IT WAS A combination of things. An unusual feeling of depression. Constant forgetfulness. An irregular menstrual cycle. Lucy, a British woman in her early 40s, knew that something was wrong. Two years before she had been training at the gym five times a week. Now she could barely find the energy to exercise at all thanks to chronic insomnia, a new affliction. Her demeanour had shifted from one of cheeriness to constant anxiety. Her work and her home life were suffering as a result.

Unsure what was causing these changes, she visited her doctor. The physician blamed stress. She suggested Lucy return in a year. Frustrated, Lucy turned to the internet. Her research led her to believe that she was entering the transition into menopause. Menopause is the time in the middle of a woman’s life—which can begin in the early 40s—when her levels of hormones such as oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone plummet. This eventually causes her ovaries to stop producing eggs and her periods to cease. After a year without periods, a woman is considered to be menopausal. The symptoms of menopause can include hot flushes, depression, aches and pains, insomnia, anxiety and transient memory loss.

Lucy’s experience is unremarkable in two ways. First, every woman experiences menopause. Second, doctors all over the world often fail to provide...

THE WORLD’S climate experts, activists and officials were gathered in Madrid this week for the 25th annual UN climate talks. But the big news was unfolding far away in Brussels, where the European Commission’s new president, Ursula von der Leyen, barely 11 days in office, announced her eagerly awaited Green Deal. The 24-page document reads like a list of vows to transform Europe into a living demonstration of how a vast economy can both prosper and prioritise the health of the planet. It covers everything from housing and food to biodiversity, batteries, decarbonised steel, air pollution and, crucially, how the EU will spread its vision beyond its borders to the wider world. “Our goal,” declared Mrs von der Leyen, “is to reconcile the economy with the planet.” Her plan is large on ambition, but in many places frustratingly vague on detail.

Top billing goes to a pledge to make Europe carbon-neutral by 2050. That is no surprise. The goal was endorsed by the EU Parliament in November, a strategy for reaching it was published in 2018 and EU heads of state began debating it at this week’s summit meeting, which was getting under way as The Economist went to press. Mrs von der Leyen’s green opus promises to draft legislation that would enshrine the 2050 target by March 2020.

That would make the EU the...

AFTER MONTHS of talks, endless delays and a week of disruptive strikes, the French government finally unveiled on December 11th its long-promised pension reform. The good news is that it has decided to press ahead with its plans, including the abolition of regimes with special privileges, despite the biggest show of union force on the streets since President Emmanuel Macron took office in May 2017. The bad news is that the new system will push the full burden of the changes on to France’s younger generations.

In a speech that leaned studiously to the left, Edouard Philippe, the centre-right prime minister, described the new universal points-based system as a “fairer” system that will guarantee “social justice”. It will replace the current sprawl of 42 regimes, most of which have different rules. For those beginning their working life, the new rules will apply from 2022, and from 2025 for those already in work but currently under the age of 45. Older generations will keep the existing rules. Sliding transition rules will bring the new system fully into effect by 2037.

Under the new system the special regimes, which today allow train drivers to retire at the age of 50, will be abolished. Pensions for public-sector workers will be calculated according to the same (less favourable) rules as those in the private sector. The...

HAS RUSSIA quietly taken back control of Moldova? Many observers reckon that is what, in effect, happened in the tiny former Soviet republic in November, when a pro-Western government abruptly collapsed, to be replaced by a new one that leans firmly towards Moscow. There is even a rumour running round Chisinau, Moldova’s sleepy capital, that Aureliu Ciocoi, the new foreign minister, is planning to remove all the European flags from his ministry. Mr Ciocoi looks shocked when asked. The flags are going nowhere, he says, and there is to be “no change at all” in Moldova’s relations with the EU. However, since 2013 Russia has embargoed almost all Moldova’s wine and agricultural produce, and so his country wants “pragmatic relations” with Moscow.

