Finde I Sharesbeiden Broker oderdeinerbank und van de Hoyte an mit ETFS zu Spahn Kapitalandarage Risiko Marketing Informat the Economist hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist.
I'm your host, Jason Palmer.
Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.
There's just something about companies from the Nordic countries.
Sure, there are the biggies like Ikea, but across the board, Nordic firms margins are bigger and their debt piles smaller.
Question is, can it last?
And the next in our series, the World Ahead, considers how democracy will fare in Asia in the coming year.
There are some good signs and some bad, but one part of the region looks particularly worrisome.
First up, though, another series of peace talks began in Qatar over the weekend.
But on the ground in Gaza, you'd hardly know that peace was on anyone's mind.
Israel's military struck more than 100 of what it called terror targets, saying they eliminated dozens of Hamas terrorists.
Gaza's health Ministry, run by Hamas, put the death toll on Saturday alone at nearly 90 fighters and civilians, some of them children.
It's all too familiar a story, but there is a sense that for better or for worse, something will change soon.
What we're seeing at present is more moves towards a ceasefire hostage release agreement.
Anshal Pfeffer is the Economist's Israel correspondent, based in Jerusalem.
We've been here so many times before in this dynamic for over a year now.
What's changed now is we have a time frame of two weeks before the inauguration of Donald Trump in which we have basically representatives of the outgoing and the incoming administration working together with Israelis, with the other parties like Egypt and Qatar, to try and have something tangible, some kind of deal in place by the time Joe Biden leaves the White House.
When you say moves on hostage release, what is the latest on that?
So on Saturday, Hamas put out A video of Liri Albag, a young Israeli soldier, a 19 year old woman who has been held now since October 7th in Gaza.
The video which seems to be proof that Liri Albag is still alive, she's one of the hostages whose parents have been very also active in calling upon the Israeli government and other governments to work harder to try and reach such a deal.