The U.S. is considering sanctions against Lebanon’s long-serving central bank chief as a broader investigation into the alleged embezzlement of public funds in the country gathers pace, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Tourism-dependent countries, including Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Portugal and Spain, are urging other EU states to adopt Covid passports, which would be modeled on the “green passport” system implemented by Israel.
As the Biden administration surveys the litany of foreign policy challenges that exist—Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea, to name a few—counterterrorism in sub-Saharan Africa likely falls outside of its top priorities. Throughout the Trump administration, there were high-level discussions on troop redeployments and how best to transition away from counterterrorism operations in order to prepare for great power competition. Sub-Saharan Africa was expected to be deprioritized more than any other region by these redeployments, despite the area becoming fertile ground for jihadist groups affiliated with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
The Muslim world “sunk to the lowest depth of its decrepitude” in the eighteenth century; “the life had apparently gone out of Islam, leaving naught but a dry husk of soulless ritual and degrading superstition behind.” Meanwhile, Europe discovered ocean routes, established economic hegemony, and exploited its power as “mistress of the world” to indulge in “recklessly imperialistic policies.” Its conquests of Muslim-majority lands prompted a massive “flood of mingled despair and rage” against the West.
Virtual Academic Program
February 9 – March 3, 2021
An Introduction to Coordination of Security and Justice Responses to Countering Transnational Organized Crime
The February meeting of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Defense Ministers, the first since President Biden took power, revealed an antiquated, 75-year-old alliance that, despite its military failures in Afghanistan and Libya, is now turning its military madness toward two more formidable, nuclear-armed enemies: Russia and China.
This theme was emphasized by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a Washington Post op-ed in advance of the NATO meeting, insisting that “aggressive and coercive behaviors from emboldened strategic competitors such as China and Russia reinforce our belief in collective security.”
On January 22, 2021, the New York Times reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was acquiring commercially available databases from vendors containing U.S. person location data generated by smartphone applications, and the DIA was periodically using that data to track U.S. person device locations (specifically, the Times reported, “Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have searched for the movements of Americans within a commercial database in five investigations over the past two and a half years”).
Minister for the Armed Forces Florence Parly on Friday 19 February announced the launch of the full-scale development phase of the SNLE 3G programme to build France’s third-generation nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs).
Since the fall of Barguz in March 2019, the last stronghold of Islamic State (IS), the dream of a sharia-based Islamic Caliphate has faded.[1] Following the assaults on Raqqa and Aleppo and with IS on the verge of defeat, this small city had been turned into a kampung (or village) for Malaysian and Southeast Asian foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) under the command of Katibah Nusantara leader Abu Naim.[2]
Emmanuel Macron va proposer à ses partenaires du G7, qui se réunit virtuellement ce vendredi, d’allouer de 3 à 5% de leurs doses de vaccins aux pays en développement, notamment en Afrique. Une annonce faite dans un entretien accordé au quotidien britannique Financial Times.