Category: Geopolitics

Violence erupts in Sri Lanka after Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was sacked by President Sirisena. He has been replaced by ex-President Mahinde Rajapaksa, who is credited with a proclivity to the Chinese. In 2014, Sri Lanka’s joint opposition, led by former president Chandrika Bandaranaike…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Visits Oman, the first such visit by an Israeli prime minister in 22 years and a sign of closer ties for Israel with an influential Persian Gulf nation that has long acted as a regional mediator. Israel is a country in the Middle East, bordered by Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and…

Iranian boats closely shadowed an American warship in the Persian Gulf on Friday, underscoring the potential for renewed maritime hostility between the United States and Iran. The US official withdrew from the JCPOA and re-imposed crippling economic sanctions on Tehran, which has further deteriorated the situation. The United…

The Chinese government is trying to make peace with Brazil’s leading presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, whose China-bashing threatens to chill a profitable trading relationship that has benefited both countries. Brazil, in South America, is one of the world’s biggest democracies. From 2000…

Belgium said it had chosen to buy US-made F-35 stealth warplanes over the Eurofighter Typhoon, which critics call a blow to the EU’s bid to build its own defences. Although Belgium is a key NATO ally, it is not a development partner in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II…

The European Parliament passed a nonbinding resolution on Thursday condemning the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and urging a European Union-wide arms embargo on Saudi Arabia. The arms trade between the EU and Saudi Arabia is valued at close to $20bn a year..

The European Union (EU) for the first time sent back a member state’s proposed budget because it violated the bloc’s fiscal laws and posed unacceptable risks. Italy’s coalition populist government had submitted a budget proposal last month to the EU which did not adhere to the European deficit reduction..

Markets in Asia tumbled Thursday on the back of a sharp fall in U.S. markets that erased all the gains made this year, as investor concerns mount that economic growth is peaking amid an uncertain geopolitical backdrop. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a stock market index founded in 1885..

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Wednesday that if the United States deploys intermediate-range missiles in Europe, Russia will have to target the nations that would host them. The US had announced its intention to withdraw from the INF treaty and possibly deploy its medium range intercontinental ballistic..

The European Parliament has voted for a complete ban on a range of single-use plastics across the union in a bid to stop pollution of the oceans. This vote comes at the heels of a critical report published by the UN on the state of the environment and the potential global catastrophe if no action…