Articles in English

A vendor at an open-air market in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last month. (Tiksa Negeri/Reuters)

MundoÁfrica

The United States, Mexico and Canada trade with one another under a pact that replaced the long-standing North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. The Europeans have their single market and common currency. Southeast Asian countries have a free-trade agreement. And 11 Pacific Rim countries have formed their own free-trade group with the unwieldy acronym CPTPP.

But what stands to be the behemoth of global trade pacts is one you’ve probably not heard of: the African Continental Free Trade Area, or AfCFTA.

Its scope is enormous, comprising 54 countries, 1.3 billion people and a combined gross domestic product of $3.4 trillion.…  Seguir leyendo »

Israeli military personnel inspect the apparent remains of an Iranian ballistic missile near Arad, Israel, April 2024. Amir Cohen / Reuters

MundoOriente Próximo

The volley of attacks and counterattacks between Iran and Israel in the first two weeks of April drastically changed the strategic landscape in the Middle East. On April 1, an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders, including two generals. Two weeks later, Iran retaliated with a barrage of drones and missiles, almost all of which were intercepted. Israel swiftly responded with its own drone and missile attack on an airbase in Iran. The exchange brought the shadow war the two countries have been fighting for more than a decade into the open.…  Seguir leyendo »

A suspect from the Crocus City Hall attack in court in Moscow, March 2024. Yulia Morozova / Reuters

MundoAsiaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional,

In March, terrorists affiliated with Islamic State Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, attacked Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, killing 145 people and wounding several hundred. The authorities swiftly arrested 12 young men, all of whom were from Tajikistan, the most southern and poorest republic of the former Soviet Union. Tajikistan’s economy is moribund, and the combination of a low growth rate and a youthful population has created an immense diaspora: at least a quarter of Tajikistan’s working-age men live abroad. The country they left behind is repressive, with a government as hostile to many forms of Islam as it is to any signs of dissent.…  Seguir leyendo »

Aerial view showing the construction works in the area where the Chinese company Cosco Shipping is building a port in Chancay, some 80 km north of Lima, on August 22, 2023. Ernesto Benavides/AFP via Getty Images

MundoAméricaEuropa, ,

Pity the Peruvian negotiators who, five years ago, signed an agreement with the Chinese giant Cosco Shipping Ports. The agreement was about the Port of Chancay, located near Lima, which was to become a megaport and “the gateway from South America to Asia”, as one Cosco manager told The Associated Press. But now, as the massive port nears completion, an “administrative error” by unnamed officials in Peru has given Cosco Shipping Ports exclusivity over operations at the Port of Chancay, the Peruvian port authority (APN) announced in March. Other infrastructure operators still hoping for large Chinese investments should pay heed.

That’s bad news, because the two-terminal construction is be completed later this year, and Peru has great expectations.…  Seguir leyendo »

Journalists protest in support of Palestinians in front of the Egypt Journalists Syndicate in Cairo, Egypt, on December 13, 2023. (Photo by Mahmoud Elkhwas/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

MundoOriente Próximo,

So far, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) operation in Rafah remains ‘ limited’, meaning it is still under the threshold of a major military incursion like the previous bloody assaults on Jabaliya, Gaza City, and Khan Younis.

This should be good news for Egypt’s security. However, the reality is far from it. The operation, launched on 7 May, creates two major threats for Egypt.

Refugees

The first is a potential mass exodus of Palestinian refugees into Sinai. For Egypt, this has been a ‘ red line’ since the start of the war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government seems to take Cairo’s concerns seriously.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Vladimir Putin arrives to review honour guards following his inauguration ceremony at the Kremlin's Sobornaya Square in Moscow on 7 May, 2024. (Photo by RAMIL SITDIKOV/POOL/AFP via Getty images)

Europa

On 7 May, Vladimir Putin was inaugurated for his fifth presidential term. The ceremony took place in a very different context from his previous inaugurations, with a war raging and the army rattling its nuclear sabre.

Team Navalny and Proekt (an independent Russian investigative journalism outlet) released new footage of ‘Putin’s Palace’ on the Black Sea to coincide with the event – but its impact will be negligible. With their network destroyed, Navalny dead, and the war in Ukraine ongoing, anti-corruption investigations have long lost their effectiveness.

Russian presidents appoint new governments at the start of each presidential term – including a new prime minister.…  Seguir leyendo »

Firefighters put out a fire in a destroyed house in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on May 3 after it was struck by a Russian bomb. (Sergey Bobok/AFP/Getty Images)

Europa, , ,

Ever since Ukraine’s second-largest city repelled Russia’s invasion attempt in the early months of 2022, Kharkiv has stood as a national success story in the grueling war with its larger neighbor. Against overwhelming odds, Ukrainian forces pushed back the attackers and denied Russian President Vladimir Putin one of his key early war aims. In the midst of that fight, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov told me in an interview he was determined to keep his city free — which was not a given at the time.

