Possible Articles

POST COVID WORLD
The post covid world is for us to shape as we recover. But amongst other things, it may be a world where we are more supportive of health care in the weaker economies after our success in eradicating COVID19 if we do. It looks as if we may well do once we have a safe and effective vaccine (the signs so far are good that we will achieve one). This pandemic highlighted how the health care in one country is important to the health care systems of the whole world. Also how closely linked our economies are too.

It has also made it clear in Asia that their cities can be cleaned of polluted air likely to lead to clean air acts of some sort and several cities are going to have some measure of traffic free city center zones on recovery.

Going to have more working at home, flexible working, less international face to face meetings and more videoconferencing, more shopping online, less flights, less traffic.

It's been a boost to renewables since when people are using less power then the renewables keep going at no extra cost while every megawatt of fossil fuels has to be paid for with fuel costs.

Based on all this then the recovery can be an opportunity to bake in some of these changes and move even further and a fair few countries wish to do it this way including Europe.

I.e. there will be some beneficial long term changes for sure, but we can encourage there to be more of them.

Generally we have shown that when there's the choice of human health and of the economy that countries are prepared to take drastic measures that affect the economy to protect human health, that human lives matter to us. This is something I think will influence decision makers and politiicans long term.

https://www.quora.com/q/debunkingdoomsday/COVID-19-recession-protecting-damage-to-economy-and-livelihoods-worldwide-many-countries-will-use-recovery-period-to

NOT HEADED FOR A COLD WAR
This is about how we are headed in the opposite direction, smaller wars, less casualties per war and total though more wars, and more connected to each other, countries are more affected by damage to other countries and also we are working together much more and we have many conventions on human rights and treaties and law of armed conduct developed much further, many things in WWII that happened on both sides wouldn't happen in a current war. https://www.quora.com/q/debunkingdoomsday/World-War-III-unlikely-trend-in-opposite-direction-to-smaller-wars-and-fewer-casualties-not-large-ones-and-reduced

Tamara KS Fist I do think it matters but not as much as many might think. Those are treaties that originated in a different world. That is from an era when the USSR was much bigger and East and West knew little about each other with much more mistrust than today. Glasnost made a big difference and is now normal. We can't go back to cold war conditions. http://www.coldwar.org/articles/80s/glasnostandperestroika.asp

Many of these treaties don't involve China in any way including the Open Skies agreement.

Trump is onto something that China needs to be more part of them in the future as we modernize the treaties and I don't think many would disagree there, but his process of doing that by just dropping them is what is controversial.

Like with the Iran deal where he just wants to drop it and start a new one.

Especially with the nuclear weapons treaties then China is just not interested in trying to compete with the numbers in Russia and the US and they need to reduce numbers of nuclear weapons ten-fold first before it really makes sense to involve the Chinese in tripartite negotiations.

But even without any of those treaties if it does end up like that for a while from 5th February 2021, we are still in a far better place I think than during the cold war. Countries won't start a nuclear war just because the treaties to stop it are gone. Nobody wants a nuclear war anyway - it is not of benefit to anyone. And I don't think in practice they are going to ramp up nuclear weapons and Russia doesn't have the capability anyway.

The one treaty we surely won't remove is the Outer Space Treaty which also prohibits nuclear weapons in space / on satellites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies

NO WE ARE NOT ALL GOING TO BECOME MUSLIMS
First then in the US by constitution it is not permitted to force anyone to adopt a religion. That is by the first ammendment. It is not constitutional to teach religion in public schools. They can't promote religious beliefs or practices, just teach about them. Many countries have freedom of religion in the law.

https://www.aclu.org/other/your-right-religious-freedom

In the US the most rapid growth is in people who do not belong to any organized religion, increased from 17% to 26% in the last decade.

They are gaining mainly at loss from Christians. All other religions increased slightly from 5% in 2009 to 7% in 2019 and only 1% Muslim which remains unchanged.

https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ https://www.cheatsheet.com/health-fitness/what-the-fastest-growing-religion-in-the-u-s-actually-is.html/

The fertility rate of Muslims is reducing with prosperity same as for everyone else. This graph is for India, the Muslims have always had more children than Hindus but it used to be a difference of one extra child from 3.3 to 4.4 now it is just half a child from 2.1 to 2.6 and both are falling. https://www.livemint.com/news/india/what-a-narrowing-hindu-muslim-fertility-gap-tells-us-1550686404387.html

In the UK the high projection with a large amount of migration is for Muslims to increase from 4.9% in 2016 to 14% in 2050. Low estimate is 7.4% in 2050.

https://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-population/

You are not talking about a Muslim majority in countries that have minority Muslim populations like India, Europe, US, etc.

But Muslims are growing slightly more than non Muslims.

Even in Muslim contries then many who are not Muslim. Often people worry about Sharia law - this is not a legal system it's just like the Jewish courts it is mainly to do with matters of importance to Muslims that are not covered by law (e.g. not being able to borrow or lend money with interest or things to do with marriage). It does not make any difference to anyone who is non Muslim. For Muslims the main concern is about whether those who go to the Sharia courts are always aware of their legal rights under ordinary law - those rights are not affected in any way by the Sharia law but sometimes they may not know about them.

Sharia law is only part of the legal system in a few Muslim countries - and some countries who used to have it in their legal system no longer do, so all this concern some have about Sharia law is not based on anything, it's going the other way. It is normally a non binding advisory law for people concerned about following the guidelines of their religion.

HONG KONG SECURITY LAW AT EARLY STAGE
This is still early stage. It is not going to make Hong Kong into just a part of mainland China but it is of concern for those who are pro democracy and free speech in Hong Kong, it is likely to be introduced into an annex to Hong Kong law and the overall mini constitution for the law in Hong Kong itself is not changed. That's why the Chinese say it still retains one country two systems.

The pro democracy people are most concerned by a provision in this proposal that seems to let the Chinese do some of the policing in Hong Kong. The biggest concern is for a section:

"When needed, relevant national security organs of the Central People's Government will set up agencies in Hong Kong to fulfil relevant duties to safeguard national security in accordance with the law."

Hong Kong has its own law enforcement agencies independent of China and the concern here is that it may lead to China having its own law enforcement in Hong Kong as well.

Hong Kong will still have its own laws. This means it will all be interpreted according to the legal framework of Hong Kong which is different. The Chinese are not changing that - Hong Kong will still be interpreting it all in its own legal system.

It is just a draft proposal at present and a lot will depend on the details as it is implemented. There is lots of room for ambiguity at this stage.

BBC has good article here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-52771718 See also

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-52762291

The things main things that get names are features on other planets, or the moon, and asteroids. Asteroids can be given almost any name by the discoverer sometimes done by contest e.g. here is how Bennu was named.

https://www.planetary.org/get-involved/contests/osirisrex/guidelines.html

But to do that you'd need to discover an asteroid or know someone who has - most are found by automated searches nowadays.