Danny Bradlow, University of Pretoria South Africa took over the presidency of the G20 at the end of 2024. Since then the world has become a more complex, unpredictable and dangerous place. The most powerful state in the world, the US, seems intent on undermining the existing order that it created and on
Ph. Is the Sun setting on Ukraine’s offensive capabilities? Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images Benjamin Jensen, American University School of International Service War is a numbers game. Each side involved must marshal the supplies, troops and firepower needed to sustain the fight, thwart advancing armies and, hopefully, prevail. But it’s also a
Patrick E. Shea, University of Glasgow The US vice-president, J.D. Vance, recently told Fox News that “the very best security guarantee” to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine again was “to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine”. The implication is that the much-debated minerals deal, in which an investment fund managed
Spyros A. Sofos, Simon Fraser University On March 1, the start of the holy month of Ramadan — observed by most of Turkey’s Sunni population — the imprisoned leader of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Abdullah Öcalan, made a historic call for the party to disarm and end its 40-year-long armed struggle against
George Wittemyer, Colorado State University Surveying elephants is hard, risky work. Dedicated biologists have been doing this challenging task across Africa for decades. Systematic surveying started in the late 1960s but has been sporadic, as access to remote areas takes logistical planning, funding and well-trained teams. Surveys can easily be derailed by civil
An international team of researchers is developing a model of Mars’s evolution that could unlock some of its long-held secrets, including whether it once harboured life. François Forget, a space scientist from the Pierre Simon Laplace Institute in France, is the man looking for those answers. He is not a time traveller, but
Thomas Gift, UCL Elon Musk is wielding a chainsaw against US government departments, potentially culling tens of thousands of jobs, as part of a huge plan to shrink the government and slash federal spending. This large-scale purge of public servants, coordinated through Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), may end up creating one
Daniel J. Olson, Purdue University English should be the official language of the United States, says a new executive order signed by President Donald Trump on March 1, 2025. The move follows the Trump administration’s termination of the Spanish-language version of the White House website and its Spanish-language account on X, formerly Twitter.
Stefan Wolff, University of Birmingham and Tetyana Malyarenko, National University Odesa Law Academy The visit of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House has not gone to plan – at least not to his plan. There were extraordinary scenes as a press conference between Zelensky and Trump descended into acrimony, with the
Central Macedonia, a region on the northern mainland of Greece, is an important producer of food. It generates a quarter of the country’s agricultural output and is the source of much of Greece’s table olives, peaches, wine and dairy products. But this productivity also results in large amounts of agricultural waste. EU-funded researchers