Weekly briefing: Asia's innovators and how to tell your policy story

Welcome to Apolitical’s briefing for the week of 23 July. Sign up here for a weekly email on how the world’s most pressing problems are being tackled.

Top Stories

Want to solve government’s biggest challenges? Invest in young kids. From stagnant social mobility to soaring levels of obesity, the seeds for many problems are sown at the start of life. Here’s three issues government can tackle by intervening early.
(Apolitical)

Western countries are spending billions on research but Asian innovators beat them to market. According to a report by the Centre for Advancing Innovation, the US and UK are producing less than half as many patents as South Korea — for the same investment.
(Apolitical)

Irish pensioners are teaching migrants to speak English. Older people are often stereotyped as xenophobic. But a community project in Ireland links isolated elderly people with new arrivals to the country for mutual benefit.
(Apolitical)

The UN has been ‘found wanting’ in its response to sex abuse allegations. So says UN Women’s Purna Sen, who is looking into the organisation’s record on harassment, abuse and rape. She spoke exclusively to Apolitical about her research.
(Apolitical)

Member Contribution of the Week

To get the public excited about your policies, you have to tell a great story. But how can policymakers go about crafting a compelling narrative? These five steps could help you capture citizens’ imagination.
(Michael D. Jones and Deserai Crow)

Evolving Cities

Charlotte, North Carolina is using basketball to boost minority businesses. The city will host a major NBA game in 2019 and has launched a mentoring and training scheme for minority-owned business that want to work with the NBA during that week.
(Governing)

Dallas, Texas is planting trees to curb overheating. In summer, parts of the city reach temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Some 1,000 trees will be placed in one of them to keep the sun at bay.
(Fast Company)

Gender Equality

New York will allow nurses to retire earlier. Workers in some male-dominated sectors like plumbing retire at 50 because they are deemed ‘physically taxing’, but nurses have to work until 55. The city will pay out $20.8million after a court found this is discriminatory.
(NBC)

India has scrapped a tax on sanitary pads following protests. Shoppers will no longer have to pay a 12% tax on the pads. Only around one in 10 women in India can afford sanitary pads, with many of the rest relying on reusable cloth rags.
(Financial Times)

In Pakistan, 13 transgender people are running for parliament in this week’s election. Laws introduced in March allow intersex people, eunuchs and trans men and women, many of whom face discrimination, to self-identify in official documents.
(The Guardian)

Health and Ageing

The latest Ebola outbreak was stopped in its tracks by efficient deployment of a new vaccine. The 2014-16 West African epidemic killed more than 11,000 people. But a 2018 outbreak in the DRC could be declared over this week with 29 dead.
(BBC)

England will give all 12- to 13-year-old boys the HPV vaccine. The vaccine, which guards against a group of sexually transmitted viruses that can increase cancer risk, is already offered to girls of the same age.
(BBC)

And finally

Margaret Thatcher’s government blacklisted ‘subversive’ civil servants. When the uncompromising ex-British PM was in power, security services surveilled 1,420 staff, among them 607 suspected communists and 45 alleged fascists.
(Civil Service World)

(Picture credit: Pexels)