Browsing: Opinions

This week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov travelled to Iran, where he met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and several other officials. The visit came on the tail of two meetings between Pezeshkian and Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 8 and September 1.

Cornell University’s internal processes for responding to sexual assault reports failed “Jane Doe”. In 2024, the third-year student reported being sexually assaulted by seven men while incapacitated at a fraternity house. Cornell launched an investigation that would last months, but the process failed to deliver the accountability Jane Doe sought. She was left feeling unheard…

As protests in France turned violent late last week, the French far right quickly resorted to racist language to blame the Muslim youth for the violence. Weeks earlier, when thousands of migrants tried to enter the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from neighbouring Morocco, the Spanish far right spoke of an organised “invasion” by Moroccans.

This autumn, the Supreme Court will consider a question with potentially far-reaching consequences for civil rights in the United States: Who gets to enforce them? On November 30, the justices will hear a case over whether employees of federally funded universities can sue under Title IX over alleged workplace sex discrimination. The Trump administration has…

On October 16, King Mohammed VI of Morocco appointed a new government headed by Prime Minister Fatima Zohra Al Mansouri. This is the first time in Moroccan history that a woman is leading the government – a precedent that was covered widely in international media.

Across Southeast Asia, the haze has returned with a familiar cruelty. Malaysia has closed schools as air quality deteriorated, Singapore has experienced dangerous levels of air pollution, and even parts of the Philippines have been affected, underscoring how far the smoke has travelled. In Indonesia, meanwhile, forest and peatland fires, a major source of the region’s haze, have threatened…

In the months leading up to the disastrous 2006 election, President George W Bush fired his press secretary, Scott McClellan, and withdrew the Supreme Court nomination of his close confidante, Harriet Miers.

Cuba is once again in the United States’s crosshairs. Washington’s operation in Venezuela at the start of the year is largely seen to have paved the way for a similar undertaking on the Caribbean island. Recent media reports have revealed US military activity nearby while US officials have repeatedly said they want “Cuba to be…

Since the start of the war, there have been several negotiation initiatives between the United States and Iran. Only one – the memorandum of understanding signed in Islamabad on June 18 – was concluded, but it collapsed within days.

As the growth of artificial intelligence accelerates, it is already posing significant challenges to society. Companies have started laying off workers whose jobs AI models can now perform. The expansion of data centres has spiked energy consumption and increased the carbon footprint. AI agents are being used by malicious actors to automate the spread of…