Commuters wearing masks at a metro station in Taipei, Taiwan, which has recorded 13 cases of coronavirus, Jan. 28, 2020 (AP photo by Chiang Ying-ying).

The fast-spreading new coronavirus that originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan is, at its most immediate level, a public health crisis. But it is also much more than that. As governments struggle to contain the epidemic, the virus is already having economic ramifications in China and around the world. That’s the second level of its impact. And as the epidemic threatens to become a pandemic, and the speed of the contagion exceeds the number of cases of the 2003 SARS outbreak, there is a third level of consequences that has received far less attention: This coronavirus could leave a […]

Travelers line up to check in for an American Airlines flight to Los Angeles at Beijing Capital International Airport, Jan. 30, 2020 (AP photo by Mark Schiefelbein).

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. China this week accused the United States of fomenting public hysteria over the Wuhan coronavirus, after the Trump administration banned recent travelers from China and warned U.S. citizens to avoid traveling there. The two countries have so far managed to share information on countering the outbreak despite political tensions in their relationship, but America’s sweeping travel restrictions could hamper that cooperation. As of Wednesday, fatalities from the epidemic had risen to nearly 500, the vast majority of which were […]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Jan. 5, 2020 (Reuters pool photo by Ronen Zvulun via AP Images).

It’s déjà vu all over again for voters in Israel, who will go to the polls for the third time in less than a year on March 2. Previous elections in April and September 2019 were inconclusive, as no party was able to form a majority coalition in the Knesset, Israel’s legislature. Will Israeli voters, fed up with all the political wrangling, produce a different result next month? And how might recent developments, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s indictment on corruption charges and the unveiling of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Israel-Palestine peace plan, affect the outcome? For this week’s interview […]

People inspect damaged buildings following three airstrikes allegedly carried out by Russian warplanes targeting the Shami Hospital in rebel-held Idlib province, Syria, Jan. 30, 2020 (DPA photo by Anas Alkharboutli via AP Images).

For the first time in Syria’s nine-year war, the Turkish military this week launched direct attacks on the Syrian army. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that he ordered howitzers and F-16 fighter jets to hit President Bashar al-Assad’s forces near the Turkish border in response to the killing of eight Turkish soldiers in Idlib province in northwestern Syria. “We are determined to continue our operations to ensure the safety of our country, our nation and our brothers in Idlib,” Erdogan warned. Turkey’s defense minister, Gen. Hulusi Akar, later claimed 76 Syrian soldiers were “neutralized” in attacks on more than […]

A member of the Mexican security forces stands guard near City Hall in Villa Union, an area previously patrolled by Mexican marines until President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador reassigned them to other duties, Dec. 3, 2019. (AP photo by Eduardo Verdugo).

MEXICO CITY—Mexico’s left-leaning president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, took office in December 2018 vowing to demilitarize his country’s war on drugs and tackle its wave of violent crime with a policy of “hugs, not bullets.” Yet his first full year in office saw 35,588 homicides committed nationwide, breaking the previous record for the third year in a row. In one of the more high-profile atrocities, nine members of a prominent Mexican-American Mormon family were massacred in November, including six children. The spiraling violence, along with AMLO’s failed promises to address it, has rekindled a long-running debate in Mexico over how […]

President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, Washington, Feb. 4, 2020 (Pool photo by Leah Millis via AP).

These are heady days for U.S. President Donald Trump. Secure in the knowledge he will survive impeachment, Trump is also coming off a string of what he can and does depict as foreign policy successes. Closer inspection reveals these “successes” to be mixed bags at best and little more than hot air at worst. His trade war with China produced a “phase one” deal that leaves most of the underlying tensions unresolved, with any potential gains remaining hypothetical. And so far, his so-called maximum pressure campaigns against North Korea, Iran and Venezuela are 0-for-3 when it comes to concrete strategic […]

President Donald Trump arrives to speak about the new North American trade agreement at Dana Incorporated in Warren, Mich., Jan. 30, 2020 (AP photo by Evan Vucci).

In a month spent celebrating supposed trade triumphs, the White House quietly conceded that some of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, on imports of steel and aluminum, were in fact failing to achieve their stated aim of boosting American production. But instead of rolling the tariffs back, Trump issued new ones. Late on a recent Friday night, a time when all presidents try to bury bad news, the White House released a proclamation in which Trump ordered new tariffs on nails, wire, car bumpers and certain other metal-based products because increased imports of those “derivative” products were “undermin[ing] the purpose” of […]

Brexit supporters celebrate the U.K.’s official exit from the European Union, at a rally outside Stormont, the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly in Belfast, Jan. 31, 2020 (AP photo by Peter Morrison).

BELFAST, Northern Ireland—The two main political parties in Northern Ireland announced a deal last month to restore the region’s power-sharing government, which had ceased to function three years ago. Within 24 hours of the announcement of the deal on Jan. 10, which was brokered by the British and Irish governments, Northern Ireland’s institutions of devolved government were back up and running. Yet while many in Belfast are breathing a sigh of relief, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s recent Brexit deal has created a host of new problems for the region that the reopened Northern Ireland Assembly will need to confront. […]

Men fish in boats on the Nile river, Manfalut, Egypt, Jan. 29, 2020 (Photo by Lobna Tarek for dpa via AP Images).

At first glance, the Nile valley at Wad Ramli, an hour’s drive north of Khartoum, looks as lush and fertile as ever. Date palms sag, heavy with fruit along the banks. Neat rows of barley await harvesting in the heat. With thousands of miles of unbroken desert to the west and many hundreds to the east, this narrow, green strip—at points only 200 meters wide—still closely resembles the life-giving refuge from a hostile environment that it has been for millennia. But ask the farmers, fishermen or anyone else who depends on the river for their livelihood, and they’ll tell you […]

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, talks to reporters at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Jan. 30, 2020 (Keystone photo by Jean-Christophe Bott via AP Images).

The rapid spread of the Wuhan coronavirus, which the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency last Thursday, is immediately testing the multilateral system’s capacity to respond to a pandemic. As of Jan. 31, the virus had infected a reported 9,720 people in China and around 100 more in 20 other countries and territories, killing at least 213. The deepening health crisis underscores that we live in an epidemiologically interdependent world, in which outbreaks anywhere can hopscotch around the world at jet aircraft speeds. Preserving global public health depends in large part on three things: timely and credible action […]

Billboards featuring candidates for Congress line a street in the San Juan de Miraflores neighborhood of Lima, Peru, Jan. 23, 2020 (AP photo by Martin Mejia).

LIMA, Peru—When Martin Vizcarra stepped up from the vice presidency to replace the disgraced Pedro Pablo Kuczynski as president of Peru in March 2018, the odds appeared stacked against him. An austere, accidental leader whose tiny political party, Peruvians for Change, controlled a fast-disintegrating congressional bloc, Vizcarra immediately came under heavy fire from the hard-right Popular Force party, led by Keiko Fujimori, which had seized on a bribery scandal to force Kuczynski to resign. After three months of attempting to appease the Fujimoristas—and seeing his approval ratings plummet—Vizcarra launched a make-or-break campaign against Peru’s rampant corruption, and by implication Popular […]

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