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Adam Smith-Connor is an Englishman found guilty of silent prayer on the public street near an abortion facility, officially criminalizing thoughts.

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More than 6.1 million malaria cases, and 1,038 deaths, have been recorded in the country this year through the end of September, compared with 4.5 million cases, and 469 deaths, for all of 2023. Worse, cases are likely to soar far higher in the next couple of months because peak malaria season, driven by seasonal rains, begins in September and runs through the end of the year.

“We’re backsliding so fast — we’ve gone back a decade,” said Fitsum Tadesse, the lead scientist overseeing the malaria program at the Armauer Hansen Research Institute in Addis Ababa, the capital of the country.

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South Korea's fertility rate, already the world's lowest, dropped further last year, with the average number of expected babies per woman decreasing to 0.72 from 0.78 in 2022.


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Sat Stats

Nicolai Tangen leads Nordic behemoth Norges Bank Investment Management, which governs the revenue earned by Norway’s oil and gas resources, hoping to distribute its benefits fairly between current and future Norwegian generations.

Under Tangen’s leadership since 2020, and over the past decade, the $1.6 trillion fund has invested more heavily in the U.S. instead of its closer neighbors in Europe.

Tangen told the Financial Times America’s performance, particularly in innovation, is “worrisome” in contrast to Europe.
Part of comes down to mindset, Tangen added, and how accepting each continent is of mistakes and risk: “You go bust in America, you get another chance. In Europe, you’re dead,” he said. But there is a difference in the "level of ambition,” he added. “We are not very ambitious. I should be careful about talking about work-life balance, but the Americans just work harder,” Tangen continued.

Meanwhile, data from the International Labour Organization, last updated in January, showed the average hours workers clocked in the U.S. was 38 hours a week. However, of those employees, 13% worked 49 hours or more per week, which outstripped the majority of European nations.

Moreover, countries like the U.K. have a statutory requirement entitling staff to 28 paid days of leave a year—if you’re a full-time employee. In the U.S. it is not a legal requirement for staff to be given any paid time off; however, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average employee who is in their first year of service takes eight PTO days

Investments in the U.S. now represent 46.9% of Norges Bank’s portfolio, whereas a decade ago the U.S. represented just under 30%. Going back a further 10 years, in 2003, the organization’s investment in America made up just 26.3% of all investments.

Conversely, in 2003, 59.5% of Norges Bank’s portfolio was invested in European countries, a figure that, by 2023, had fallen to 28.7%.

AI, a growing field of American-European disparity, is instructive. “I’m not saying it’s good, but in America, you have a lot of AI and no regulation; in Europe, you have no AI and a lot of regulation. It’s interesting,” Tangen added.