Two years after that victory, however, Terekhov leads Kharkiv as it once again faces an existential threat.…  Seguir leyendo »

A woman stands with an Israeli flag during a two-minute siren in memory of victims of the Holocaust, in Jerusalem, May 6. (Ohad Zwigenberg/AP)

MundoOriente Próximo,

As Israel marks its 76th anniversary this week under the shadow of the Oct. 7 massacre and the Israel-Gaza war, the country’s underlying Zionist ideology is being called into question. Various groups distort and weaponize the term “Zionism”, depicting it as a malignant form of tribalism or even racism. To understand current developments in Israel, as well as the country’s tumultuous history, it is necessary to clarify what Zionism has really meant over its 150 years of existence.

Born in the late 19th century, modern Zionism is a national movement similar to the ones that arose during the same period among Greeks, Poles and many other peoples.…  Seguir leyendo »

A Ukrainian serviceman at a press conference of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Kyiv, April 2024. Thomas Peter / Reuters

InternacionalOTAN

Last month, NATO, the world’s most successful military alliance, celebrated its 75th anniversary. Some fear that it may have been its last anniversary with the United States playing a leading role. Former U.S. President Donald Trump still views the alliance as obsolete. If reelected, he says he would encourage Russian leaders to do “whatever the hell they want” to member states that do not pay what he considers to be enough for defense. A second Trump presidency could have dire implications for European security.

Trump’s defenders argue that he is bluffing to pressure Europe into spending more on defense. But former U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

Palestinian children stand in a camp for displaced people in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip in April. AFP/Getty Images

MundoOriente Próximo

Note: This article includes descriptions of disturbing impacts of violence.

A child shrieks in pain in a medical tent at a field clinic in southern Gaza. He’s 7, with severe burns on his back that are being cleaned and slathered with balm. It’s an excruciating process that would be done under anesthesia, in the sterile setting of a hospital, in ideal circumstances. But after nearly seven months of bombing and shelling in Gaza, conditions of any sort have ceased to be even adequate, let alone ideal.

I’m in Gaza on a humanitarian mission with my charity, International Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance, which I established in 2015 when I was still a senior correspondent for CNN.…  Seguir leyendo »

Assistance from AI will allow programmers to see computer code anew. Photograph: Science Photo Library/Alamy

ReflexionesNuevas Tecnologías

When digital computers were invented, the first task was to instruct them to do what we wanted. The problem was that the machines didn’t understand English – they only knew ones and zeros. You could program them with long sequences of these two digits and if you got the sequence right then the machines would do what you wanted. But life’s too short for composing infinite strings of ones and zeros, so we began designing programming languages that allowed us to express our wishes in a human-readable form that could then be translated (by a piece of software called a “compiler”) into terms that machines could understand and obey.…  Seguir leyendo »

Katerina, left, stands with relatives holding flowers at her parents' funeral in Hroza, Ukraine, in October. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post). (Heidi Levine/FTWP)

Europa, , ,

Six-year-old Renat and 10-year-old Varvara were living in Mariupol — the city wiped from the face of the Earth by Russian bombing — when they were sent to an orphanage in Russia. They were torn from their mother, who had been taken prisoner.

Desperate, Renat and Varvara’s grandmother knocked on every door, searched every inch of land to find her missing loved ones. While their mother was eventually brought back to Ukraine via a prisoner swap, it took nine months and the assistance of the Ukrainian authorities for the grandmother to bring back her grandchildren. She even crossed enemy lines to rescue them.…  Seguir leyendo »

An Egyptian security detail escorting the UN Secretary General at the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, Sinai, October 20, 2023. Los Salah/AFP/Getty Images

MundoOriente Próximo,

In February satellite photographs of a new militarized buffer zone along Egypt’s border with Gaza circulated online. The Egyptian government was silent about the matter for a few days, then said that the area was being prepared so that aid trucks could enter the besieged Palestinian territory through the Rafah border crossing. Unnamed Egyptian officials also told NPR and other media outlets that the government planned to contain up to 150,000 people there in case of a mass breach by Palestinians trying to escape Israeli assaults.

From October until May Israel systematically pushed Palestinians from across Gaza southwards into Rafah, against the refortified Egyptian border, where 1.3 million people, 600,000 of whom are children, now shelter, mostly living in tents.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaInternacionalEconomía

On separate visits to Beijing last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen bore a common message: Chinese manufacturing overcapacity is flooding global markets with cheap Chinese exports, distorting world trade and leaving American businesses and workers struggling to compete.

