Newsletter Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. Mohamed Bazoum, the candidate of Niger’s ruling party, has won last Sunday’s runoff presidential election, setting the stage for one elected leader to succeed another for the first time in the country’s history. Provisional results released Tuesday showed Bazoum with 55.75 percent of the vote to 44.25 percent for his opponent, Mahamane Ousmane. The poll was marred by violence, though, including two attacks on Election Day that killed […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Rachel Cheung and Assistant Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive China Note by email every week. When Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp won the city’s local elections in a landslide in 2019, securing 17 of its 18 districts, their unprecedented victory was a slap in the face for the Hong Kong government, and for Beijing, whose puppets suffered a humiliating loss. But that victory was short-lived, as the authorities in Hong Kong are now making sure the opposition won’t be […]

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. The images are shocking, but they aren’t new. The photographs of tortured, emaciated and brutalized prisoners and detainees—some of their bodies wrapped in plastic, others dumped on the ground, but all of them catalogued with sinister precision—are a reminder of the horrors of Syria’s civil war. Broadcast by CBS’ 60 Minutes on Sunday night, they are, […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. Tanzanian President John Magufuli has consistently downplayed the dangers of the coronavirus pandemic despite warnings from experts that his country is experiencing a surge in infections, threatening to overwhelm its health facilities. Magufuli’s skepticism has drawn rebukes from global health officials who worry that his refusal to take preventive measures may also undermine efforts to slow the spread of the virus across East Africa. The death of a […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Rachel Cheung and Assistant Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive China Note by email every week. As China moved to block Clubhouse last Monday evening, a sense of impending doom spread among Chinese users on the audio-chat application that caught fire in the country this month. Moderators in group chats scrambled to let mainland Chinese speakers take to the podium, giving them a last chance to comment before they lose access to the app. The ban hardly came as […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. COVID-19 vaccination campaigns across Africa suffered a potentially serious blow after new research showed that a vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca offered only minimal protection against mild and moderate infections caused by the more contagious coronavirus variant that was first detected in South Africa. The new strain has fueled a second wave of infections in the country and has been detected in at least 30 other […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Rachel Cheung and Assistant Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive China Note by email every week. The shocking allegations of systematic sexual abuse of ethnic Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang region, detailed in a recent BBC report, did not come as a surprise to Arfat Erkin, a Uighur student living in the United States. “It is something all Uighurs know subconsciously,” the 23-year-old told me. “We all knew that, but we never brought it up or faced it, because it’s […]

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. “This war has to end,” Joe Biden declared in his first foreign policy address as president last week, when he announced a halt to “all American support for offensive operations” in the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen against Houthi rebels. But cutting off U.S. arms for the disastrous Saudi air war, which Biden also called a […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. The coronavirus pandemic is certain to dominate the annual African Union summit this weekend, but it’s far from the only issue on the agenda at the two days of virtual meetings. Key elections are scheduled for leadership positions in the AU Commission, and analysts are watching to see whether the bloc can revitalize last year’s pledge to end Africa’s conflicts. The summit marks the end of South African […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Rachel Cheung and Assistant Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive China Note by email every week. After months of bureaucratic delays and two weeks of quarantine in China, international investigators from the World Health Organization finally started their probe into the origins of COVID-19 in Wuhan. The mission began last Thursday amid political tensions and controversy. Less than a week into the trip, the scant information released so far under the watch of Chinese authorities offers little assurance that […]

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. It hasn’t taken long for President Joe Biden to make a clean break with Donald Trump’s agenda in the Middle East. That shouldn’t be a surprise, given Biden’s campaign message that got him elected, and the executive orders and other actions he has quickly taken since the inauguration to undo Trump’s legacy, both in domestic and […]