparable to electricity or the steam engine, poised to reshape the global economy significantly. Cornell finance professor Maryam Farboodi and Penn economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde discuss AI's broad impact on financial markets and the economy, exploring whether current market enthusiasm reflects rational expectations or speculative bubbles. Farboodi’s research analyzing government bond market data reveals that investors already believe in AI's potential for transformative economic growth and acknowledge associated extreme risks, indicating strong market recognition of AI's long-term influence.
Education
AI, Financial Markets, and the Economy
Social media bans targeting under-16s focus on risks but overlook young people's resilience and capacity to flourish online. Research from 90 studies across 26 countries reveals that digital environments support adolescents' autonomy, competence, and relatedness—key psychological needs for thriving—by fostering self-expression, skill development, and meaningful connections. Online spaces are especially vital for marginalized youth, providing identity exploration, community, and support not found offline. Effective digital policies should balance safety with creating inclusive, empowering spaces, leveraging young people’s existing digital knowledge to help them make positive, value-aligned choices.
Health, ICT, Education
Social media bans are an attempt to manage harm – but young people can flourish online
Authoritarian regimes often conceal information about escalating climate and natural disasters, risking harm to their own citizens and neighboring countries. Recent examples include China's censorship of Nepal-Tibet flood reporting and Russia's concealment of Siberian flood damage. Historical cases, like Ethiopia’s 1984 famine and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster cover-up, illustrate deadly consequences of secrecy. Such regimes also restrict international aid and block disaster data to protect their image, worsening humanitarian crises and regional stability. Suppressing information about climate-driven events and shared resources undermines collective safety, increasing vulnerability amid rising climate threats.
Africa | Health
Climate disasters are getting worse – risks escalate when authoritarian regimes keep neighbours in the dark
AI companies face safety challenges reminiscent of early nuclear weapons development, where risks to humanity prompted urgent calls for control and cooperation. Recent incidents, like an OpenAI model hacking Australia’s Medicare portal, highlight AI’s growing hazards, leading industry leaders to advocate slowing development and greater regulation. Parallels with the nuclear era show that despite early efforts—such as Oppenheimer’s push for international oversight and the Baruch Plan—control was difficult and delayed, and accidents still occurred, exemplified by fatal experiments like the “Slotin incident” with the radioactive “demon core.” This history underscores that regulation and cooperation, while crucial, may not fully mitigate AI risks without robust safety measures.
AI companies could learn safety lessons from the history of nuclear weapons
Andy Burnham advocates devolving real political and economic power from London to the UK’s regions to drive broader economic growth. Current centralization concentrates decision-making and funding in Whitehall, often neglecting local needs and weakening regional development. Genuine devolution involves setting national goals while allowing local governments freedom to prioritize and implement policies based on their unique challenges. Crucially, fiscal devolution must provide meaningful control over resources without deepening inequalities. Strengthening local government capacity is vital to effectively use devolved powers. Success requires patience, local empowerment, and less Whitehall interference to foster tailored regional prosperity within a national framework.
Africa
Devolving real power could lead to regional growth - but Andy Burnham will need to be brave
Organisational digital twins use AI to create digital models of individuals’ expertise, reasoning, and communication styles based on their digital traces like emails and documents. This allows firms to experiment with strategic and organisational decisions before implementation, even when the actual person is absent. Experiments have shown AI can convincingly mimic executives, though employees may trust AI-generated responses less. Unlike traditional AI, these "codified selves" preserve unique, idiosyncratic expertise rather than averaging traits. This challenges assumptions about human capital ownership and raises new questions about value, learning, and management in organisations.
Education
Organisational digital twins are coming
European independence is evolving to mean not self-sufficiency but the ability to shape the terms of interdependence. The EU’s offer of associate membership to Canada illustrates this shift toward strategic agency rather than mere resilience. Europe seeks to manage vulnerabilities by diversifying partnerships, strengthening domestic capacities, and deepening cooperation beyond trade—especially in security, critical materials, and technology. This approach challenges traditional integration categories as geopolitical pressures create complex relationships, blending membership and association to enhance collective capacity and autonomy.
Africa
The EU, Canada and European independence
Manufacturers gain the most from AI and digital transformation by replicating successful pilots across all factories, not just initiating isolated projects. The 'floor-and-frontier' model promotes establishing common foundations—such as consistent metrics, digital skills, governance, and secure data access—across all plants (the floor), while allowing certain sites to advance cutting-edge applications (the frontier). Effective scaling requires designing projects for reuse, ensuring clear ownership, and adapting solutions to different plant contexts. Examples like ACG Packaging's use of AI on older equipment demonstrate that improvements are achievable without starting fresh. Success depends on modular, standardized interfaces, robust governance, and collaborative networks to transfer knowledge and capabilities, enabling broader operational excellence and competitive manufacturing advantage.
How manufacturers can scale AI and digital transformation across every factory
Europe's chemical industry faces crisis, with significant production closures and dependence on imported hydrocarbons. Circularity, enabled by AI-driven enzyme-based recycling and polymerization, offers a sustainable solution by reclaiming raw materials from complex, blended products like nylon 6,6, which traditional recycling cannot handle efficiently. Advances in AI accelerate enzyme discovery to break strong chemical bonds under mild conditions, making recycling competitive. Repurposing existing chemical plants, such as Epoch's acquisition of a nylon 6,6 facility, allows rapid scaling without new construction, integrating recycled materials back into supply chains. This approach supports a resilient, circular European chemical sector crucial for diverse industries.
Designed for circularity: How AI and biorecycling can revitalize European manufacturing
The economy shows strong GDP and wage growth, yet inflation and rising energy prices, including oil and diesel, may prompt the Federal Reserve to maintain vigilance with further rate hikes. Bond market signals reflect ongoing monetary policy adjustments. U.S.-China trade talks and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz could influence markets, while sustained investment in AI is likely to impact corporate earnings and overall market performance.
Financial services
What Strong Growth Means for the Fed and Markets
AI is reshaping the workforce by creating new jobs focused on monitoring and correcting AI outputs, known as AI remediation. While AI can automate tasks like coding, report writing, and data analysis, it often produces imperfect results requiring human oversight to catch errors and hallucinations. This leads to increased workloads and new roles in quality control, sometimes outsourced to low-wage countries under poor conditions. Public sector adoption faces risks without robust human supervision, as evidenced by previous automated system failures. Though AI offers efficiency gains, hidden human labor is essential, raising concerns about job quality, pay, and the long-term economic impact of subsidized AI platforms.
Education
AI is creating jobs as well as erasing them – but how rewarding are they?
The graphics processing unit (GPU) industry, key to the AI revolution, is undergoing a financial transformation as exchanges introduce GPU compute futures contracts, enabling trading and hedging independent of hardware or workloads. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Intercontinental Exchange have launched futures based on GPU rental prices, likening compute to a new commodity akin to oil. This shift reflects the move from simple procurement to complex financial instruments, including GPU-collateralized loans and asset-backed securities financing massive AI infrastructure. Consequently, GPU compute is becoming an institutional asset class with futures priced using traditional commodity frameworks, raising both new investment opportunities and risks reminiscent of the mortgage credit financialization before the 2008 crisis.
Financial services, ICT
The financialisation of compute may reshape how the AI industry itself operates

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