Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about national drug policies in various countries around the world. Scotland is in the throes of a devastating drug crisis. Data released this past summer showed that the number of drug-related deaths in 2018 spiked to nearly 1,200—a 27 percent increase over the previous year. Scotland’s drug-related fatality rate is three times higher than that of England and Wales, and is now on par with that of the United States on a per capita basis, according to The Guardian. In an interview, Catriona Matheson, professor in substance use at the [...]
With every day, a new thread seems to emerge in the ongoing impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, which centers on Trump’s efforts to pressure the government of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, the former vice president and now Democratic presidential candidate. According to multiple whistleblowers and a released rough transcript of a July 25 phone call, Trump urged his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Biden. The request put Zelensky in a tough position, caught between his need for American support to fight a war in eastern Ukraine against Russia-backed separatists, and his desire to avoid [...]
A left-leaning anti-establishment party scored an upset victory in parliamentary elections in Kosovo last weekend, as voters strongly rebuked the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo, or PDK, which had been in power since the country declared independence in 2008. The left-wing Albanian nationalist Self-Determination Movement, or Vetevendosje, took a plurality of 26 percent, and the more mainstream Democratic League of Kosovo finished a close second. Vetevendosje leader Albin Kurti, a former political dissident, will now try to form a coalition government, but how exactly he will do so is unclear, says Aleksandar Kocic, a Serbian-born journalist and lecturer in journalism [...]
