The Real Story

Sweden has experienced days of violent protests against a far-right group. Danish-Swedish politician Rasmus Paludan’s anti-Islam party Hard Line says it will burn copies of the Quran as part of a tour of cities with large immigrant populations. Sweden has traditionally welcomed refugees, taking in Jews during WW2, Iranians fleeing the revolution, and a large number of people from the former Yugosl...

This week the first round of the presidential election in France has shone a spotlight on the tectonic shifts taking place in the nation’s politics. President Emmanuel Macron, who shocked the world five years ago by winning the presidency as an outsider, has firmly established his party as the only centrist force - peeling off support from the traditional left and right. His main challenger, Marin...

Workers at an Amazon warehouse in New York have successfully set up Amazon's first ever union in the country. Staff at dozens of other US locations are said to be interested in unionising as well. There are signs workers are now increasingly in the driving seat. The pandemic has galvanised American employees with a tightening labour market providing them with more leverage. An increasing number of...

History was made this week when, for the first time, the foreign ministers of the UAE, Morocco, Egypt and Bahrain travelled to Israel on an official visit. For decades Arab leaders have criticised Israel for its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which appeared to rule out closer ties. But not anymore. After the meeting Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan told his Israe...

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 141 of the UN’s 193 member states voted to condemn the action. But the Kremlin isn’t without its allies. Four nations voted with Russia against the resolution (Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Eritrea) and another 35 abstained. China is the most prominent of these, but India also sat out the vote. The world’s largest democracy has not only failed to criti...

Within days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Germany announced a number of significant changes to its economic and security policies. Chancellor Olaf Scholz described it as a Zeitenwende – or watershed – moment for Europe. The country would remove a self-imposed restraint on its armed forces - in place since the Second World War - and invest billions of dollars upgrading its military hardware. The...

Just two weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine the conflict has already begun reshaping the world. The bombardment of Ukrainian cities has led to the deaths of thousands of civilians and forced millions to flee the country. But the war has also completely upended the global economy. Russia is paying the heaviest economic price, as it grapples with Western-led sanctions on its banks,...

The war in Ukraine has cast a spotlight on Europe's energy dependency on Russia. Nearly half of Europe’s gas, along with petroleum and coal, come from the Russian Federation. But with no resolution to the war in sight, there is concern that Moscow will reduce its gas supply in retaliation to the tough sanctions imposed by the EU. Countries like Germany, Austria and Bulgaria would face severe econo...

This month the G20 came under criticism for failing to deliver a promised $100bn of additional funds to poorer countries to help with the economic fallout of the pandemic. Many of these countries suffered a significant financial crunch as their exports dropped while the price of imports went up. The World Bank says the recession of 2020 led to the largest single-year surge in global debt in decade...

This month President Putin of Russia was the star guest at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. But his trip to China was not just about showing support for the host country. He and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping issued an unexpectedly long statement pledging friendship with 'no limits' and no 'forbidden areas of co-operation'. Beijing and Moscow have maintained a stable relationship...

This week the French president Emmanuel Macron travelled thousands of kilometres across Europe in a diplomatic effort to avert an escalation of the war in Ukraine. He met Presidents Putin and Zelensky in Moscow and Kyiv, as well as German and Polish leaders in Berlin. Diplomats say Mr Macron has made himself a key interlocutor between the EU and the US on one side and Russia on the other. The cris...

As the Beijing Winter Olympics get underway in China this week the host city has reported its highest number of new Covid-19 cases in more than a year. The authorities have put in place a strict 'closed loop bubble’, isolating more than 60,000 athletes, officials and service providers from the rest of the country. China's firm approach to quashing transmission of the virus has been in place ever s...

Growing fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine have prompted the US and UK to pull the families of staff at their embassies in Kyiv out of the country. Moscow’s forces have been amassing on Ukraine’s border for months prompting fears of a major escalation in a war that’s been underway since Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Vladimir Putin says the Russian and Ukrainian populati...

The British Broadcasting Corporation is the world’s oldest and largest public service broadcaster. But as it prepares to mark its 100th birthday the organisation finds itself at a crossroads. The UK government has begun a review of the BBC’s long term funding structure with an aim of ending its dependency on television licence fees – effectively a tax on British owners of TV sets. The broadcaster'...

While agriculture remains one of the biggest contributors to climate change, it is also most exposed to its adverse effects. Scientists say that extreme weather events will become more frequent and more intense as global temperatures continue to rise. In 2021, harsh winters, unseasonably warm summers, and sudden changes in rainfall affected food production around the globe - from the farmlands of...

The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will begin in 4 weeks’ time with more than 2,000 athletes from across the globe expected to take part. Officials have set up a bubble to keep arriving athletes and officials separate from the general population, all part of attempts to prevent coronavirus infections. Some health officials fear the increased transmissibility of the Omicron variant will pose a severe...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that the stability of some countries’ financial systems could soon be at risk because of unregulated crypto assets. Cryptocurrencies and other digital financial products created using blockchain technology are proliferating. They’re largely free from the controls of governments and central banks, but also free from any significant regulation. The IM...

It’s been more than two decades since the war in Bosnia ended. It remains one of the darkest chapters in modern European history and cost over 100,000 lives. Since the Dayton Agreement was reached in 1995 a fragile peace has held, but last month the international community's chief representative there - Christian Schmidt - warned that conflict might return and the country is in danger of breaking...

The emergence of the Omicron variant has once again highlighted the difficulty in preventing the pandemic from spreading across the globe. Health experts have long argued that regions like southern Africa, where the variant was first detected, are prone to dangerous mutations of the virus when large groups of people are left unvaccinated. Only a tenth of Africa's billion plus population have recei...

It has been 100 days since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan and the country is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis. More than half of the country’s 39 million people face acute food insecurity as prices skyrocket. Severe drought, the pandemic and the damage caused by decades of war have all helped to bring the economy to its knees. With winter approaching the World Food Programme has...

The European Union is at loggerheads with Belarus over the arrival of thousands of migrants. It alleges that President Lukashenko has created a deliberate crisis by facilitating the migrants' travel into Belarus and onwards to the country's borders with EU members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Belarus says the EU is breaching its humanitarian obligations by blocking the entry of those seeking asyl...

The Chinese Communist Party has held a high level meeting that will help propel President Xi Jinping to a level of power not seen since Chairman Mao. The gathering was essentially a celebration of Mr Xi's time in office, with a new emphasis on establishing him at the core of the party's identity. Despite the initial shock of the coronavirus pandemic China's economy has continued to grow. But there...

The UN Climate Conference in Glasgow is being described as a make-or-break moment for humanity. The purpose of the gathering is to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Currently the world is way off target, with temperatures still projected to rise higher than is sustainable. A big part of the problem is the huge...

Defiant protesters have been on the streets of Sudan this week after the country's armed forces launched a military coup. On Monday coup leader Gen Abdel Fattah Burhan dissolved civilian rule, arrested political leaders and declared a state of emergency. It wasn't meant to be like this. After long-time Sudanese ruler Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in 2019, civilian leaders and their military counte...

This week in an interview with a British newspaper the Secretary General of Nato repeated his desire to widen its mandate to include China. His comments coincide with reports that Beijing has tested a hypersonic missile potentially capable of breaching US and European defences. There are concerns about China's cyber activities against Nato member states, as well as the country's increasing presenc...