Two hundred conservatives gathered at Yale Law School and coalesced into a group whose name was a joke: the Federalist Society.

For the last two years, the US and its allies have engaged in a frenzy of infrastructure projects in the Middle East, seeking to consolidate influence in the region. This bid for hegemony is coming up against a new force: Chinese capital.

Afghan journalist Masood Shnizai describes his country’s worsening plight since the U.S. departure last year.

These are deeply upsetting times. The COVID-19 global pandemic had the potential to bring people together, to strengthen global institutions such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), and to galvanise new faith in public action. Our vast social wealth could have been pledged to improve public health systems, including both the surveillance of outbreaks of illness and the development of medical systems to treat people during these outbreaks. Not so.

By raising interest rates, the Bank of England has made it harder to repay the mountain of household debt built up during the cost of living crisis – leaving millions exposed to even more unsustainable bills, writes Grace Blakeley.

Colonel Assimi Goïta, who leads the military junta, said that the agreement with the French “brought neither peace, nor security, nor reconciliation” and that the population aspires “to stop the flow of Malian blood.”