Kissinger with the founding father of Kenya, President Jomo Kenyatta, during his whirlwind tour of Africa in 1976. Over two weeks in April, Kissinger visited six countries, also meeting presidents Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, William Tolbert of Liberia, and Senegal’s Léopold Senghor. Despite these visits, critics said Kissinger was more interested in white minorities in southern Africa, with whom he had more sympathy. Photograph: World Politics Archive/Alamy The Guardian
Tag: Israel
China ready to broker Israel-Palestine peace talks, says foreign minister
China’s foreign minister told his Israeli and Palestinian counterparts his country is ready to help facilitate peace talks, state media reported. The separate phone calls between Chinese foreign minister, Qin Gang, and the Israeli and Palestinian top diplomats comes amid recent moves by Beijing to position itself as a regional mediator. Qin encouraged “steps to resume peace talks,” and said that “China is ready to provide convenience for this,” in a Monday phone call with Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen, state media agency Xinhua reported. In his conversation with Palestinian…
Nuclear nightmare: reckless leaders push the world back to the brink | Simon Tisdall
Leaders of unstable nuclear-armed states do dangerous and foolish things when under stress. They miscalculate, provoke, overreach. Given the febrile state of bilateral relations, last week’s aerial military clash between Russia and the US over the Black Sea inevitably intensified fears of nuclear escalation. The incident dramatised how dangerous Vladimir Putin, cornered by his existential Ukraine blunder, truly is – and the risks he is increasingly prepared to run. But he’s not the only one. As often the case over the past year, Putin relied on American restraint. US forces…
Ukraine is in the headlines now. But a whole new world of conflict is about to erupt
It was a good year to bury bad news – and bad deeds – as a clutch of dictators, assorted killers and repressive or anti-democratic regimes can testify. In Myanmar, Yemen, Mali, Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and Afghanistan, to name a few crisis zones, egregious abuses and unrelieved misery attracted relatively scant, perfunctory international scrutiny. The main reason for 2022’s blinkered perspectives is, of course, Ukraine, Europe’s biggest conflict since 1945. This is not to say war-torn Tigray or Guatemala, strangled slowly by corruption, would otherwise…
The world in 2023: what our writers say you should watch out for
A near-inevitable global recession sparked by a lengthening war in Europe’s frozen east; an energy crisis coupled with soaring inflation; Covid-19 finally running rampant in China – predictions for 2023 are grim. Still, there are reasons to be hopeful. That same energy crisis has spurred an unprecedented demand for renewables, which are expected to boom, while in Brazil, a new president has sworn to protect the Amazon. Repressive regimes, meanwhile, will be nervously looking at Iran, where hardline clerics are locked in a struggle with a formidable pro-democracy uprising that…
At the DealBook Summit, Untangling the Now — and the Future
This article is part of our special section on the DealBook Summit that included business and policy leaders from around the world. Last week at the DealBook Summit, I interviewed some of the world’s most influential leaders, among them Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary of the United States; President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine; Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta; and Andy Jassy, the chief executive of Amazon. One common theme came up in just about every conversation. It was that every decision — big and small — is ultimately a…
Secret British ‘black propaganda’ campaign targeted cold war enemies
The British government ran a secret “black propaganda” campaign for decades, targeting Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia with leaflets and reports from fake sources aimed at destabilising cold war enemies by encouraging racial tensions, sowing chaos, inciting violence and reinforcing anti-communist ideas, newly declassified documents have revealed. The effort, run from the mid-1950s through to the late 70s by a unit in London that was part of the Foreign Office, was focused on cold war enemies such as the Soviet Union and China, leftwing liberation groups and…
Your Friday Evening Briefing
(Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.) Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Friday. 1. Sanctions hit President Vladimir Putin’s former wife and his rumored girlfriend. Britain added Putin’s former wife, Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, and the woman long considered to be his mistress, Alina Kabaeva, to its sanctions list as the West deepened its efforts to combat Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A former K.G.B. operative, Putin has kept his personal life shrouded in secrecy, but the sanctions are lifting that veil. On the battlefields,…
Covid live news: Chinese city puts 1.3 million in strict lockdown over three asymptomatic cases
South Korea has just released its daily Covid report. The Asian nation recorded another 3,024 confirmed coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, a figure much lower than recent weeks. A further 51 deaths were also recorded with 973 people in critical condition, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A total of 86.2 % of the eligible population have received at least one Covid vaccine dose and 83.1 % have received at least two. 대한민국 질병관리청 (@KoreaDCA) 🔊코로나19 국내 현황(1.4.) 일 1차접종 39,839명(누적 1차접종 44,239,358명/86.2%)일 2차접종…