This week in @TheEconomist I wrote about the incredible progress that we have been making against dementia. Though total numbers are rising (because we are living longer), the actual rate at every age has been coming down sharply for decades. A short 🧵 1/ @TheEconomist Whereas 40 years ago three in every ten Americans aged 85-89 had dementia, by 2024 just one in ten had it...Between 1988 and 2015 the share of older people being diagnosed with dementia fell by 13% a decade across six countries in North America and Europe 2/

I have been struggling to articulate the complex emotions I've been feeling since Saturday morning as a Jew, a liberal/progressive, a believer that Palestinians and Jews have a right to a homeland, to safety and dignity. A thread 1/ Firstly I still feel sick and worried. I have family and friends in Israel. Some were in communities near those that were attacked. Others have children, nephews, grandchildren who have been called up to the IDF. I have friends and colleagues exposed to danger to report 2/

Two stories in the news today illustrate how Eskom in South Africa is squandering a huge opportunity to massively save costs, green its energy supply with renewables and reduce the load-shedding that is killing the economy. A short 🧵 1/ The first story says that Eskom is on track to spend about 22bn rand ($1.3bn) on diesel for its inefficient open-cycle gas turbines, which produce some 2MW of power. Meant for emergency "peaking" they have been run about 12 hours a day 2/ dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-0…

Big take in this week's Africa pages @TheEconomist on why efforts to form a cocoa cartel (COPEC, like OPEC) will not do much to help the poor. A short 🧵on why it is a bad idea 1/
economist.com/middle-east-an… @TheEconomist Currently farmers get a raw deal: "More than half of Ivorian cocoa farmers and their families subsist on less than $1.20 a day...In Ivory Coast and Ghana, which between them grow about 60% of the world’s cocoa, some 1.5m children do dangerous work in cocoa-growing areas."