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Pope Benedict has warned that a form of colonialism continues to blight Africa.

the developed world continued to export materialism - which he called "toxic spiritual rubbish" - to the continent.

the Catholic Church is already growing faster there than in any other part of the world, nearly trebling in size to 150 million followers over 30 years.

A growing number of Russians believe their country does not need democracy, a nationwide survey by one of Russia's leading polling agencies suggests.

Poor countries considered vulnerable to climate change have pledged to embark on moves to a low-carbon future, and challenge richer states to match them.The declaration from the first meeting of a new 11-nation forum calls on rich countries to give 1.5% of their GDP for climate action in the developing world.

The declaration contends that man-made climate change poses an "existential threat to our nations, our cultures and to our way of life, and thereby undermines the internationally protected human rights of our people".

"The key message to rich countries is that what seems like them to be a domestic political difficulty is for the vulnerable nations an existential problem," said Saleemul Huq, senior fellow in climate change at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), which gave technical support to the Maldives meeting. "They're saying 'getting a good deal for us means survival, but you seem to be coming to the table only with what's feasible domestically' - and there is another reality that trumps domestic political realities,"

Mr Chavez also hailed Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

While most analysts agree that an all-out conflict between Russia and NATO members is very unlikely, the conflict in Ukraine is a reminder that “a quarrel in a faraway country” often ends poorly.

Smaller nations are better equipped than ever to rule the skies with cheap airpower—like off-the-shelf drones and kamikaze munitions—and the United States had better learn to cover up.

Russia never lets a good crisis go to waste, and Myanmar is no exception. Russia’s deputy defense minister, Alexander Fomin, visited Myanmar to shore up support for the military junta amid its sweeping and deadly crackdowns on protesters who opposed the country’s military coup

The global system is built around sovereign states, and it shows. This is an enormous problem for groups that define themselves, or are defined by others, as distinct from the country within whose borders they happen to reside, and it’s also terrible as a framework for navigating the global politics of a rapidly changing world.

Sovereignty is usually traced back to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which was pivotal in shifting conceptions of government toward a secular state with entire authority inside inviolable territorial borders. Designed as a diplomatic solution to catastrophic religious wars among feudal, monarchical territories, its tenets have persisted into the modern world largely due to the entrenched power of those states, jealously guarding their unfettered rule over their slice of geography.

as the power of monarchy eroded and European countries needed something else to inspire loyalty among their citizens, the ideal of the nation-state—that the people within those arbitrary borders would feel some sort of collective identity—became popular. This led to more wars as European states expelled or converted anyone who didn’t fit their concept of nation: not French enough, not German enough, not Italian enough. They also spread this idea to their colonies, exporting successive waves of destructive conflicts.

Canada's federal court has ruled that an asylum agreement the country has with the US is invalid because America violates the human rights of refugees.The Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), in place since 2004, requires refugee claimants to request protection in the first safe country they reach.But on Wednesday, a judge declared the deal unconstitutional due to the chance that the US will imprison the migrants.

Barely 50 years after the Polos’ return from China, an outbreak of bubonic plague traveled those very same routes to the West, where the disease became known as the Black Death. It is believed to have been spread by both land and sea, originating in China and following the trade routes to Europe and the Middle East. Both routes ultimately converged on Italy, where the plague killed up to 75 percent of the population in some areas. Northern Italy’s thoroughly internationalized merchant traders probably played a key role in transmitting the disease onward to the rest of Europe.

as the coronavirus ravages the West, China has successfully spun the propaganda narrative to its own advantage. China has sent masks, respirators, and even specialist doctors to the country of Marco Polo—at a time when Italy’s European Union partners were largely ignoring its calls for help. (That has changed since, with Germany sending equipment and airlifting Italian coronavirus patients to German hospitals.) Its efforts have earned China predictable plaudits from the Italian government, which includes populists with a predictably pro-authoritarian streak. Perhaps inevitably, Chinese President Xi Jinping suggested that the aid could lay the basis for a “health silk road” connecting Europe and China. He seemed to have forgotten that China already declared a health silk road three years ago at a Belt and Road Initiative conference in Beijing.

When Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte led Italy into China’s Belt and Road Initiative around this time last year, he was probably hoping for a wave of Chinese investment to boost Italy’s moribund economy. In the end, he has had to contend with a different import from China: COVID-19

For many years the fishmeal industry has raised questions about sustainability. It uses vast quantities of fish, such as sardinella and bonga, which make up at least half of The Gambia's total protein intake.

Rather than usher in a new era of Chinese influence, Beijing's missteps have shown why it is unlikely to become the world's leading power. Even if it overtakes the United States to have the biggest economy in the world, which many economists believe could happen over the next decade, China will not dislodge Washington from its central position in global affairs for decades to come.

China's assertiveness is generating intense suspicion, if not outright enmity, among its neighbors. Its "peaceful rise" is not taking place in isolation. There may be echoes in today's Asia of the late-nineteenth century in Europe and North America, but this is the one critical difference. The United States came into its own as a great power without any major challenge from its neighbors, while Germany's ascent was aided by the collapsing Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires and Russian monarchy on its frontiers. China, on the other hand, is surrounded by vibrant countries with fast-growing economies, from South Korea to India to Vietnam, who all believe that this is their time, as well. Even Japan, after two decades of stagnation, still has one of the most formidable navies in the world, as well as the world's third largest economy. China's strategic misfortune is to be bordered by robust and proud nation-states which expect their own stake in the modern world.

On the economic front, Beijing is taking aim at another pillar of U.S. power: the dominance of the dollar. China is putting in place an ambitious long-term plan to turn the renminbi into one of the main international currencies. Chinese leaders often discuss the project in technical terms, about reducing currency risk for their companies, but they also do little to hide their frustration with the dollar's privileged status. One Chinese academic even likens the importance of the project to turn the renminbi into a major reserve currency to China's acquisition of a nuclear weapon in the 1960s. The politics of the currency plan are themselves an interesting sidebar to the over-hyping of Chinese influence. While American politicians have been worrying loudly about the risk of China owning so many Treasury bonds ("How do you deal toughly with your banker?" Hillary Clinton asked at a private lunch with then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in March 2009) China has been fretting about how little leverage its U.S. bond holdings give it. The desire to dethrone the dollar is partly rooted in China's frustration that it has absolutely no influence over the Federal Reserve. And yet it has few options other than buying American debt, because the U.S. Treasury bond market is the largest and most liquid in the world.

adviser to President-elect Donald Trump said the new US leader will “review” the Iran nuclear agreement, but will stop short of ripping up the landmark international pact.

signaled that Trump might not move the US Embassy to Jerusalem immediately and indicated he would make negotiating an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal a priority right off the bat.

appeared to represent a break with some comments made by other Trump advisers and the president-elect himself, and highlighted persisting confusion over what the contours of a Trump administration’s foreign policy may look like

Kenyan MPs have approved a motion to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC)

the US had refused to sign the Rome Statute to protect its citizens and soldiers from potential politically motivated prosecutions. "Let us protect our citizens. Let us defend the sovereignty of the nation of Kenya,"

No other country has withdrawn from the ICC.