DEBT stalks Africa once again. Over the past six years sub-Saharan governments have issued $81bn in dollar bonds to investors hungry for yield. Piled on top of this are murkier syndicated loans and bilateral debts, many to China and tied to big construction projects. Public debt has climbed above 50% of GDP in half the…
Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Earlier this week, Donald Trump declared his administration’s response to Hurricane Maria an “incredible, unsung success.” This took aback many reporters and pundits. After all, that storm’s official death toll sits at nearly 3,000. And the the federal government’s relief effort was riddled with demonstrable failures: Despite receiving advance warning of…
RUSSIA has long feared a Chinese invasion of its sprawling far east. Large Russian armies regularly drill in southern Siberia. This year the exercises are the largest since the cold war. But what is striking is not just the scale of “Vostok-2018” (see article), but the fact that thousands of Chinese soldiers will take part…
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department on Tuesday expressed deep concern over China’s “worsening crackdown” on minority Muslims in the Xinjiang region, as the Trump administration considered sanctions against Chinese senior officials and companies linked to allegations of human rights abuses. Discussions have gained momentum within the U.S. government over possible economic penalties in…
A shifting attack strategy In Iraq and Syria, even with its territory greatly diminished, the Islamic State has persisted. Months after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared “final victory” over the group in 2017, three Iraqi provinces have witnessed an uptick in violence. Still, the violence there is less devastating than it once was. The group…
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions if it pursued an investigation of American troops in Afghanistan, opening a harsh new attack on an old nemesis of many on the political right. “The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from…
VOTERS have a funny habit of wrecking pundits’ storylines. The election on September 9th in Sweden was supposed to be a rebuke of the country’s generous refugee policies during the migrant crisis of 2015, and yet another signal that European populism is on the rise. The anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats were to become the country’s biggest…
BEIJING (Reuters) - China will respond if the United States takes any new steps on trade, the foreign ministry said on Monday, after President Donald Trump warned he was ready to slap tariffs on virtually all Chinese imports into the United States. FILE PHOTO: Chinese officials prepare the flags for the China-U.S. bilateral meeting at…
Donald Trump. Rick Loomis/Getty Images President Donald Trump nearly provoked North Korea into war with a single tweet, renowned journalist Bob Woodward said in an interview with "CBS Sunday Morning" that aired Sunday. In the interview, Woodward discussed his new book "Fear: Trump in the White House," and said Trump is fixated on the fact…
Democrats aren’t the only 2020 threat. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Republican pros have, in recent weeks, quietly settled on new conventional wisdom: If Donald Trump is not impeached first, he is likely to face a primary challenge — of some sort — in 2020. The matter was regarded as an open question for most of 2018,…
