The global economy is headed for a downturn as inflation remains a major threat, a report says
The globe will slide into a recession next year as a number of economies will contract due to surging borrowing costs introduced to combat inflation, the UK-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) has predicted in its latest report.
The world economy surpassed $100 trillion for the first time ever in 2022 but will stall in 2023 as “the battle against inflation is not won yet,” while regulators will keep raising interest rates, the consultancy said in its annual World Economic League Table.
“We expect central bankers to stick to their guns in 2023 despite the economic costs. The cost of bringing inflation down to more comfortable levels is a poorer growth outlook for a number of years to come,” the director and head of forecasting at CEBR, Kay Daniel Neufeld, wrote.
The report's conclusions are more pessimistic than the most recent forecast by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which predicted in October that more than a third of the world’s economy will contract in 2023.
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The CEBR, which bases its growth, inflation, and exchange-rate forecasts on data from the IMF and an in-house model, said that “inflation has become the main economic story” of the past year. The analysts warned that “even though we are starting to see price growth decelerating in some economies, volatility in global energy markets and entrenched core inflation suggest that it will remain front and center in 2023 as well.”
The consultancy also predicted that China would outperform the US and become the world’s largest economy by 2036 – six years later than previously expected, due to the country’s zero-Covid policy and escalating trade tensions with the West, which have slowed its growth.
According to the study, India’s economy will become the third largest overall by 2032 and will reach the $10 trillion mark by 2035.
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https://www.rt.com/business/569106-global-economy-recession-forecast/
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a leading civil rights organization, has accused Israel of carrying out “an organized and systematic practice of sexual torture” against Palestinian detainees from the besieged Gaza Strip.
PCHR said in a new report that its investigators have documented extensive sexual violence against both Palestinian women and men detained by Israeli forces across Gaza over the past two years.
According to PCHR, researchers and lawyers interviewed several Palestinians recently released from Israeli custody, who described repeated incidents of rape, forced stripping, filming of abuse, and sexual assault using objects and dogs, along with other forms of psychological humiliation.
One 42-year-old mother, detained while crossing an Israeli checkpoint in northern Gaza in November 2024, told investigators she endured repeated rape and physical abuse over several days.
“They put me on a metal table, pressed my chest and head against it, cuffed my ...
Accepting the Washington-based lender’s plan would be a “disgrace” for Dakar, the African state’s prime minister has said
Senegal has rejected a debt-restructuring proposal put forward by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The West African country’s prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, said following the plan would amount to a national “disgrace.”
Sonko made the remarks at a rally in the capital, Dakar, on Sunday, days after the Washington-based lender concluded a two-week mission to Senegal without a new financing deal.
Senegal’s public debt has risen to over $11 billion amid the discovery of $7 billion in undeclared loans. The IMF has since frozen a $1.8 billion lending facility to the former French colony, citing misreporting and hidden debt.
Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who came to power in April 2024, has blamed his predecessor, Macky Sall, for the debt crisis.....more here
https://www.rt.com/africa/627581-senegal-rejects-imf-debt-restructuring-proposal/
While Washington dreams of a Golden Dome, Beijing is quietly building one that actually works
When Donald Trump unveiled the Golden Dome in May 2025, he promised nothing less than a revolution in American security – a $175-billion missile defense shield designed to intercept any threat to the United States.
Modeled on Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the new project envisions an integrated network of satellites, next-generation interceptors, radars, and laser weapons extending from the Earth’s surface to outer space. The ambition is clear: complete, preemptive, and absolute protection by 2029.
Yet behind the spectacle of technological grandeur lies a troubling pattern. No concrete system architecture has been presented, and early projections suggest the true cost could triple the official figure. More importantly, the concept of “absolute security” signals an enduring American desire for unipolar dominance – one that undermines, rather than reinforces, global ...
