After the financial and cultural success of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, more and more nations have vied for the chance to host the Olympics and the World Cup, leading to ambitious budgets and corruption in the selection process. Since the selection of Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup, though, FIFA and the IOC have course-corrected.
As the United Nations COP27 Climate Change Conference closed Sunday, Egypt, this year’s host, hailed the agreements brokered there as a success. But there continues to be a gap between the climate-change commitments most countries in the Middle East and North Africa have formally expressed and their actual behavior.
Saudi Arabia has ramped up its crackdown on dissent, as recent cases make clear that the country is willing to surveil its citizens abroad and severely punish them for exercising their right to free expression within the jurisdiction of democratic countries, a worrying trend that appears to only be getting worse.
