Foreign

Abelardo de la Espriella, May 25, 2026. Due to the high profitability of global commodity markets, Amazonian basin governments have historically pursued extractive projects in agriculture, mining, and oil drilling that required clearing forests. Although a regional wave of climate-focused administrations has sought to counter these pressures by implementing stronger environmental regulations, their efforts and protections have proven to be precarious. Colombia’s outgoing Gus

Former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima after being captured by the US military. In the early hours of January 3, 2026, Caracas residents awoke to explosions, low‑flying aircraft, and the realization that the United States was attacking their capital. By sunrise, then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was on a US aircraft, bound for a jail cell in New York. What Washington calls a surgical extraction mission is, for Latin America, a reminder th

The sun sets on Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland and home to 1.2 million people. The city, largely rebuilt after being destroyed by the Barre regime, has made considerable progress but faces serious challenges due to limited access to foreign capital. Somaliland is a relative beacon of stability and state-building in a region where violence and poverty have become the norm, despite decades of foreign aid and intervention. The success of Somaliland stems from its rejection

Burundi peacekeepers prepare for next rotation to Somalia. For decades, international policy toward Somalia has been framed around the single objective to defeat Al‑Shabaab, an al-Qaeda aligned terrorist group that emerged from Somalia’s civil war and has fought the Somali government and international peacekeeping forces since the mid-2000s. From mass casualty bombings to attacks on aid workers, the group’s violence poses a profound threat to Somali civilians and instituti

Residents flood the iconic La Rambla to protest overtourism and its effect on their home city of Barcelona, Spain. On July 6, 2024, an unexpected splash of water punctured the postcard image of a sunny day in Barcelona. Around 2,800 anti-tourism protesters filled the city’s streets, hoisting “Tourists Go Home” banners and aiming plastic water guns at visitors dining along the crowded boulevard of Las Ramblas. What appeared at first to be a theatrical stunt quickly drew in

Obama and Medvedev sign the Prague Treaty, 2010. On February 5, 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) between Russia and the United States expired after sixteen years of operation. The treaty, modeled after previous arms deals dating back to 1991, limited the number of Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles to 700 and the number of nuclear warheads to 1,550. The deal also placed restrictions on Russian submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The