A man walks past an image of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in Manila, Philippines, March 20, 2020 (AP photo by Aaron Favila).

Rodrigo Duterte’s election as president of the Philippines in May 2016 defied the country’s political history. He was the first candidate from the troubled southern island of Mindanao to ascend to the presidency, and the first to be elected while serving as a local politician. This foul-mouthed, unfashionably attired mayor of Davao City, a thousand kilometers away from “imperial Manila,” easily defeated the runner-up, Manuel “Mar” Roxas, a wealthy, American-educated scion of a once-powerful political dynasty, by more than 15 percentage points. Over the next two years, as his single, six-year presidential term draws to a close, Duterte has another […]

Protesters hold banners with the face of Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a demonstration against China in Ahmedabad, India,  June 24, 2020 (AP photo by Ajit Solanki).

India and China’s ties took a dangerous turn with the fatal clash last month at their disputed border in the Himalayas. Despite being the first time in 45 years that blood was spilled between the two rivals, the incident, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed alongside an undisclosed number of Chinese casualties, is unlikely to go down as an aberration. It should be seen instead as a critical inflection point between Asia’s two premier powers. The path ahead in their relationship will be as rocky and treacherous as the site of last month’s confrontation: a sheer cliff at an […]

People gather in Trafalgar Square during a Black Lives Matter rally in London, June 12, 2020 (AP photo by Alberto Pezzali).

In the past month, the mass protests for racial justice that were prompted by the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis on May 25 have spread rapidly around the world. From the United Kingdom to Senegal to Japan, millions of people have taken to the streets to demand that the U.S. finally address its racial inequalities and the violent behavior of its police—and to decry local manifestations of injustice closer to home. By now, this pattern looks familiar. Protests in Tunisia in 2010 and 2011, prompted by the self-immolation of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, set off a wave […]

President Donald Trump after speaking at a White House news conference about the coronavirus, Washington, March 14, 2020 (AP photo by Alex Brandon).

Michael Pack, the new head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, is coming under scrutiny for purging the directors and advisory boards of several U.S. government-funded media outlets. A conservative documentary filmmaker, Pack was confirmed by the Senate last month after being nominated for the position by President Donald Trump in 2018. One of Pack’s first moves after taking office was to fire or demote the chiefs of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Network and the Open Technology Fund. The directors of Voice of America, USAGM’s flagship global news network, had already resigned following his confirmation. […]

American soldiers wait on the tarmac in Logar province, Afghanistan, Nov. 30, 2017 (AP photo by Rahmat Gul).

From the moment The New York Times broke the news that U.S. forces had found massive amounts of cash during raids in Afghanistan, and ultimately concluded that Russia has been offering bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American and coalition troops, the focus has centered on President Donald Trump and his failure to take action in response. Observers have paid much less attention to whether this is the kind of operation Russia would run—and why Moscow might undertake activities so brazen that if discovered, they might qualify as a casus belli, risking armed confrontation or at least a sharp deterioration […]

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong arrives at a nomination center with his team ahead of the general election in Singapore, June 30, 2020 (AP photo by Yong Teck Lim).

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong declared in a televised address last week that Singapore would hold its next general election on July 10. Lee and other members of the long-ruling People’s Action Party, or PAP, have expressed confidence in being able to hold an election safely and effectively, even though Singapore has had more than 43,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the most in Southeast Asia on a per capita basis. In his address, Lee noted the difficulty of determining how long it would take to wait out the pandemic, stating there was no guarantee that Singapore could hold a coronavirus-free […]

People line up as they wait to receive a ration of donated food, in Barcelona, Spain, May 14, 2020 (AP photo by Emilio Morenatti).

MADRID—Tens of thousands of households in Spain began receiving checks last Friday under a new guaranteed minimum income program that was passed by parliament in early June. Plans to provide a guaranteed income had been part of the coalition agreement reached in January between the ruling Socialists and their junior coalition partner, the far-left Podemos party, but they were fast-tracked due to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Spain is one of the hardest-hit countries from COVID-19, with nearly 300,000 confirmed infections and more than 28,000 deaths. Its GDP is expected to contract by more than 9 percent this […]

People line up at the Artux City Vocational Skills Education Training Service Center in Artux in western China’s Xinjiang region, Dec. 3, 2018 (AP photo by Ng Han Guan).

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Amid all the focus this week on Hong Kong, where Beijing’s plan to clamp down on political dissent came to fruition when controversial national security legislation went into effect Tuesday night, there were more troubling developments about China’s actions toward its Muslim minorities. The Associated Press reported that the Chinese government is carrying out a “systematic” campaign to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, a discovery that some experts called […]

The Voice of America building in Washington, June 15, 2020 (AP photo by Andrew Harnik).

It was a “Wednesday night massacre,” as one former U.S. official told CNN, when an appointee of President Donald Trump fired the heads of multiple government-funded media outlets. Conservative documentary filmmaker Michael Pack took over last month as the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media after a two-year confirmation process in the Senate, and one of his first actions after taking office was to sweep out the directors and advisory boards of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and the Open Technology Fund. The two directors of the USAGM’s flagship network, Voice […]

President Donald Trump speaks on the phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, Jan. 28, 2017 (AP photo by Andrew Harnik).

In November 2008, just days before the U.S. presidential election, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was the high-profile victim of a prank call from a team of Canadian comics pretending to be then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy. More recently, in August 2019, Sen. Lindsey Graham let his guard down with a team of Russian prank callers pretending to be the Turkish defense minister. Both suffered significant embarrassment when recordings of the conversations were subsequently released. In a way that was shocking but not surprising, the calls both revealed and confirmed the gap between what politicians say in public and what they […]

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