A significant trial of a daily weight-loss pill has found that it helped people to shed the pounds and reduce their blood sugar levels, making it a contender to join the new wave of drugs that combat obesity and diabetes. People who took a 36mg pill of orforglipron lost an average of 7.3kg (16lbs) over nine months, according to results from a phase 3 clinical trial reported by the drug’s manufacturer, Eli Lilly, on Thursday. The trial, which enrolled 559 obese people with type 2 diabetes from the US, China,…
Tag: South and Central Asia
Global defence budget jumps to record high of $2440bn
Global military expenditure has reached a record high of $2440bn (£1970bn) after the largest annual rise in government spending on arms in over a decade, according to a report. The 6.8% increase between 2022 and 2023 was the steepest since 2009, pushing spending to the highest recorded by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) in its 60-year history. For the first time, analysts at the thinktank recorded a rise in military outlay in all five geographical regions: Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania and the Americas. Nan…
Far Beyond the Pasturelands review – on the trail of the ‘Himalayan Viagra’
Every year, thousands of Nepalese villagers make their way to the Himalayan foothills in search of a fungus called yarsagumba. Known for its aphrodisiac properties, the elusive substance sells in China for a price higher than gold. Following Lalita, a young mother among the countless trekkers, this intimate documentary from Maude Plante-Husaruk and Maxime Lacoste-Lebuis paints a stirring portrait of a community exploited by modern commerce. Living in the largely agrarian village of Maikot, a wistful Lalita thinks back on her adolescent dreams of going to university, but an early…
Myanmar: is the junta’s grip on power weakening and what next for its leadership?
Myanmar’s military junta is on the brink of losing control of a major trading town, Myawaddy, on its eastern border with Thailand, after soldiers defending the position surrendered in recent days, according to opposition groups. This is the latest in a series of defeats for the junta, which has also lost crucial territory along its border with China and India, as well as areas of Rakhine state, in the west of the country. These defeats aren’t just economic or strategic blows for the junta – they’re also a humiliation for…
Six killed after suicide bomber rams convoy of Chinese engineers in Pakistan
Six people have been killed after a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle into a convoy of Chinese engineers working on a dam project in north-west Pakistan, in the third significant attack on Chinese interests in the country in a week. The first two attacks targeted a Pakistani naval airbase and a strategic port used by China in the south-west province of Balochistan where Beijing is investing billions in infrastructure projects. The engineers were en route from Islamabad to their camp at the dam construction site in Dasu in the province…
‘Big bullies’: Maldives turns away from India as calculating China woos it with aid
Since Mohamed Muizzu was elected president of the Maldives in September, a wave of anti-India sentiment has swept the country. This week, it was made clear to New Delhi exactly where his government’s allegiances now lie. “There will be no Indian troops in the country come 10 May. Not in uniform and not in civilian clothing. The Indian military will not be residing in this country in any form of clothing. I state this with confidence,” Muizzu said in a public address on Tuesday. A few days earlier, the two…
Xi Jinping is playing deadly games with Myanmar and North Korea | Observer editorial
Instead of acting as a responsible superpower, China is putting millions of lives at risk in the region and beyond Military coups and dictatorships rarely come to any good. But has any army takeover in recent times led to more utterly disastrous consequences than those suffered by the people of Myanmar since February 2021? For sheer, vicious stupidity and criminality, Gen Min Aung Hlaing, the junta chief, and his bloodstained associates take some beating. Yet a beating is what they are getting at the hands of Myanmar’s civilian resistance groups,…
Myanmar hands over junta-backed warlords to China in telecoms scam case
Myanmar has extradited 10 people, including notorious warlords, to China, where they are wanted for their alleged role in running abusive online and telephone fraud centres in which tens of thousands of foreign nationals are trapped and forced to run scams. The centres – which target people in China as well as in other countries – have flourished since the Covid-19 pandemic and China says about 44,000 people have been involved, including victims of human trafficking. The Chinese embassy in Myanmar on Tuesday named six of the people who had…
Powerful earthquake hits China-Kyrgyzstan border
A 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck along the China-Kyrgyzstan border, as authorities warned of potentially widespread damage. The China Earthquake Networks Center said the quake hit Wushu county shortly after 2am local time, according to the state-run Xinhua press agency. There were no immediate reports of damage or fatalities. State broadcaster CCTV said there were several aftershocks since the main quake, registering up to 4.5 magnitude. The earthquake struck in a rural area populated mostly by Uyghurs, who have been the target of a state campaign of forced assimilation and mass…
‘Cheaper to save the world than destroy it’: why capitalism is going green
The root of the climate crisis is “not capitalism but the corruption of capitalism”, according to the author of a new book on how people, policy and technology are working to stop the planet from heating. Akshat Rathi, a climate reporter with financial news outlet Bloomberg, argues that smart policies can harness capitalism to cut carbon pollution without killing markets or competition. “It is now cheaper to save the world than destroy it,” he writes, adding that this holds true even when viewed through a narrow capitalist lens. “Capitalism cannot…