Tobacco-related diseases kill 4.3 million people each year in low- and middle-income countries. That’s more than HIV/AIDS, 
malaria, and tuberculosis combined (see figure). So could someone please explain why it isn’t a ‘mainstream development issue’?
Chocolate is good for you: The Chance Result the Whole World Yearned to Believe [h/t Richard King]
What did Otpor (Serbian protest movement) get right, that Occupy got wrong? Analysis by Harvard Business Review [h/t Rakesh Rajani]
Think we’ll be seeing more of this cartoon in the run up to the Paris climate change summit in December.
The ‘us’ & ‘them’ in trade agreements (e.g. the TPP) is not nation v nation, but investors (one dollar/one vote) v voters (one person/one vote)
72 countries have more than halved the proportion of undernourished people. Global total down to 795 million. The FAO’s new State of Food Insecurity report
There was quite a lot about football on twitter last week, for some reason (John Oliver provides essential background):
“Football has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.” George
Orwell quoted by Matt Andrews, who argues that football income is a bit like natural resources – money out of the ground, with a high likelihood of corruption.
‘A clean FIFA will get rid of African/Asian influence and ignore ¾ of the poor world.’ Branko Milanovic worries that a
cleaned-up soccer will end up looking like tennis.
And it’s not just about corruption: in Qatar, “As things stand, more than 62 workers will die for each game played during the 2022 tournament.”
And finally, I rather liked this WaterAid spoof for last Thursday’s World Menstrual Hygiene Day, but still prefer the ad below – wonder if Richard now regrets his Facebook post? It was one of 8 chosen by the Guardian in advance of the Cannes ‘glass lion awards’ later this month. Interesting to see just how good private sector is at targeting attitudes and beliefs – maybe we should leave that bit to them, and they should give up on the service delivery?…..
[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpy75q2DDow[/youtube]