The growing popular discontent over China’s “zero COVID” restrictions has now erupted into public protests in cities across the country. The unrest comes in response to a number of unrelated tragic incidents that have brought to the surface tensions surrounding lockdown-driven economic precarity among Chinese citizens.
The 2022 FIFA World Cup, one of the biggest international sporting events, is being held for the first time in the Middle East, with Qatar as the host nation. My experience attending the tournament underlines the economic, political and social tensions that this World Cup has put on prominent display.
After much foot-dragging, the European Commission proposed a cap on the price it will pay for natural gas yesterday. Fifteen of the union’s members had proposed such a cap to limit Russian energy revenues due to spiking gas prices since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, but a group of members led by Germany are opposed to it.
As the United Nations COP27 Climate Change Conference closed Sunday, Egypt, this year’s host, hailed the agreements brokered there as a success. But there continues to be a gap between the climate-change commitments most countries in the Middle East and North Africa have formally expressed and their actual behavior.
Multilateralism has suffered in the past six years, but for those who consider it to be as essential as it is imperfect, the past week offers some cause for optimism. It’s premature to declare that multilateralism “is back.” But if it does enjoy a resurgence, the past week could be the moment its fortunes began to turn around.
Senegalese President Macky Sall, who also serves as the African Union’s rotating chairperson, announced on Twitter that the AU has applied to join the G-20. Many other African leaders pushed for more representation at the forum, but it’s unclear that an AU seat at G-20 table would offer the benefits they seek.
As the U.N. COP27 Climate Change Summit enters its final days, all eyes are on delegations from rich, industrialized countries to see if they will continue to resist demands from developing countries in the Global South for “loss and damage” payments, which would compensate them for the impacts of climate change.
As encouraging as the three-hour meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping was, it is but one stopping point in what promises to be a long and difficult road ahead for bilateral relations between the U.S. and China, especially against the backdrop of competition that characterizes the relationship.
The U.N. COP27 Climate Change Summit has entered its final week, but the agenda for the remainder of the conference threatens to be overshadowed by concerns over Egypt’s poor human rights record, especially because of the restrictions Egyptian authorities have placed on the participation of civil society groups at the summit.
The U.N. COP27 Climate Change Conference kicked off in Egypt this week, capping off a year of contrasts when it comes to climate action. On one hand, several states dramatically increased their climate ambitions. On the other, a series of extreme weather events reinforced the sense of urgency over the climate crisis.
African delegates arrived at the U.N. COP27 Climate Change Conference with little patience for more pledges that they believe will likely go unrealized, especially as many African countries experience extreme climate events while rich, industrialized nations are responsible for the lion’s share of historical global carbon emissions.
As the remaining results of this week’s midterm congressional elections in the U.S. continue to trickle in, the EU’s leadership is assessing the outcome’s implications for the trans-Atlantic relationship, now that the opposition Republican Party appears on track to win back control of at least one, if not both, chambers of Congress.
Many observers have raised questions about whether Elon Musk’s cozy business ties to Chinese politicians will create conflicts of interest when it comes to how Twitter handles issues like account verification, data privacy and security, and content moderation to prohibit harassment campaigns against activists and dissidents.
Israel’s fifth parliamentary election in four years secured a dramatic political comeback for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is set to form a government that will include the ultra-nationalist Religious Zionism. The coalition already threatens to undermine Israel’s partnerships with Gulf States and the U.S.
Israeli voters went to the polls for the fifth time since 2019 on Tuesday, in elections that many expected to deliver the same kind of “Groundhog Day” outcome of indecisive deadlock that characterized the previous four ballots. Instead, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured a stunning political comeback, overcoming his legal jeopardy stemming from corruption trials and a toxic personal brand that had splintered the Israeli right to win an outright majority. For the past three years, opposition to Netanyahu had driven the formation of an “anyone but Bibi” coalition among political factions that otherwise had little to nothing in […]
Kenyan President William Ruto officially announced the deployment of Kenyan troops to eastern Congo as part of an East African regional force tasked with protecting civilians and bringing peace to the region. But there has been little consideration about the length of the deployment and what its main strategic objectives are.
Italy’s new far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is in Brussels today for her first meetings with EU leaders. Such pro forma courtesy visits to Brussels are commonplace, but hers raises the question of how the bloc’s other leaders will manage the optics of working closely with Italy’s first far-right leader since World War II.