2018
January
26
Friday

Monitor Daily Podcast

January 26, 2018
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Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

Another hard week for choosing where to focus.

A partial government shutdown ended. American gymnasts tasted justice. Earth’s crust got active. Another school heard gunfire.

We had a distracting flurry about “secret society” texts and the FBI. More infighting about a border wall. The basement of the Louvre was threatened by floodwaters, a rising global concern.

The so-called Doomsday Clock hit two minutes to midnight.

At week’s end the news energy moves to a Swiss alpine enclave where helicopters sit in a row as though valet-parked. At Davos – which banking executive Jamie Dimon famously called the place where “billionaires tell millionaires what the middle class feels” – an American president stiff-armed news reports concerning a special prosecutor and made a pitch for fair and reciprocal trade. (More on that in today’s first story.)

Davos is not just about fanfare for the uncommon man. But writer Felix Salmon argued last year that the forum tends to nurture a brand of globalism that’s better for the world’s very rich and very poor than it is for the global middle.

In a shift, at least some Davos attendees might be more sensitive this year to those in the middle, those who form the vital centers of national economies. Said Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund and a forum co-chair, “I find that more and more world leaders are concerned about excessive inequality.”

Now to our five stories for today, highlighting shifts in thought, shifts in power, and the value of compassion. 


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Evan Vucci/AP
President Trump (l.); Joe Kaeser, president and chief executive of the German firm Siemens (c.); and Kirstjen Nielsen, US Secretary of Homeland Security (r.) have dinner with European business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 25.
Joel Kouam/Reuters
In Douala, Cameroon, demonstrators voice their opposition or support for independence (or greater autonomy) for the Anglophone regions of the country in October 2017. The banners read: 'I am not Francophone' (r.), 'I am not Anglophone' (l.).

Difference-maker


The Monitor's View

Retuers
A former train station in Paris has been converted into "Station F," a place for startups, multinationals and investors to start new businesses.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

A message of love

Ahmer Khan
Nuns assemble early each day at the Druk Gawa Khilwa Abbey in Kathmandu, Nepal, to practice martial arts. In most Buddhist orders, monks lead prayers and occupy powerful positions, while nuns are assigned menial jobs. But in 2008, the leader of the 1,000-year-old abbey changed that. Nuns here learn a mixture of martial arts and meditation as a means of empowerment. The convent is now home to about 400 women from Nepal, India, Tibet, and Bhutan.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte and Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks, as always, for being here today. Among the stories we’re working on for next week: a report on what the "sharing economy" means in different social contexts – in particular, in societies that have vast wealth gaps. Enjoy your weekend. 

More issues

2018
January
26
Friday
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