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Global food security deteriorated between 2019 and 2022, according to the latest Global Food Security Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The index measures the affordability, availability, quality and safety, as well as sustainability and adaptation of food across 68 indicators in 113 countries. Finland, Ireland and Norway were named as the countries with the highest levels of food security in 2022, while Yemen, Haiti and Syria had the lowest. The gap between the best and worst performers has been growing since 2019, highlighting the worsening state of inequality in the global food system. The United States comes in rank 13 out of 113, with a score of 78.0. Food security declined the most drastically between 2022 and 2012 in Syria, falling a total of 10.5 points. It also worsened in nine other countries in that time frame, the worst of which were Haiti (-5.4), Venezuela (-4.9), Colombia (-2.2) and Zambia (-1.8). According to the EIU, the food system’s weakening is due to a number of overlapping risks, including volatility in agricultural production, scarcity of natural resources, increasing economic inequality, a rising number of climate-induced shocks such as droughts and floods, as well as trade and supply-chain volatility. Armed conflict too is strongly linked to lower food security scores, affecting not only supply-chain infrastructure but also leading to water, soil or land contamination.

Autonomous driving, either driverless or with a human safety driver in place, is still mostly confined to urban testing grounds on the U.S. West Coast. However, the number of permits issued for autonomous vehicle (AV) testing in California over the past two years is potential grounds for an expansion into other states. As data from the California Department of Motor Vehicles shows, 1,603 AVs were registered as test-ready in 2023, an increase of 430 cars or 37 percent compared to 2021. However, not all permits are issued equally. The California DMV's Disengagement Reports for 2023 showed that 77 percent of all permits were issued to AVs run by three companies: Cruise, Waymo and Zoox, which had 510, 438 and 284 vehicles registered. These might not be household names for the uninitiated, but their parent companies should ring a bell. Cruise is backed by legacy automaker General Motors, Waymo and Zoox are subsidiaries of Alphabet Inc. and Amazon, respectively. Other notable companies testing autonomous driving technologies in 2023 were Mercedes with 79 vehicles and Apple with 67 road-ready AVs. Nuro, a Californian start-up that cut 50 percent of its staff between November 2022 and May 2023, was also featured with 98 cars. Chinese AV pioneer AutoX, which became the second company to receive a testing permit for driverless cars in California in 2021, had 44 vehicles on Californian roads in 2023. Ride-hailing service Lyft had 23 permits in 2021. However, for the period covering December 2022 to November 2023, it didn't make use of said permits. NVIDIA's small fleet of six cars in 2021 also makes no appearance in 2023 reports. While some industry pundits see driverless cars as the future of urban transportation, critics cite safety concerns as a major roadblock to wider AV implementation. In October 2023, Cruise's permit for testing driverless cars was suspended indefinitely in San Francisco after an AV collided with a pedestrian and trapped her under the car, according to reporting by The Verge. 35 companies currently hold permits for testing robotaxis with human safety drivers, while only six companies, Apollo, AutoX, Nuro, Waymo, WeRide and Zoox, have permits to test driverless AVs on California's roads. Most of these driverless AVs are only allowed to be tested in specific regions like San Francisco, San Jose or Santa Clara. Waymo is the only company with permits to operate in Los Angeles County.

Indian unveiled its second nuclear-powered submarine last week in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. The domestically produced vessel is armed with ballistic missiles that have a striking range of 750 kilometers, the South China Morning Post reports. Its two submarines, the first having been launched in 2009, give the country the ability to now launch nuclear weapons from land, air and sea - an important factor in its deterrence strategy, according to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. Data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies' publication The Military Balance shows that the U.S. has by far the largest nuclear-powered fleet worldwide at 66. Russia has less than half the number of nuclear-powered submarines, around 30, while China had 12 at the start of 2024. Nuclear-powered submarines do not necessarily mean nuclear-armed but those fuelled by a nuclear reactor rather than by diesel-electric propulsion. However, the powerful vessels are often also used for this purpose. To bolster Australia’s naval defense amidst Western nations’ mounting anxiety over China’s military expansion, the U.S. agreed last year to sell the country three U.S. Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines in the early 2030s, and two more at a later point if needed. Beijing criticized the move, saying it was encouraging an arms race. China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin warned that the three countries are walking “further and further down the path of error and danger.” The Guardian reports that under the new so-called Aukus partnership, the UK too could see a considerable increase in its deep sea vessels. Brazil will be another country acquiring nuclear-powered submarines in the future. It plans to start the construction of a first one in 2025 as part of a partnership with France.

