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The COVID-19 pandemic lays bare a global crisis of gender inequality. While women have achieved considerable success in their fight for equality, they continue to face violence, discrimination and exclusion globally. Women are now disproportionately bearing the costs of the pandemic, surfacing...
On July 3, the Russian central election commission announced the results of the nationwide vote on constitutional reforms, the biggest shake-up of the constitution since it was adopted in 1993. According to official data, 77.92% of voters, or 57.7 million people, cast their ballots in favor of the...
For months, as the COVID-19 disease was spreading and hundreds of thousands of people were dying across the world, accusations amplified by the media flew across borders in a global blame game. They raised three great destabilizing questions: Which nation was responsible for bringing COVID-19 into...
Bearing in mind that gaining access to political power remains the focus of all political parties, they not only attempt to acquire political power within government but, more importantly, actively work toward its acquisition and maintenance. In this effort, political parties try to establish a...
Communication between governments and citizens has changed over the years. The digital era has provided state actors with new channels to spread their messages. Different channels offer different types of outreach. Nevertheless, successful communication requires consistency and...
Since the toppling of the statue of slaver Edward Colston in Bristol last month, a stream of articles, many by white writers, have called for such monuments to be placed in museums. These writers argue that, with sensitive curation, such statues can act to educate a public ignorant of the...
In East Asia, face masks are accessories akin to hats and scarves, a civilian, not a medical, accessory. People wear them for a variety of reasons: the smog, the cold, the sun, hay fever, unruly acne or to send a message usually transmitted via earbuds in North America: Don’t talk to me unless...
Wirecard AG, the Munich-based payments and financial services company that was a member of the DAX index of Germany’s 30 leading blue-chip stocks, collapsed spectacularly and filed for insolvency on June 25. Among many lessons, this disaster has revealed major gaps in audit...
The verdict is in. Contrary to what some have maintained, what COVID-19 has provoked is not just another recession in the eternally recurring cycles of capitalism. Not even a Great Recession, like the one the world began wading through 12 years ago. This time, it is clearly our second Great...
When the COVID-19 disease began to spread in Europe, France and Germany prohibited the export of medical equipment, while Italy asked in vain for supplies of protective equipment under the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. Neither the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) nor the...
The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly made adjustments to the global political processes, delaying several major events. Among them was the introduction of amendments to the Russian Constitution (early voting on which started on June 25, originally scheduled for April 22) that fundamentally alter...