Poverty makes it hard for Moldova to stand up for itself, and its economy has been looted for years, especially at times when governments claiming to be pro-European were in charge. Now, Mr Ciocoi says, Moldova’s problems are so dire that unless his government succeeds, in a decade the country could end up as a lot at Sotheby’s, a London auction house, “with a starting price of €1.”

Mr Ciocoi is not wrong to paint his country’s problems as existential. Emigration is now at such high levels, thanks to endemic corruption, a miserable economy and the lure of better-paid jobs in the EU,...

FINLAND NOW has the world’s youngest serving prime minister. On December 10th Sanna Marin (pictured, second from right), who is 34, was sworn in at the head of a coalition whose four other component parties are also led by women. Three of them are also in their 30s. Strikes toppled the previous prime minister last week.

THE STREETS of Barcelona twinkle with Christmas lights. The city council has quietly re-asphalted bits of roadway that were damaged by the nightly fires and barricades that lasted for a week in October, after nine Catalan separatist leaders were sentenced to long jail terms for their failed independence bid of 2017. The most unusual thing in Barcelona this week was a discreet meeting on December 10th between leaders from the Socialist party of Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s acting prime minister, and Esquerra, the strongest Catalan separatist party. Mr Sánchez is seeking the abstention of Esquerra’s 13 deputies in the national Congress. That would mean he could win the vote he needs to form a coalition government with Podemos, a party politically to the left of the Socialists.

It would, however, involve a double climb-down for the prime minister, and it highlights how Spain’s political deadlock has become intertwined with the stand-off over independence in Catalonia. Mr Sánchez won a plurality of seats in Congress at an election in April, but not a big one: only 123 of the 350. Over the summer he broke off desultory coalition talks with Podemos’s leader, Pablo Iglesias. Against the instincts of wiser heads in his party, he called a fresh election for November 10th to seek “a strong progressive government that doesn’t depend on separatists”,...

ON DECEMBER 9TH the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned Russia from major sporting events for four years. The ban will apply to next year’s Olympics in Tokyo, the 2022 winter Olympics in Beijing and that year’s football World Cup, to be held in Qatar. It follows the discovery that Russian officials are still covering up widespread cheating. Russia handed over computer files in January that were supposed to be a full account of past doping, which WADA thinks involved more than 1,000 athletes and was directed by government ministers. But WADA found the files had been doctored.

A four-year ban sounds like a stiff penalty. But it is full of loopholes. It applies only to “major” tournaments, which do not include such mega-events as next year’s European Championship in men’s football.

Even at competitions that WADA classifies as “major”, such as the World Cup, the ban could allow Russians to compete under a neutral flag. The fine print of the agency’s ruling specifies that athletes may take part as long as they have neither been named in the documents that the Russian officials handed over nor failed any drug tests. FIFA will probably allow Russians to play their qualification matches for the 2022 competition in their national colours. Only at the finals in Qatar will the team have to give up its flag and anthem.

...

THE OPENING ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 was meant to be the defining moment of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, showing off a resurgent Russia to the world and turbocharging his popularity at home. With a price tag of $50bn, he left nothing to chance. Russia doped its athletes and trumpeted their gold medals as though they were the spoils of war. Whipped up by the state propaganda machine, the celebration morphed into anti-Western hysteria; and the Sochi Olympics gave way, within days, to the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Donbas, in eastern Ukraine.

Six years on, the after-effects are catching up with the Kremlin. On December 9th the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned Russia from major international sport events for four years (see article). In a country where symbols matter more than substance this ban, despite its loopholes, comes as a huge humiliation. It came on the day that Mr Putin sat down with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, and the leaders of France and Germany, to negotiate a settlement to the Russia-sponsored war in Donbas that has claimed 13,000 lives.

The first “Normandy format” meeting for three years was shrouded in apprehension, partly caused by Emmanuel Macron’s new eagerness to build bridges with...