F. Al Yafai, National
The militant group has seized large areas of territory, neutralised its competition and now holds the lives of three million Syrians in its hands
P. Mozur, J. Kessel & M. Chan, NYTimes
In Ecuador, cameras across the country send footage to monitoring centers to be examined by police and domestic intelligence. The surveillance system's origin: China.
David Jesse, DFP
A Saudi Arabian student who was arrested in 2012 as he was about to fly to Michigan to attend college was beheaded by the Saudi government
Matthew Winkler, Bloom. View
There are good reasons why one American state leaves big countries like France and Italy in the rearview mirror and overtook the U.K. last year.
Krishnadev Calamur, The Atlantic
When ISIS claimed responsibility for the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka, it did so in Arabic and Englishand in languages spoken in just a few regions across South Asia.
Cameron Munter, RealClearWorld
Peter Tasker, Nikkei Asian Review
Europe struggles to escape stagnation, while Japan is recovering from its lost decades
Kars De Bruijne, African Arguments
A year since President Julius Maada Bio defeated the incumbent in general elections and took office, Sierra Leone's political scene is fraught with tensions. As the now ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) has gradually wrested control from the former ruling All People's Congress (APC), political relations within the country have soured dramatically.
Maria Rosa Tomasello, Worldcrunch
Business models are changing, but Chinese presence in Italy's business world remains high.
Sophie McBain, New Statesman
On 9 April New York City's mayor Bill de Blasio declared a public health emergency and launched a compulsory vaccination programme in Brooklyn, where at least 285 people have contracted measles since an outbreak began in the autumn. Most of those who have fallen ill are children who had not been vaccinated against a disease that once killed hundreds of Americans a year but that, following a decades-long vaccination programme, was declared eradicated in the US in 2000. Читать дальше...
Jonathan Tobin, National Review
The costs namely higher gas prices and potential trouble with China are real, but they don't outweigh the gains.
Doug Bandow, National Interest
Rohit Chopra, The Conversation
India's parliamentary elections, now underway, will show how social media is affecting Indian society and government.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Review of Books
How enlightened was the Enlightenment? Not a few critics have seen it as profoundly benighted. For some, it was a seedbed for modern racism and imperialism; the light in the Enlightenment, one recent scholar has suggested, essentially meant white. Voltaire emphatically believed in the inherent inferiority of les Ngres, who belonged to a separate species, or at least breed, from Europeansas different from Europeans, he said, as spaniels from greyhounds. Читать дальше...
C. Pepinster, NP
The death and destruction in Sri Lanka was particularly shocking given that it took place on Easter Sunday, the holiest feast of the Christian year. However, it was also horribly familiar, for we are now living through an unprecedented era of Christian persecution.
Richard Lapper, AQ
Jair Bolsonaro talked tough on China during his campaign, but his tone has changed now that he's in office. Deep business ties help explain why.
Economist
The country throws a revealing party for the anniversary of its navy
Jiayang Fan, New Yorker
Though the series is set in a previous century and intended to provide a transporting distraction from real life, its stories have tapped into contemporary China's most urgent preoccupations.
Robert Muggah, Foreign Policy
Bolsonaro will claim credit for the good news, but his policies may erase the country's hard-won gains.
Leonid Bershidsky, Moscow Times
Opinion His presidency could be a wasted chance or it could finally free up the creative energy Ukraine needs for a leap forward.
Gwendolyn Sasse, Carnegie Europe
The term ??protest vote?? does not really capture the full picture about the election result. It was a conscious vote against the incumbent and expressed hope for a new start in Ukrainian politics beyond identity cleavages.
Carl Bildt, Washington Post
Volodymyr Zelensky will need the support of the West both financial and political in order to succeed.
Paul Goble, JTown
Moscow wants to have it both ways on the Montreux Convention, which governs naval passage through the Turkish Straits (the Bosporus and the Dardanelles), casting itself as a supporter of this agreement when it works to its advantage but at the same time ignoring and working to undermine it when the accord does not. This intentional oscillation represents President Vladimir
Cathy Young, The Bulwark
You might have thought that the terrible fire in Notre Dame on Monday was the kind of moment that would transcend politics and our petty political divisions. Then again, this is 2019. First, people on the
Andrew Thompson, WPR
