BEIJING China’s ambitions to have a major hand in Afghanistan’s stability and development under the Taliban, while boosting its own stature, will be on display at a pair of multinational meetings it is hosting starting Wednesday.
A bellicose Russia, shorn of its empire and suffused with resentment, is being led by a leader intent on payback for the wrongs that he believes were inflicted upon his nation after the end of the Cold War by vengeful and unscrupulous Western powers.
Welcome to Friday, where G7 leaders meet for crunch talks on Ukraine, Africa sees its first case of polio in five years and wow that’s one big strawberry. We also take a look at the way some countries around the world are dealing with witch hunts (the literal kind) both past and present.
Western states are taking democratic governance for granted and responding feebly to threats in their midst. With the crisis at the Ukraine-Russia border coming to a head, the 1930s offer lessons on the dangers of complacency in the face of a kind of semi-democracy.