Not surprisingly, China’s leaders did not like what they heard, and they didn’t budge. They can’t. Years of erratic and irresponsible policies, excessive Communist Party control and undelivered promises of reform have created a dead-end Chinese economy of weak domestic consumer demand and slowing growth. The only way that China’s leaders can see to pull themselves out of this hole is to fall back on pumping out exports.…  Seguir leyendo »

Britain's Foreign Secretary David Cameron walks past a display of destroyed Russian military vehicles in Saint Michael's Square, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on May 2, 2024 . (Photo by Thomas Peter-Pool/Getty Images)

Europa, , , ,

The Kremlin has responded with predictable theatre to comments from foreign secretary David Cameron, after he said Ukraine is free to use weapons supplied by Britain to launch strikes inside Russia.

That theatre was both diplomatic, with the British ambassador summoned to the foreign ministry in Russia on Monday to warn of retaliation, and nuclear: Moscow announced it would be holding exercises involving tactical nuclear weapons in the near future to remind the world yet again that it has them.

The UK position is a sharp contrast to that of the US, which has consistently forbidden Ukraine from using the weapons it supplies to hit targets in Russia.…  Seguir leyendo »

One of the Most Successful Parties in the World Is Staggering to Inevitable Defeat

Europa,

At 3 a.m. one day last December, a 78-year-old volunteer for the British Conservative Party was reportedly woken by a call from Mark Menzies, the Conservative lawmaker she worked for. He said that he was being held somewhere by “bad people” who demanded £5,000, or $6,300, to release him. The volunteer, a former campaign manager for Mr. Menzies, paid the sum out of her own savings. She was later reimbursed out of party funds.

Mr. Menzies, who was suspended from the party last month, denies that allegation and others, which include using £14,000 from party funds for personal medical bills. The ins and outs of his improprieties are neither here nor there, though he is no stranger to scandal.…  Seguir leyendo »

Israel’s Rafah Incursion Helps No One Except Netanyahu

MundoOriente Próximo

Three days after it began, Israel’s operation in Rafah looks like a microcosm of its seven-month-long fight in Gaza: an attempt to check a tactical box rather than a strategic move with a definitive goal in the fight against Hamas.

As a limited incursion, it could be the least bad of Israel’s bad options, and even prove successful if it helps achieve a more favorable hostage deal or a cease-fire agreement. However, judging by the war’s conduct to date, it’s more likely that the operation will, in the end, backfire.

So far, the Israel Defense Forces has ordered the evacuation in the eastern outskirts of the city, taken over a two-mile-long section of the so-called Philadelphi Corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt and occupied the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing, which is not actually in the city of Rafah.…  Seguir leyendo »

A Palestinian man watching Israeli strikes in eastern Rafah, Gaza Strip, May 2024. Hatem Khaled / Reuters

MundoOriente Próximo

On May 6, in an effort to forestall an all-but-certain Israeli operation in Rafah, Hamas leaders said that they might be prepared to accept a hostage-for-prisoners agreement with Israel. Coming after weeks of stonewalling by Hamas, the announcement raised hopes in Washington that some kind of deal might still be reached that could free dozens of hostages and bring about a pause in Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. But even now, it remained unclear how committed Hamas was to carrying out this deal, or whether it was simply seeking a means to preserve its Rafah stronghold, where Israel believes its remaining brigades and Gaza-based leadership are holed up.…  Seguir leyendo »

A cargo vessel transiting the Panama Canal, May 2024. Daniel Becerril / Reuters

InternacionalOrden Mundial

Falling water levels in Panama’s Gatún Lake. A cyberattack on a payment platform. An earthquake disrupting silicon-chip production in Taiwan. Elon Musk deciding which countries have access to the Internet. At first glance, these things have nothing in common other than their recent prominence in news headlines. But an invisible through line connects them: each one highlights modern society’s dependence on complex infrastructure to function. Disruptions in the Panama Canal can delay the delivery of critical shipments around the world. Computer failures can interrupt routine medical care provided by clinics across the United States. A brief halt in the production of semiconductors causes panic.…  Seguir leyendo »

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva delivers a speech during a May Day (Labour Day) rally to mark the international day of the workers in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on May 1, 2024. Miguel SCHINCARIOL / AFP

MundoAmérica

On March 4, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sent an ambitious bill to the National Congress, aiming to regulate work carried out via ride-hailing apps. Among other provisions, the bill contains stipulations on minimum pay and working hours as well as unionization for drivers and compulsory pension contributions. While announcing the bill, Labor Minister Luiz Marinho—who declared that he had worn a pink shirt “in honor of” Women’s History Month—stated that drivers had so far been suffering from a “false sense of freedom”, since “workers were being enslaved by long working hours and low pay”.

But the public response to the proposed law portrays a more complicated reality.…  Seguir leyendo »