In The News

Support Withheld on New Brexit Deal: Guardian

Andrew Sparrow October 19, 2019
The battle over Brexit continues within the United Kingdom as members of parliament voted on an amendment that requires the prime minister to seek a delay on breaking with the European Union. The Letwin amendment “withholds approval of the prime minister’s deal until the legislation to enact it – the EU withdrawal bill – is passed,” reports Andrew Sparrow in live reporting for the Guardian.The...

Catalan Leaders Guilty of Sedition: El País

Reyes Rincón, Óscar Lóopez-Fonseca and Jeúus García October 16, 2019
Catalan separatists – including a party leader, former speaker of the Catalan parliament, former ministers and cabinet members – were sentenced to 9 to 13 years in prison by the Spanish Supreme Court for an attempt to break from Spain in October 2017. “The court has found that there were “undeniable acts of violence” in Catalonia in the fall of 2017, but that these were not severe enough to...

UN Cash Crunch: Washington Post

David Bosco October 15, 2019
The United Nations is running a deficit of $230 million and has stopped hiring, slashed travel and cancelled meetings due to funding shortages resulting from members failing to pay annual dues in a timely way. “The organization uses factors including a country’s economic size and wealth to assess its ‘capacity to pay’ and determine its annual bill,” reports David Bosco for the Washington Post. US...

Tunisia’s Saied Projected in Landslide Win: Reuters

Tarek Amara and Angus McDowall October 14, 2019
Exit polls project Kais Saied as the decisive winner of Tunisia’s presidential race by 70 percent. Tunisia triggered a wave of protests in 2011, what became known as the Arab Spring: It was the first country to remove its dictatorial ruler and the only one to sustain the transition to democracy. Saied’s campaign, operating with little funding promised a return to the values of the 2011 Arab...

Fantasy of a Global Britain: New Statesman

Robert Saunders October 10, 2019
Brexit will bring immense changes, and citizens who depend on trade or diplomatic relationships feel betrayed, explains historian Robert Saunders for New Statesman. Both sides in the debate have relied on selective historic details. The notion of a “global Britain,” is one example, but history suggests that Britain was small without its colonies. Saunders describes how Enoch Powell and other...

NBA Caught Up in Hong Kong Protests: Bloomberg

Eben Novy-Williams October 10, 2019
Through three decades’ development, basketball has attracted an annual Chinese audience of more than 800 million, creating a market with billions of dollars revenue. However, one swiftly deleted tweet may threaten all those painstaking efforts. Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted an image of a slogan supporting Hong Kong’s protesters, and China responded quickly. Some...

Protests, Curfew in Ecuador: Miami Herald

Jim Wyss October 9, 2019
Massive protests over rising prices and an end to fuel subsidies are roiling Ecuador’s capital. President Lenin Moreno has left the capital, transferred the government from Quito to Guayaquil, and declared a state of emergency, reports Jim Wyss for the Miami Herald. The president blames neighboring Venezuela and political opposition, and some US officials agree with that assessment despite...