Politics
Trump Drops Greenland Tariff Threat After NATO Talks in Davos
Donald Trump has stepped back from one of the most extraordinary disputes of his second presidency. After repeatedly insisting that the United States needed to acquire Greenland, refusing initially to rule out coercive measures and…
Myanmar Military-Backed Party Sweeps Election Held Amid Civil War
Myanmar’s first general election since the 2021 military coup has ended almost exactly as expected. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has won an overwhelming parliamentary majority after voting was conducted in three…
Iran Protest Crackdown Deepens as Government Shuts Down Internet
Iran’s economic protests have developed into something much more serious than the demonstrations I wrote about two weeks ago. What began in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar over the collapse of the rial and rising living costs…
US Forces Capture Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela Raid
The United States has crossed a threshold in Latin America that would have seemed almost unimaginable a year ago. On 3 January, American special forces entered Caracas in Operation Absolute Resolve, captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás…
Iran Protests Spread as Currency Collapse Turns Into a Crisis of Political Legitimacy
Iran has entered 2026 facing another serious wave of anti-government protests, but this one began somewhere politically significant: Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. Shopkeepers began closing businesses and demonstrating in late December after the Iranian rial collapsed…
Israel Becomes First Country to Recognise Somaliland as Independent State
Israel has become the first country in the world formally to recognise Somaliland as an independent sovereign state, breaking a diplomatic isolation that has lasted more than three decades. Somaliland declared independence from Somalia in…
Trump and Zelenskyy Say Ukraine Peace Deal Is Close but Territory Remains Unresolved
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have ended another round of talks at Mar-a-Lago saying that a framework for ending the Russia-Ukraine war is closer than at any previous point in Trump’s second presidency. Trump said…
EU Agrees €90 Billion Ukraine Loan but Stops Short of Seizing Russian Assets
European leaders have agreed to provide Ukraine with a €90 billion loan for 2026 and 2027, giving Kyiv a crucial financial lifeline as Russia’s war approaches its fifth year. The agreement reached at this week’s…
José Antonio Kast Wins Chile Presidency in Sharp Rightward Shift
Chile has elected José Antonio Kast president, completing one of the sharpest political reversals in Latin America this year. Kast defeated Jeannette Jara, the Communist Party member and former labour minister representing the governing left,…
Romania Water Crisis Leaves More Than 100,000 Without Safe Tap Water
More than 100,000 people in Romania’s Prahova and Dâmbovița counties have spent much of the past week without normal access to drinking water after a serious failure around the Paltinu reservoir and Voila treatment plant.
Trump Tightens Immigration Restrictions After Washington National Guard Shooting
Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has entered a new phase after the 26 November shooting of two West Virginia National Guard members in Washington, D.C., which authorities are investigating as a targeted attack. One Guard member,…
G20 Summit in Johannesburg Exposes a Growing Split Over the Global Economic Order
The G20 summit in Johannesburg this weekend was supposed to demonstrate the growing influence of the Global South in international economic governance. It was the first G20 leaders’ summit held on African soil, hosted by…
