Under a pledge made in 2009 in Copenhagen, the rich countries are supposed to give $100-billion annually to poor nations from 2020. This money is to be used in climate change mitigation. The 38 developed countries — who had signed the vow back then — on Tuesday said that they were “confident” of meeting the target. There was initial …

  In a democracy, the “people” are the supreme arbiters, and their wisdom speaks through the electoral process. Such is the assumption on which the modern world has been built since God and monarchs began to fade from the scene. Lately, however, the wisdom of the people has felt a bit off-key. In one country after another, from the Philippines …

  Of an estimated 2.6 billion mobile-phone owners in low- and middle-income countries last year, 1.4 billion were men and 1.2 were women, according to a study conducted for the mobile industry trade group GSMA. Most of that mobile-phone gender gap was concentrated in just one country, India, where 114 million fewer women than men had phones. This leads to …