Expect a bumper year for weight-loss drugs - The Economist   

FOR decades, weight-loss drugs have been a disappointment, delivering ineffective or even dangerous treatments. The recent arrival of drugs that are both effective and safe is therefore a medical milestone. Some now talk of a long-term future in which obesity might be cured. That is no small claim: obesity is a serious global problem, with 1.1bn people, or roughly 14% of the world’s population, being obese.

In 2024 the two companies, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, will battle for dominance of what could be a $77bn market by 2030. Their drugs Wegovy (semaglutide) and Mounjaro (tirzepatide) are going to be blockbusters. The size of the market is attracting a lot of competition and innovation. More than 70 other obesity treatments are in development, according to STAT, a medical news site. Most firms are chasing the same idea, namely glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists. These mimic the hormones the body produces after a meal, thus regulating glucose in the blood, which is why GLP-1 drugs worked so well to treat diabetes.

Unexpectedly, though, GLP-1 drugs also work on weight loss. They do this by slowing down the rate of “gastric emptying”, keeping people fuller for longer. They also affect the brain’s hypothalamus, which controls hunger. And they seem to make fat more likely to break down. Although GLP-1 will probably continue to be the primary target for new medications, some firms are exploring additional cellular targets in the hope of making ever more effective drugs that shed ever higher percentages of body fat.

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How Europe’s cities stack up in the cost-of-living index - The Economist   

BUMPER SNOWFALL means Europe’s ski resorts have enjoyed the best start to a season in years. Thousands of salopette-clad slalomers are making the most of it, dragging themselves up mountains and hurtling down the slopes. But much of the continent is steep in a less enjoyable sense, too. Cities in western Europe are among the biggest climbers in this year’s global cost-of-living index by EIU, our sister company. That reverses a downward slide in 2022. Our map below shows how 44 cities in the region compare.

Switzerland, which sits at one of the highest altitudes in the region, also has some of the highest prices. Zurich came in first place with Singapore, having jumped five places from last year. Geneva followed, coming joint third with New York. Overall, the region accounts for ten of the 20 priciest cities in the world; the scores for each city rose by an average of six percentage points.

What accounts for western Europe’s greater unaffordability? It is in part a consequence of sticky inflation, which continues to push up the prices of groceries, clothing and personal care. But the bigger reason for these jumps is the appreciation of the euro and other European currencies against the greenback. EIU’s index converts prices to dollars in order to compare them (it is primarily used to adjust expatriates’ salaries). A strengthening currency, therefore, often means a rise up the rankings. When using last year’s exchange rates, the cities instead rose by an average of two percentage points.

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America’s new policing tech isn’t cutting crime - The Economist   

ON MAY 31ST 2020 the life of Michael Williams, a 66-year-old from the south side of Chicago, fell apart. That evening Mr Williams picked up a young hitchhiker in his neighbourhood. A few blocks later, the young man was shot, apparently through the passenger window of the car. Mr Williams rushed him to hospital; two days later the man died, and a few weeks after that Mr Williams was arrested. He spent the next 11 months in the Cook County jail, accused of murder. But before the case could come to trial, it was thrown out, when the public prosecutor in the Chicago area decided to withdraw its main evidence. Since last year Mr Williams has been suing the City of Chicago, alleging that the city’s police department deliberately relied on a case it knew was flimsy.

That evidence was from Shotspotter, an “acoustic gunfire-detection” system supplied by SoundThinking, a firm based in California. Shotspotter automatically recognises and analyses the sound of gunshots from a network of microphones spread across cities—Chicago has by far the largest network in America. By triangulating the recordings it can, in theory, pinpoint where a gun has been fired. The idea is that this will help police officers respond more quickly to shootings, and find out about shootings that go unreported.

Chicago spends over $10m a year for the service. But it is controversial. Cases like that of Mr Williams are partly why. Before his election in May, Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s left-wing mayor, promised to end the city’s contract (as mayor he has extended it, seemingly by accident).

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Death, debts and democratic doubts in Africa - The Economist   

For large parts of Africa 2023 was a rough year. Violence cut a swathe across the Sahel, where coups and civilian misrule have shaken faith in democracy. Sudan’s catastrophic civil war, fuelled by outside powers, is spreading relentlessly: on December 15th fighting engulfed Wad Madani, a city 200km south of the capital, war-torn Khartoum. Across the region government debt levels have reached their highest levels since 2001, while economic growth in the world’s youngest continent barely outstripped population growth. Measured in current dollars sub-saharan Africa’s share of world GDP fell to just 1.9%, compared with its share of 18% of the world’s people. Why did things go wrong for Africa in 2023? And what does that mean for the continent in 2024?

The best place to start is also the bleakest: the civil war in Sudan, whose enormity has yet to be fully appreciated by the outside world, whose politicians and public have focused on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. The struggle erupted in April between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, and has now displaced more than 7m people. Reported fatalities are 12,000 but the actual death-count is likely to be far higher. Peace talks by Saudi Arabia have failed to stop the violence. The RSF, which following the assault on Wad Madani now has the upper hand in the war, is widely understood to be armed and funded by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), though the UAE denies this. America and other Western powers have said little and done less to stop the carnage, even as the RSF’s predominantly Arab gunmen have committed acts that may amount to genocide in Darfur, a region of Sudan with a large black African population.

The catastrophe in Sudan has occurred in parallel with an intensification of other conflicts. Jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) continue to terrorise the Sahel. They control swathes of territory in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, and threaten the densely populated and economically crucial coastal states in the Gulf of Guinea. In Benin, for example, there were 182 attacks targeting civilians between January and the end of November, an increase of 75% on the same period in 2022, according to ACLED, a research group. On the other side of the continent, in Ethiopia, where a civil war that killed 600,000 people ended in November 2022, ethnic conflict continues to smoulder. Don’t discount widening violence there in 2024. Abiy Ahmed, the country’s messianic prime minister, has raised fears that he might start a war with Eritrea or its neighbours over access to the Red Sea.

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