The first round of local elections happens next Sunday (March 15th), with 34,000 communes, from tiny villages up to the major cities, heading out to elect the local mayors who play a huge part in shaping the life and infrastructure of each area.
Aki Ito is our chief correspondent on careers, a huge topic for Davos - and for us. She asked people across business tough questions about the future of work (believe me, I was in the room) to help bring insights for your success. She also moderated a conversation with chief people officers from companies across the business world. You'll see her takeaways from that soon.
Policy-makers are being urged to focus on investments in artificial intelligence (AI) in a way that makes sense for the economy. The Rethinking AI sovereignty paper, published to coincide with the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, recommends that policy-makers reframe AI sovereignty as strategic interdependence, where localised investments are combined with trusted partnerships and alliances. The paper, co-authored by the World Economic Forum and Bain & Co, presents data that illustrates the gap between AI infrastructure investment in the US and China compared with other countries.
After more than 25 years of debate and delay, we have moved beyond words and into action. This commission is not just a technical body; it is a commitment to historical integrity and a long-awaited bridge to justice for those whose heritage was stolen.
We begin with a deliberately ambitious question. What would it take for every person on Earth to live at least as well as someone in Switzerland does today-by 2100? Not culturally Swiss, but economically empowered with high incomes, long lives, strong education, and social cohesion. Achieving this would require global GDP to be about 8.5 times higher than it is today. That figure alone is enough to trigger skepticism. Will we have enough energy, materials, food, and innovation?
Standing among the Alps, it's easy to believe that they will last forever. They seem too big to fail, too old to change. This illusion of permanence has long entranced travelers who have visited to experience the intoxicating feeling of being daunted and dwarfed by a landscape's authority. But even mountains move: This past May an avalanche of ice and rock tore through the Lötschental Valley, erasing the village of Blatten in less than a minute.
US and Palestinian officials also used the ceremony to lay out a blueprint for the next steps in implementing a ceasefire in Gaza, and putting the territory under the day-to-day control of a Palestinian-run technocratic administration, which has been assembled in Cairo. The president's son-in-law Jared Kushner outlined a plan for the next 100 days, including a significant increase in aid deliveries, the rehabilitation of essential infrastructure, such as water, electricity and sewage systems, and the reconstruction of hospitals and bakeries.
"Calm down the hysteria," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday. "Take a deep breath." He was urging European counterparts and journalists not to read too much into the current kerfuffle over President Donald Trump's desire to annex Greenland, which was followed by the threat of new U.S. tariffs on a group of European countries standing in solidarity with Denmark.
