Category: opinion

Throughout 2016, Europe has lurched from one crisis to another. The British voted to leave the EU. Russia stepped up its interference in domestic politics in several European countries by planting false news stories and financing populist, right-wing movements. Terrorist attacks and the refugee and eurozone crises divided the EU’s 28 member states. On the other side of the Atlantic, Americans elected Donald Trump as their next president on a ticket promising to make the United States great again. Trump professes little interest in what has kept the West together:…

Seemingly unthinkable just a few months ago, the fall of Aleppo represents a major victory for forces loyal to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The pressing question now is where these forces will head next: eastwards, so as to confront the Islamic State, or to the west and south in order to roll back opposition strongholds in Idlib province and around Deraa city? The Islamic State appeared to resolve the question in mid-December with its dramatic recapture of Palmyra from regime forces and its swift onward push towards…

In the course of interrogations, Saddam ‘turned our assumptions upside down’. By John Nixon, Cia Analyst I had been up for 27 hours and was flat-out exhausted, but the news sent jolts of adrenaline through me like I’d never experienced before. A Special Forces team hunting the man we called High Value Target No 1 had pulled someone from a hole in the ground. He answered the description. And my bosses at the CIA were grilling me, the expert. Could this burly, unkempt man truly be Saddam Hussein, the ruthless…

Less than three per cent of the nearly five million refugees living in Syria’s neighbouring states have been resettled in rich countries according to a new report published yesterday by Oxfam. Instead a lack of political will and a rise in xenophobia have driven a backlash against refugees in many countries. Oxfam reviewed the resettlement policies of eight countries – Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States – and concluded that in some countries a lengthy process, security screening, and an increasingly hostile political…

There are nearly 7.4 billion humans on planet Earth, but these 74 men and women make the world turn. Forbes’ annual ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People identifies one person out of every 100 million whose actions mean the most. To compile the list, we considered hundreds of candidates from various walks of life all around the globe, and measured their power along four dimensions. First, we asked whether the candidate has power over lots of people. Pope Francis, ranked #5, is the spiritual leader of more than a…