Human rights activists and democracy advocates have criticized French president Francois Hollande for receiving Cuban leader Raul Castro – with full honors – as nearly 200 peaceful dissidents were being… Read more »
An unknown assailant threw a grenade at the house of the governor of Moldova’s central bank overnight, RFE/RL reports: Bank chief Dorin Dragutanu and his family were asleep when the… Read more »
The killing of a pro-independence Balochistan leader, Dr. Manan, on Saturday by the Pakistani security forces in Mastung is a great setback for establishing peace in a volatile region, says… Read more »
Most Russians regard the loss of the USSR as a negative event, according to a poll conducted this month by the independent Levada Center. Some 63 percent see the collapse… Read more »
Over the last five years, the European Council on Foreign Relations’ annual Scorecard has tracked the European Union’s diminishing ability to influence its neighbors. In 2015, the story became one… Read more »
The fifth anniversary of Egypt‘s 2011 uprising has produced an oddly structuralist set of reflections in which the failure of its democratic transition has taken on an almost foreordained quality, notes… Read more »
Russian President Vladimir Putin and the extremist Islamic State group are both engaged in efforts at state building that share two qualities: each seeks to create a political alternative to… Read more »
More than 15 African countries held national elections in 2015–including Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Tanzania–and a similar number is set to do so in 2016, notably the… Read more »
Vietnam’s Communist regime ended an unprecedented internal power struggle Thursday by deciding to stick to the status quo over a more reform-minded challenger, USA Today reports: Nguyen Phu Trong, who… Read more »
President Xi Jinping appears to be treading a similar path to the Chinese emperors during the legendary surpluses of the Han dynasty, an age characterized by the first Chinese… Read more »