The news of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s resignation is causing despondence in Brussels. The announcement will throw Italy into months of political turmoil and risks ushering in a new far-right government in the next general election, which is scheduled for this fall. Draghi’s resignation caps off a week of drama in Rome that kicked off when the Five Star Movement, or 5SM—the largest party in Italy’s parliament and the bedrock of the prime minister’s unity coalition—announced that it would not take part in a confidence motion last week, effectively torpedoing Draghi’s government. Draghi initially offered to resign the premiership [...]
Radical Movements
In the second round of Colombia’s election last month, voters faced a choice between Gustavo Petro, a far-left former guerrilla, and Rodolfo Hernandez, a candidate regularly described as a “right-wing populist.” Many citizens who define themselves as centrist and wanted to vote for a moderate candidate found themselves struggling to decide which of these extremes was worse. Second-round polarization has become a common theme in Latin American presidential elections. In the past year, presidential candidates from ideological extremes in Chile, Peru and Colombia made it to second-round votes, while more traditional and centrist candidates missed the cut by large margins. [...]
On the morning of April 1, seven children were playing in the lush wheat fields of Afghanistan’s Marjah district, in the southern Helmand province, by tossing around a metal object. Moments later, it exploded. The blast claimed five of their lives, including the youngest in the group, a 5-year-old boy. “My daughter has not only lost her three sons, but also her senses,” Haji Abdul Salam, a 55-year-old farmer who lost two children and three grandchildren in the explosion, tells me at his home while attending to visitors there for the funeral. “She neither sleeps nor eats.” But Salam is [...]