A recent poll conducted by Reuters among 16 property market experts suggests that house prices in India will rise by 7.8 percent in the current year, almost double the increase for 2023. According to the experts surveyed, this is mostly driven by increasing demand for luxury residential real estate, while the spiking demand for more affordable housing is generally not forecast to be satisfied due to lower profit margins for real estate developers. Zooming in on the eight biggest cities and metropolitan areas, significant increases in house prices are exhibited in all but two areas. This is evident in the most recent Housing Price Tracker by the Indian real estate trade association CREDAI, published in conjunction with Colliers and Liases Foras. The tracker shows that in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and the National Capital Region (NCR), a multi-state metropolitan area encompassing the country's capital Delhi as well as other cities like Faridabad and Gurugram, average house prices have risen by upwards of 50 percent in the second quarter of 2024 compared to the period of January to March 2019. On the other side of the spectrum, prices in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region were on the same level as five years prior. However, this doesn't mean that prices were constant in the past quarters, but rather that the devaluation of housing stopped. For example, in the second quarter of 2023 average house prices in Mumbai stood five percent lower than in Q1 2019. Looking at the year-over-year development, Delhi and the NCR saw the highest increase in house prices, rising 30 percent from the second quarter of 2023, largely driven by luxury real estate projects. The NCR is followed by Bengaluru (28 percent year-over-year change), Ahmedabad (13 percent year-over-year change) and Pune (13 percent year-over-year change), with the rest of the top 8 cities and metropolitan regions staying significantly below the ten percent threshold.

Saudi Arabia is planning to build a two-kilometer-high skyscraper on a site north of the capital city of Riyadh. If completed, it will be the world’s highest building. According to architecture and design magazine Dezeen, UK studio Foster + Partners is the primary architecture firm on the proposal. As it stands, the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building worldwide at 828 meters (2,717ft). Based in Dubai, the UAE, the 163-stored building was completed in 2010. In second place comes the Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at 679 m (2,227 ft), followed by the Shanghai Tower in Shanghai, China at 632 m (2,073 ft). When it comes to the world’s highest buildings, data from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat shows that Asia and the Middle East are winning the race to the skies. Out of this roundup, only one skyscraper, the One World Trade Center in New York City, is located outside of these two regions. China is particularly well represented, as it is home to five of the top 10 tallest buildings. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat database, the Burj Khalifa would be trumped by the proposed Burj Mubarak Al Kabir, which is planned to be built in Kuwait City, with a height of 1,001 m (3,284 ft) and 234 floors. The completion date is not published yet.

Megaprojects have been growing larger globally and many of them have recently centered on the Arab Gulf Region. Construction software company 1Build estimates that before the end of the decade, the world will see the first construction megaproject with a cost estimation exceeding $1 trillion. Right now, there are several projects underway that exceed the size of $100 billion - despite the fact that $10 billion construction proposals were considered to be megaproject just some years ago. Out of all nine ongoing megaprojects identified by 1Build, International Construction Magazine and Construction Review to cost $100 billion or more, four were being built in Arab Gulf States. This includes the ambitious project of Neom City, actually a collection of futuristic towns and cities which are being built in Northwestern Saudi Arabia. One of the developments, The Line, has received the most attention for being planned as a completely enclosed, linear city. The project was recently scaled back to a length of just 2.4 kilometers/1.5 miles (and a width of 200 meters/height of 500 meters). It is projected to house around 300,000 people by 2030 - just a fractions of its original length. Other ongoing megaprojects on the Gulf are King Abdullah Economic City North of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Silk City in Northern Kuwait, which will be home to the world's future tallest building. More expensive than Neom City is the EU's Trans-European Transport Network. The large-scale infrastructure upgrade estimated to cost $600 billion includes the building of railway lines, roads, shipping routes and related structures in EU member countries to improve long-distance transport. Projects on the peninsular have also suffered a setbacks, like the $250 billion, 2,000 km project to connecting GCC member countries by rail. Initially to be completed by 2018, it was halted, but planning has since resumed. A megaproject in the region that was partially canceled is entertainment and tourism complex Dubailand, initially scheduled to cost $64 billion.

Take a look at the facts and figures behind some of the stories that were trending over the past month. Topics that caught notable attention during August include the Stock sell-offs, TSMC breaks ground on new fab, Tech layoffs, the Paris Olympics and Mpox.

The percentage of the foreign-born population differs widely within the OECD - OCDE and two Asian nations are finding themselves well towards the bottom of the ranking. Japan and South Korea – two countries long known for their at-times negative stance on migration – only boast foreign-born populations of 2.2 and 3.5 percent, recently. Only Mexico scored lower among the 38 countries ranked at 1 percent, while Poland's figure was 2.5 percent. This scenario is flipped on its head in European nations Luxembourg and Switzerland, which had the highest score in the ranking. A countries surprisingly below the OECD average of 14.0 percent was France at 12.7 percent, while the United States hit the average rate.

New York City has been named the world's most expensive place to build, with costs reaching $5,723 per square meter, according to the Turner & Townsend International Construction Market Survey. This marks a 5% increase from last year, keeping NYC at the top for the second consecutive year. San Francisco follows closely at $5,489 per m². Six of the top eight most expensive cities to build in are in the U.S., driven by high labor, machinery, and equipment costs. Hong Kong and London rank ninth and tenth, while Tokyo has dropped off the list due to the yen's devaluation and moderate economic growth.

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