Материалы: October 31st, 2013

Russia’s Recent Demographic Improvements Were Not Foreseen By The Experts

Whenever I write about the recent improvements in Russian demography, someone will inevitably respond by saying that these changes are ultimately meaningless because they are small in scale, temporary in nature, and were easily foreseen by experts in the field. If this is true, if demographers really did uniformly predict that Russia would experience a […]

Missiles for milk: how Russia offered NZ military hardware to settle dairy bill

Former PM Jim Bolger ‘absolutely stunned’ to be offered a nuclear sub and two MiGs in lieu of money, new book reveals. Russia made the unusual offer of two MiG fighters in 1993, when it was struggling to pay its debts after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Photograph: AAP/MiG Jet Adventures. How do you […]

China: Superpower or Superbust?

AS IF a global financial-market meltdown, the deepest U.S. recession in seventy years, an existential crisis in the euro zone and upheaval in the Middle East hadn’t already created enough trouble for one decade, now the unrest and anxiety have extended to some of the world’s most attractive emerging markets. Just in the past few […]

Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy

By Max Fisher People in Japan are so averse to romantic relationships that the country’s media even has a name for it: sekkusu shinai shokogun, or “celibacy syndrome,” according to a widely circulated Guardian story on the country’s low rates of marriage, childbearing and even sex. But this is more than a story about Japan […]