Hostilities should halt and healthcare facilities must be treated as ‘safe havens’, WHO’s regional chief has said Middle East crisis – live updates A total stop to hostilities in the Middle East is needed to halt a “health crisis unfolding in real time”, the World Health Organization’s chief in the region has said. Hospitals and other healthcare facilities must be treated as “safe havens”, urged D...
Hostilities should halt and healthcare facilities must be treated as ‘safe havens’, WHO’s regional chief has said Middle East crisis – live updates A total stop to hostilities in the Middle East is needed to halt a “health crisis unfolding in real time”, the World Health Organization’s chief in the region has said. Hospitals and other healthcare facilities must be treated as “safe havens”, urged Dr Hanan Balkhy , the WHO’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean. Continue reading...
The Italian PM has won plaudits for her tightrope-walking pragmatism. But have voters now had enough? Giorgia Meloni has a long history of defying expectations . She holds the record as Italy’s youngest cabinet member, at 31, and is its first female prime minister, thus overcoming two of Italian politics’ most formidable obstacles, gerontocracy and machismo. After she took office in autumn 2022, s...
The Italian PM has won plaudits for her tightrope-walking pragmatism. But have voters now had enough? Giorgia Meloni has a long history of defying expectations . She holds the record as Italy’s youngest cabinet member, at 31, and is its first female prime minister, thus overcoming two of Italian politics’ most formidable obstacles, gerontocracy and machismo. After she took office in autumn 2022, she quickly put to rest concerns that her post-fascist background would make her a foreign policy radical. Staunch support for Ukraine and a pragmatic relationship with EU leaders won her international credibility. Against this backdrop, the defeat she suffered in this week’s referendum – where Italians rejected the government’s proposed constitutional reform of the judiciary by 53.2% to 46.8% – appears all the more significant. Riccardo Alcaro is head of research at IAI, Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome Continue reading...
Professionals from across Europe urge MEPs to reject plans, saying ‘climate of fear’ could stop people seeking care More than 1,100 healthcare professionals from across Europe have urged MEPs to reject proposed measures aimed at increasing the deportation of undocumented people, warning they could threaten public health by transforming essential public services, including hospitals, into sites of ...
Professionals from across Europe urge MEPs to reject plans, saying ‘climate of fear’ could stop people seeking care More than 1,100 healthcare professionals from across Europe have urged MEPs to reject proposed measures aimed at increasing the deportation of undocumented people, warning they could threaten public health by transforming essential public services, including hospitals, into sites of immigration enforcement. The draft plans, which are due to go to a vote on Thursday, have been in the works since last March, when the European Commission laid out its proposal to target people with no legal right to stay in the EU, including potentially sending them to offshore centres in non-EU countries. Continue reading...
Stretched over a winding valley and secluded by trees, the vast complex in the small town of Dubnica nad Vahom is testament to Czechoslovakia’s past as a Cold War arms manufacturer, and also the industry’s bleak outlook after the fall of communism. Some of the facilities were rented to new businesses. One made printer cartridges, another made school benches. Production of air rifles kept the compa...
