President Joe Biden’s administration has come under heavy criticism, both domestically and from overseas, over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan by American and NATO forces. Since Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, Biden’s approval rating has dipped nearly five points, to 45 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted average of opinion polls. And Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, bluntly criticized the U.S. earlier this week for making “very few—if any—consultations with their European partners” regarding plans for the exit from Afghanistan. The fallout from this crisis will follow Biden to United Nations headquarters in New York later [...]
Haiti was already mired in a deep political crisis and humanitarian emergency before a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck earlier this month, killing at least 2,200 people and injuring and displacing thousands more. The country’s acting president and prime minister, Ariel Henry, had been in office for less than a month when the disaster occurred, having assumed power in the wake of the assassination of President Jovenel Moise on July 7. Moise had been facing mass protests and widespread demands for his resignation due to rampant corruption and mismanagement of the economy under his administration. Amid the turmoil, a coalition of Haitian [...]
Data released earlier this year showed that South Korea’s fertility rate is now the world’s lowest, at 0.84 births per woman in 2020, contributing to the country’s first-ever population decline. Other major powers in the region—including China and Japan, the world’s No. 2 and No. 3 economies, respectively—also have rapidly graying populations. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, Ronald D. Lee, a demographer and economist at the University of California, Berkeley, joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman to discuss the implications of East Asia’s demographic transition, and what policies can be implemented to address it. Listen to the full conversation here: [...]
