Thirty years ago, the former communist country of Czechoslovakia split in two. The event was called the “Velvet Divorce” because it was an amicable divorce between two nations whose association dated back to the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, as the BBC recounted....
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Natural gas is changing the Eastern Mediterranean. It could also shake up the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. As the Middle East Institute outlined in a recent report, governments in southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa have been struggling to develop new natural gas fields since long...
Read full story →The former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, might finally be planning to return to his native country after decamping for Florida in late December, shortly before his successor, the now incumbent Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, took the oath of office. Bolsonaro’s time in...
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China recently lifted mandatory quarantining for visitors, ending three years of travel restrictions designed to prevent Covid infections. The move was the latest easing of anti-Covid measures in the country, which was rocked last month by protests against lockdowns, as the Council on Foreign Relations...
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Kazakhstan recently memorialized the first anniversary of Bloody January, the term for the four days of civil unrest and police clashes a year ago that led to the deaths of almost 240 people before Russian forces intervened and restored order. “It was a time of trial...
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Andrej Babis is a billionaire agricultural magnate and former Czech prime minister who is currently a leading candidate for the presidency of his central European country when the first round of voting starts on Jan. 13. At the same time, Reuters reported, the 68-year-old populist is...
Read full story →On Jan. 1, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in as the new president of Brazil. A week later, supporters of his opponent, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, stormed Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Presidential Palace to try to stop the changing of...
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Belgian authorities have arrested a vice president of the European Parliament and jailed her, detained almost a dozen others and raided parliamentarians’ apartments and offices, seizing $1.6 million in cash. All this is part of a major scandal known as “Qatargate” that has erupted in the...
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Controversially tough-on-crime Rodrigo Duterte is no longer president of the Philippines. But, in an echo of protests that occurred when Duterte was in power between June 2016 and June 2022, demonstrators recently took to the streets of the Filipino capital, Manila, to protest against violence...
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Al Qaeda and Islamic State extremists are gaining a foothold in Africa as the Russian-Ukrainian war, the pandemic and economic woes preoccupy the rest of the world. Benin in West Africa is among the hardest hit. Jihadist attacks in Benin increased to 25 between July and...
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Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister of Israel again in late December, his sixth time in the job. His coalition, widely described as the country’s most hardline and right-wing government ever, contains a self-described “anti-Arab” party and is quickly moving to secure a far-right agenda, wrote...
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The throngs that crowded Buenos Aires and other Argentine cities after the South American country’s World Cup victory testified to a vibrant country that can field world-class athletic teams, as a photo essay in the Atlantic portrayed. But the unorganized jubilation also led to unfortunate...
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The Iranian government’s crackdown on free speech and the free flow of information has led protesters who are challenging the country’s Islamic clerics to smuggle Starlink satellite dishes into the country. Manufactured by a subdivision of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, the devices provide...
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The New Year will begin with two pressing crises that could upend the international order: the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, and the coronavirus pandemic in China. As the Economist noted, Ukraine has a fighting chance against Russia in 2023. Ukraine’s recent counteroffensive shocked Russia...
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It was hard to watch Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent address to the US Congress and not conclude that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the most important geopolitical event of 2022. In his address, Zelenskyy compared the war to a struggle between good democracy and evil despotism,...
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Pakistani and Indian diplomats recently traded barbs over who is a sponsor of terrorism, the Associated Press wrote. The kerfuffle was important because, as the Council on Foreign Relations explained, the two South Asian countries are nuclear powers that have fought wars in the past,...
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Somali government forces and local militias recently won a pitched battle against al-Shabab, the al Qaeda-linked terrorist group that has sown fear and violence throughout the Horn of Africa for years. The allied forces managed to kill around 700 militants and push the group out...
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Indonesia wants to auction off development rights for more than 100 islands spread out among 25,000 acres that offer some of the most biodiverse areas of the planet. The New York arm of auction house Sotheby’s was planning to accept bids for the opportunity to develop...
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Foreign tourists were recently stranded at Machu Picchu, the 15th-century Incan citadel and UNESCO World Heritage Site, CNN wrote, amid a major political crisis in Peru. Officials declared a state of emergency, reported the Associated Press, shutting public transportation amid violent protests over the fate...
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[featurecontent2] Russian soldiers have been building trenches on the Black Sea coast of the Crimean Peninsula, a Ukrainian territory Russia invaded and illegally annexed almost nine years ago in a move that now clearly presaged the wider war. The trenches run in a zigzag pattern that runs...
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