| | | | How the Syria Catastrophe Somehow Keeps Getting Worse | | War has its own logic. The devastating, ongoing siege taking place in Syria's eastern Ghouta is just the latest reminder that with the collapse of the Islamic State, the old rules have gone out of the window, The Guardian editorializes.
"The powerful are too invested to back out now, or pay heed to the Syrians destroyed by their ambitions. Eastern Ghouta, once the breadbasket of Damascus, is choked with dust and starving. The overlapping wars have stolen the lives of at least half a million Syrians and displaced half the population, forcing six million to flee abroad to a precarious life in which their suffering is met at best with an inadequate response and at worst with an utter lack of concern or hostility," The Guardian writes.
"Even as eastern Ghouta suffered, two more developments highlighted the multiplying strands of this catastrophe and the fact that there is no end in sight. On Tuesday Turkish forces fired on a convoy of pro-regime forces entering the north-western Afrin region to support Kurdish fighters fending off Ankara's offensive there. Meanwhile, Moscow has acknowledged that 'several dozen' of its nationals and citizens of other former Soviet states were killed by a US-led coalition strike in Deir ez-Zor, eastern Syria, two weeks ago, having previously dismissed reports of mercenaries' deaths as 'classic disinformation.' It is realizing – as the US did in Iraq – that crushing the opposition is not the same as winning, still less being able to effect an exit.
| | Think You Know How Americans Feel About Gun Control? | | Americans' views on gun control are shifting, with a record percentage saying they support stricter rules, according to a Quinnipiac University poll taken in the wake of last week's Florida school shooting.
"American voters support stricter gun laws 66 - 31 percent, the highest level of support ever measured by the independent Quinnipiac University National Poll…Support for universal background checks is itself almost universal, 97 to 2 percent, including 97 to 3 percent among gun owners," the poll finds.
"If you think Americans are largely unmoved by the mass shootings, you should think again. Support for stricter gun laws is up 19 points in little more than 2 years," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
"In the last two months, some of the biggest surges in support for tightening gun laws comes from demographic groups you may not expect, independent voters, men, and whites with no college degree." | | Emerging Confidence CONTENT BY  The U.S. and Germany are dropping in rank as innovation champions, according to a new GE study, while Japan and China are rising. See how countries stack up in the 2018 Global Innovation Barometer. | | | Why the Pence "Almost Meeting" Matters | | | North Korea abruptly cancelled a planned meeting earlier this month with Vice President Mike Pence that was to include Kim Jong Un's sister.
"President Donald Trump had signed off on the decision to meet, with the caveat that the United States wouldn't back off its stated demand that Pyongyang abandon its nuclear weapons," CNN reports. Jung H. Pak, a former CIA analyst and now the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies at the Brookings Institution, emails Global Briefing that while the "failure of the two sides to meet highlights the continuing US-North Korea stalemate, the initial willingness of Washington and Pyongyang to hold discreet talks is still a small, but significant development." Still, she adds: "If Pyongyang were to return to missile and nuclear tests after the Olympics, advocates of military options in the Trump administration are likely to use Pyongyang's decision to pull out of the Olympic meeting to show the futility of using dialogue to thwart North Korea's nuclear ambitions." | | Billy Graham, "America's the World's Pastor" | | Evangelist Billy Graham, who died aged 99 on Wednesday, was frequently dubbed "America's Pastor." But his legacy stretches far from America's shores, notes Rick Noack in the Washington Post.
"Graham never established his own megachurch, but his style and global reach still served as a role model to many of those who sought to attract similarly big communities across the United States and elsewhere."
"Despite American roots that reach back to the 19th century, megachurches abroad now have a higher average attendance, even though the vast majority of megachurches are still in the United States," Noack writes, noting that while the median weekly attendance in America "is about 2,750…the median weekly attendance at world megachurches is nearly 6,000."
"Attendance is high in western and eastern Africa: At least 25 of the region's churches are in Nigeria. The country's population is set to reach about 900 million by 2100, probably contributing to a further growth in Protestant believers."
Leading the megachurch trend? Seoul, which the Washington Post notes has an average weekly attendance of about 825,000, far ahead of second-place Lagos (346,500) and Houston (211,936). "For decades he was a rational meeting point between faith and politics, a man who transcended parties to provide moral leadership. It was important that president after president could pick up the phone to the same man who would listen and advise with patience. He leaves behind a country that has always been divided – as the politics of his own time proves – but feels increasingly incapable of crossing those lines of disagreement."
| | The Deadliest Infectious Disease Isn't What You Think | | The developed world may have largely forgotten the massive toll it takes, but the reality is that tuberculosis now takes more lives than malaria or HIV, writes Bjørn Lomborg for Project Syndicate.
"Unlike diseases like Ebola or Zika, TB seldom makes headlines. It should. Given all that we know about how to prevent and treat TB, and a powerful economic case for investing in eradication efforts, there is no excuse for the heavy toll that it continues to take," Lomborg writes.
"TB not only gets scant attention, but also a fraction of health funding. Around 3.4% of total development assistance for health is devoted to TB, compared to 27.7% for maternal and child health and 29.7% for HIV in 2015."
"In Bangladesh, one in 11 deaths is caused by TB. Every hour, nine people die from a disease that we know how to treat effectively and cheaply. Almost half of the cases are never detected. Investment in TB is not only important from a health perspective, but also for poverty reduction, because loss of income forces those with TB further into destitution."
| | The "Least Corrupt" Country Is… | | New Zealand is seen as the least corrupt country in the world, according to a new survey by Transparency International that ranks nations based on "their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople."
Rounding out the top five were: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Switzerland. The United States ranked 16 of the 180 countries and territories, which were given a score from 0 to 100.
"Syria, South Sudan and Somalia rank lowest with scores of 14, 12 and 9 respectively. The best performing region is Western Europe with an average score of 66. The worst performing regions are Sub-Saharan Africa (average score 32) and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (average score 34)." | | | | | | |