Stretched over a winding valley and secluded by trees, the vast complex in the small town of Dubnica nad Vahom is testament to Czechoslovakia’s past as a Cold War arms manufacturer, and also the industry’s bleak outlook after the fall of communism. Some of the facilities were rented to new businesses. One made printer cartridges, another made school benches. Production of air rifles kept the company, ZVS Holding AS , largely afloat. The number of employees dropped from 7,000 to a few hundred. The rejuvenation of ZVS is now part of a wider transformation as NATO scales up production of military equipment. It’s one that has implications for the economy and politics in the European Union’s east, as well as its richest man . Slovakia became the world’s biggest per capita car producer along with the Czech Republic because of demand from auto companies for cheaper, skilled labor. Now war is turning the tiny nation into a critical ammunition powerhouse. The new focus is underpinned by a close alliance between Czech arms billionaire Michal Strnad and Slovakia’s influential defense minster, Robert Kalinak . ZVS is part of Strnad’s Czechoslovak Group AS, or CSG, which he wants to become Europe’s biggest defense conglomerate . “In the midst of this severe economic crisis gripping Europe, the defense industry is one of the few remaining lifelines still feeding our economy,” Kalinak, who has known the Strnad family for more than a decade, said in an interview at his office in Bratislava. “I like the idea of having another ‘pillar’ for our industry to stand on,” he said, predicting “a good 30 years of prosperity.” (Sign up to the Eastern Europe Edition newsletter, delivered every Friday.) Strnad’s family acquired a controlling 50% share of ZVS in 2015 and in 2020, two years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine, it decided to only focus on making large-caliber ammunition. Slovakia now makes hundreds of thousands of shells a year compared with just some 30,000...
Zhang Dongmei Beijing named Zhang Dongmei a deputy director of the Communist Party Central Committee’s Hong Kong and Macao Work Office, filling a senior vacancy and making her the first woman to join the office’s leadership team since it was formed three years ago, according to a government personnel notice released Tuesday. Zhang, 58, previously served as a vice chair of the All-China Women’s Fed...
Zhang Dongmei Beijing named Zhang Dongmei a deputy director of the Communist Party Central Committee’s Hong Kong and Macao Work Office, filling a senior vacancy and making her the first woman to join the office’s leadership team since it was formed three years ago, according to a government personnel notice released Tuesday. Zhang, 58, previously served as a vice chair of the All-China Women’s Federation and as a secretary of its executive secretariat. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security published the appointment in a State Council roster of personnel changes dated March 25.
bombermoon/iStock via Getty Images The following segment was excerpted from the Virtus SGA Global Growth Fund Q4 2025 Commentary. During the quarter, we initiated a new position in Sea Limited ( SE ), a Southeast Asian consumer internet company with an integrated ecosystem combining e-commerce, digital payments, and entertainment. Sea has a diversified business model, with its Shopee e-commerce pl...
bombermoon/iStock via Getty Images The following segment was excerpted from the Virtus SGA Global Growth Fund Q4 2025 Commentary. During the quarter, we initiated a new position in Sea Limited ( SE ), a Southeast Asian consumer internet company with an integrated ecosystem combining e-commerce, digital payments, and entertainment. Sea has a diversified business model, with its Shopee e-commerce platform, a mobile-centric marketplace that provides integrated payments, logistics infrastructure, and seller services; Garena, a digital entertainment platform for users to access mobile and PC online games; and Monee digital financial services offering credit, mobile wallets, payment processing, banking, and insurtech services. Sea operates in markets with unique geopolitical, cultural, and economic complexities, and the company is ahead in localizing its products and content, making it difficult for competitors to disrupt at scale. Sea's e-commerce business benefits from low penetration rates and rising digital adoption, while its logistics network and localized approach create meaningful competitive advantages that are difficult for competitors to replicate. The company's digital financial services segment is scaling rapidly, leveraging accumulated user data and e-commerce use cases to drive engagement and profitability. In gaming, Sea's deep understanding of local audiences and self-developed franchises like Free Fire are favorable for emerging markets audiences where low-end smartphones dominate. While near-term margin volatility is expected as Sea invests in logistics, fulfillment, and new initiatives such as free shipping membership, management's focus on building long-term competitive advantages and expanding addressable markets positions the company well for sustainable growth. Among the key risk considerations are increasing competition from TikTok and Lazada (backed by Alibaba ( BABA ) (BABA)) in Southeast Asia, MercadoLibre in Brazil, and Coupang ( CPNG ) in Tai...
Novo Nordisk A/S ’s Chairman Lars Rebien Sorensen will face investors at the company’s annual meeting for the first time on Thursday after his boardroom coup. He’s in for an earful. Sorensen and new Chief Executive Officer Mike Doustdar have had just months to start remaking Novo as a more aggressive and fast-moving company, but investors point to two recent missteps. The drugmaker failed in an at...
