Russia’s economic prospects are looking increasingly grim.Last year, plunging energy prices and international sanctions contributed to a 3.7 per cent fall in the gross domestic product (GDP).

At the United Nations in New York on April 22, world leaders ratified the global climate agreement reached in Paris last December.One hundred ninety-five countries, ranging from richest to poorest, have now agreed to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial lev

Why are some regions plagued by seemingly endless instability?In the Middle East, one widespread argument, which even Daesh expounds, puts much of the blame for chronic conflict on the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the secret deal agreed 100 years ago by France and Great Britain to divi

 Kenya is about to destroy its entire stockpile of elephant ivory.More than 100 metric tonnes of “white gold” — both illegally harvested (confiscated from poachers or traders) and naturally accruing (from natural mortality) — will go up in smoke this weekend.In China — where

Patrick Vallance and Tim WellsIn recent years, tremendous progress has been made in the battle against malaria.According to the World Health Organisation (WTO), the number of deaths from the disease has fallen by a staggering 60 per cent since 2000 — the result of improved access

 The dramatic drop in malaria deaths since the beginning of the century is one of the great public-health success stories of recent years.Thanks to concerted investments in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, the number of people killed by the disease each year has decline

Over the last 35 years, Western democracies have seen a rapid rise in political instability, characterised by frequent shifts in governing parties and their programmes and philosophies, driven at least partly by economic transformation and hardship.The question now is how to impr

 Over the last 10 years, “climate change” has become almost synonymous with “carbon emissions”.The reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, measured in tonnes of “carbon equivalents” (CO2e) has emerged as the paramount objective in the quest to preserve the planet.Bu

During the last century, the battle to secure equality for women and girls has been fought in the classroom, in the voting booth and in the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies.But if gender inequality is ever to be abolished, we can no longer afford to neglect one of its major ca