World

You’ve probably seen the graphs, cases are way up in France, even higher than the first wave, and yet deaths hardly seem to be up at all. Yet if you compare the latest number of deaths recorded, 130 for the week ending 3 September, they’re slightly higher than the 123 deaths in the week in March when the country locked down.  Meanwhile, in the UK, cases continue to rise with just under 3,000 new infections announced over the last two consecutive days. The deputy chief medical officer said last night that the rise is deeply concerning and that Brits had ‘relaxed too much’. Should we be panicking? Are we about

We have been here before. Russia is at the centre of an international crisis of its own creation. And we know how it plays out: briefly there is shock in Western capitals, quickly followed by outrage. This is entirely justified given that Alexey Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition figure – and the second most popular politician in the country – is lying in a coma in a Berlin hospital having been poisoned, according to the German government, by the nerve-agent Novichok. In diplomatic language, this is expressed as ‘deep concern’ with Russia’s ‘shocking and irresponsible’ behaviour, which is condemned ‘in the strongest terms’. Next comes Russia’s disinformation onslaught. Already, Maria

Last night’s confirmation that Tony Abbott is joining the Board of Trade has been reported, bizarrely, with accusations that he is somehow misogynist or homophobic. There was little mention of why the British government actually headhunted him: his ability to achieve big free trade deals quickly. In his two years in office, he did more to help Australia’s exporters than any other leader in the country’s history, finalising free trade deals with what are (now) Australia’s three most important markets: Japan, China and Korea. He also initiated talks on a trade deal with the EU after his Labor predecessors lazily ignored the opportunity for years. But as this is not

This week France announced a €100 billion (£89 billion) stimulus package equivalent to 4 per cent of GDP over two years. It might seem churlish to ask why the French government has put so much money on the table. To save the French economy, of course. But there’s a graver concern in France that has lately come to the fore. But first, some context to the ‘France Revival’ stimulus programme. It adds to the most generous furlough scheme of any developed economy, which in the spring was already calculated to push France’s debt to GDP ratio over 121 per cent, according to France’s budget statistics. The rationale is that France’s economy

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has confirmed that tests showed ‘unequivocally’ that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was poisoned by a military-grade novichok nerve agent. Germany became involved in the affair when Navalny was transported to the Charité hospital in Berlin two weeks ago. But, while Berlin decided to reveal the test result and called on the Russian government to provide answers about what happened to Navalny, this could easily become a typical case of German diplomacy. Critics of the government in Germany like to call its actions on the international level ‘zahnlos’, which can be translated as ‘toothless’ – its actions lack teeth to hurt another power, or at least leave

To complete the Hajj is the pinnacle of Islamic worship, required once in the lifetime of every able-bodied Muslim who can afford the journey. In its 1,400-year history, the annual pilgrimage has been cancelled dozens of times, by wars, political strife and pandemics. As I found out when I made the journey, it is a swirling sea of humanity: some 2.5 million visiting Mecca over a few days, from all over the world. When the Covid crisis came, worship was suspended. But then something was attempted that would have once seemed impossible: carrying on the tradition, but under digitally monitored social distancing. The results were extraordinary. A pilgrimage famous for

Could war finally be coming to the eastern Mediterranean? It’s not as excitable a question as it might first appear. In an article titled, ‘Erdogan’s calculated war,‘ the German newspaper Die Welt quoted sources from the Turkish military saying that president Recep Tayyip Erdogan had recently ordered his generals to sink a Greek warship, without inflicting casualties. They refused. Then came the suggestion to down a Greek aircraft. Again, they refused. Such reports would be alarming at any time. Now they are acute. Tensions between Greece and Turkey are greater than they have been since the 1990s. Ostensibly, the problems come from longstanding competition over resources. Recent exploration has shown the

One thing we know that Putin reads is history. He’s keen on chronicles and biography of great Russians, presumably with an eye to his own reputation. And this may help explain why he’s increasingly trying to control his country’s backstory. In Russia, 1 September is not just the start of the school year, it is Den’ Znanii or ‘knowledge day’. There is a whole ritual, a celebratory welcome to all the new crop of children coming from kindergarten to big school, with sonorous speeches about the value of learning and the promise of a new generation. For the head of state, this is usually a softball opportunity to play the role of father

So is it over for Joe? Gloating Republicans and handwringing Democrats alike suddenly seem convinced that President Trump is headed towards an improbable repeat victory this November, especially after his acceptance speech last night. But there are multifarious reasons to believe that this is a bunch of hooey. For one thing, Biden has been repeatedly counted out only to bounce back. Consider the primary. Conventional wisdom was that Biden was a goner. Too old. Out of it. A dullard. On the eve of the South Carolina primary he was, in short, dismissed as a has-been, though vanity prompts me to note that yours truly, writing on this website, rightly predicted