Novo Nordisk A/S ’s Chairman Lars Rebien Sorensen will face investors at the company’s annual meeting for the first time on Thursday after his boardroom coup. He’s in for an earful. Sorensen and new Chief Executive Officer Mike Doustdar have had just months to start remaking Novo as a more aggressive and fast-moving company, but investors point to two recent missteps. The drugmaker failed in an attempt last fall to wrest an obesity startup away from Pfizer Inc. And it surprised the market this year with a gloomy forecast that sent shares plunging. The two events further eroded investors’ faith in the Danish company at the heart of the obesity-drug revolution. Novo’s shares have fallen about 45% since Sorensen, a 71-year-old company veteran, intervened to oust former CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen last May. Over the same period, rival Eli Lilly & Co. ’s market value grew by a fifth, briefly turning the US maker of Zepbound into the world’s first $1 trillion drugmaker. “Investors in Novo have endured an extremely difficult two years,” said Ketan Patel , a fund manager at the family office Whitefriars. “The real test will be to get back in the race versus Eli Lilly and get the share price moving in the right direction.” Sorensen and Doustdar must prove they can steer Novo back to growth. Investors are calling for diversification outside obesity and strong execution on Novo’s most promising new drug: a pill version of its weight-loss blockbuster Wegovy. A year ago, former CEO Jorgensen acknowledged to investors that even though Novo had finally managed to meet demand for its obesity and diabetes shots in the US, its troubles there weren’t over. Competition from cheaper copycat versions prepared by compounding pharmacies remained a challenge. The pharmacies gained a foothold during Novo’s supply shortage and kept selling copies even after it ended. Novo had also suffered a pair of disappointing clinical trial results from its next-generation drug CagriSema. Led by Sorense...
JHVEPhoto/iStock Editorial via Getty Images Investment Thesis Almost consistently since early 2024, I have been bullish on Micron ( MU ) as it became clear that DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) is a key component of the wave of GPUs that GPU giants like NVIDIA ( NVDA ) and AMD ( AMD ) have been producing. While Micron was clearly in the right place at the right time two years ago, just as this ...
JHVEPhoto/iStock Editorial via Getty Images Investment Thesis Almost consistently since early 2024, I have been bullish on Micron ( MU ) as it became clear that DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) is a key component of the wave of GPUs that GPU giants like NVIDIA ( NVDA ) and AMD ( AMD ) have been producing. While Micron was clearly in the right place at the right time two years ago, just as this GPU wave started to take off, I believe that shares have now fully priced in the upside of the AI-GPU revolution. In essence, while revenue growth is still set to be strong for the rest of calendar year 2026, I think there is a real risk that some of the DRAM orders that Micron has may have some softness in them. For those who have not followed previous memory boom-bust cycles, the claims of “sold out through 2027” from memory giants may look like a statement of guaranteed demand. For those who have been following the space for the last few cycles, you understand we need to take these statements with caution. With this, I think the memory bull run (which began over 2 years ago) is coming to an end. Many of the large AI labs have secured more DRAM via forward contracts than what they will realistically need. This has created the sense of an artificial shortage supported by essentially FOMO on DRAM supply. Like in previous cycles, this will unwind. With this, I am downgrading Micron from a Strong Buy to a Hold. The stock has had an incredible run since my first call in 2024 . I think it's time to take profits. Why I’m Doing Follow-Up Coverage Micron has been one of my favorite stocks to write on ever since I started writing on Seeking Alpha almost 3 years ago. Since the last time I wrote on the AI memory giant back in March of last year (almost exactly 1 year ago), shares have jumped an impressive 312.93%. This gain is ~300% points more than the S&P 500’s 14.66% gain in the same time period. The company has been one of the best-performing AI plays over the last 12 months. Wit...