Timed to coincide with Republic Day on October 29, Turkey launched a massive transportation project: the opening of a railway tunnel underneath the Bosphorus Strait that has taken almost 10 years to construct. Marmaray (from the word Marmara, or the Sea of Marmara, and Ray – the word for rails) joined the old European and new Asian parts of Istanbul with underwater commuter trains. And so the dream of an Ottoman sultan from a century and a half ago was fulfilled.
Marmaray should help to relieve the densest Istanbul traffic. Travel time between the Asian and European sides of the Bosphorus will be reduced from half an hour (by ferry) or even an hour and a half (sitting in traffic on the bridges) to just four minutes. The first underwater tunnel to connect two continents in the world will carry 75,000 passengers an hour and almost 1 million passengers a day.

The lengthy U.S. economic recovery is accompanied by growth in economic indicators across the board, including in sales of motor vehicles, which have reached record levels. In order to keep pace with the increased demand, all assembly line facilities in the United States have maxed out their manufacturing capacity and are today producing more cars than ever before. In the first half of 2013 alone, 5.7 million cars were manufactured in the U.S., exceeding the same period last year by 5.9%. In addition, the American auto manufacturing capacity is beginning to return home from China.

Employees at the Pilsen Steel Mill are back to work, having stopped production in the middle of June. Half of the 900 plant’s employees are back at the machines again and the other half will resume within the next month. Full production is planned to start in late November. This was all possible thanks to financial support from the KKCG Investment Group, owned by billionaire Karel Komarek.

Since the mill shut down, the Czech press has been circulating a lot of rumors about the plant going bankrupt, which the Pilsen management has been trying in vain to refute. “The Czech investment group gave us a loan in early October, with which we re-started production,” said Pavel Ratislav, Director of Human Resources for Pilsen Steel. “Production is now gradually gaining momentum. All workflows are controlled by the creditors’ committee which sanctions important changes.”

An aging population and rise in unemployment have brought to light a new negative trend: Social contributions from the working population are no longer enough to pay benefits to pensioners – at least not in the amounts they have grown accustomed to.

Politicians are calling this phenomenon one “worthy of attention,” while pensioners are calling it “a catastrophe.” The first to sound the alarm was the province of Tarragona, where there were 262,550 working people and 154,144 pensioners in 2012. It has always been considered that the ideal ratio was 2:1 – two working people to one pensioner. In Tarragona, that figure is 1.7:1, which has already generated a budget deficit of €250 million per year. The province’s average pension is €826. Tarragona, like the rest of Spain, is accustomed to living well.

The world is changing before our very eyes. Even 15 years ago, it was reasonable to use the word “unipolarity” to talk about the power balance in politics and economics. Benchmarks for success in business were also set by Western companies. The structure of the present world order is much more diverse. The role of the locomotive of economic growth lies with developing countries, and companies that originated there are increasingly conquering heights set by Western businesses. BCG ranked 100 countries with emerging markets that have the chance to determine the shape of the global economy in the coming decades.

In recent years, developing countries have justifiably earned the title “driver of economic progress.” Already, their markets are voluminous and will be even more so in the foreseeable future, thanks to the constantly high rate of economic growth. At the same time, a national accumulation of wealth is taking place, as consumer savings grow in response to the increase in income. Overall, this leads to an improvement in the general welfare of the citizens in those countries. Thus, in 2012, private wealth grew 7.8% worldwide, mostly thanks to developing countries in Asia. Prosperity indicators in Asia (13.8%) and Latin America (10.5%) were significantly higher than the global average. Furthermore, BCG projects that by 2017, developing countries will account for 70% of all increases in private wealth.

For many years, China has been the most populous country on the planet. And the world’s most populous country has gradually become more and more important within the world economy. It is obvious that the country’s territorial and infrastructural needs will only continue to grow. In this light, China’s cooperation with its neighbors is a key issue. WEJ tried to answer the question of what goals China is trying to achieve in cooperating with Russia.

It is believed that when the Chinese pursue joint projects with the Russians, they are mainly interested in territorial space. In fact, the sparsely populated regions of Eastern Siberia would not seem to be the worst choices for Chinese investment. But Moscow is very cautious about the prospects of such investment, perhaps fearing that such projects may whet Beijing’s appetite for more.
 
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly recognized that one of his most important foreign policy achievements is the settlement of Russia’s border dispute with China. Russia has transferred to China an area of 170 square kilometers on the Tarabarov and Bolshoy Ussuriysky islands, at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers. This territory had been the subject of a serious dispute between the two countries at the end of the 1960s. By solving this old problem, Russia has deprived China of the opportunity to make new demands. At the same time, it has removed an item from the agenda of talks that could have adversely affected the prospects of Sino-Russian cooperation.