Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Every year as many as 20 million people get typhoid fever, about 160,000 die, most of them

children, and the bacteria that cause it are increasingly resistant to antibiotics. We

take a look at a promising new vaccine. And we hop on the world's shortest scheduled

flight, which could soon also be the world's greenest. It takes longer to describe the

journey than to make it. But first, for the past year, American officials and the Afghan

militants of the Taliban have been holding talks.

The goal has been to help Afghans achieve peace. Afghans are yearning for peace. There

have been war in that country for 40 years.

The American envoy to the negotiations, Zalmeq Halilzad, spoke last month to the Georgetown

Institute for Women, Peace and Security about the goal of ending America's longest conflict.

We also have been there involving a war for some 18 years. We would like to end this

war. We associate ourselves with the aspirations of the Afghan people.

And this week in Qatar, there was news of a breakthrough. Mr. Halilzad declared the

two sides had made excellent progress towards the deal.

The essence of it is two things. America is going to pull out its troops, lots of them

to begin with, and then the rest on some kind of schedule that will be public and will

have probably some conditions attached.

Shashank Joshi is the economist's defense editor.

In return, the Taliban will agree to sever their ties to terrorist organizations, international

terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, and they will agree that Afghanistan won't be

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