Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
News
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport Matteo Salvini meets with journalists following the CIPESS decision to approve the construction of the Messina Strait Bridge, Italy, on August 7, 2025.
13.5 billion: After decades of planning, the Italian government has approved a €13.5 billion ($15.6 billion) project to build the world’s longest suspension bridge, connecting Sicily to mainland Italy. The Ponte Messina will span one of the most seismically active areas in the Mediterranean, but designers say it will be able to withstand earthquakes. The target date for completion is 2033.
8: A helicopter crash in the central Ashanti region of Ghana has killed eight people including two government ministers: Edward Omane Boamah and Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed. The cause of the crash was unclear, but local farmers near the crash site reported foggy conditions as the helicopter flew overhead.
1.5: What’s that smell in Portugal? Oh it’s just some cocaine in rotting animal skins. A police captain and an accomplice are under arrest in Portugal on suspicion of importing 1.5 tons of the drug by hiding it in untanned hides imported from Latin America. The plot thickens: captain was himself involved in a sting operation against a drug ring two years ago.
1 of 3: South African prosecutors have withdrawn charges against one of the three men accused of murdering two Black women last year and feeding their bodies to pigs. The case has exacerbated racial tensions in the country, especially in rural areas. The trial will resume on Oct. 6.
74: Myanmar’s figurehead President Myint Swe died on Thursday at the age of 74. Swe had held the role ever since the military coup of 2021, repeatedly endorsing extensions of the country’s state of emergency to ensure the military junta could hold power.
Spiritual Counsel: Azucar para siempre! Nuyorican pianist and band leader Eddie Palmieri, a giant of Latin jazz and one of the pioneers of the genre that came to be called salsa, died Wednesday at the age of 88. Thank you for all of the music, all of the magic, and all of sugar, Eddie. Que en paz descanses.
What We’re Watching: Trump to meet Putin, Indigenous voters in Bolivia shift right, Lula’s anti-Trump strategy goes global
U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russia's President Vladimir Putin during their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017.
Trump to meet with Putin, proposes trilateral summit with Putin and Zelensky
The Kremlin confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with US President Donald Trump “in the coming days” to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war. The location of the meeting isn’t yet clear. Trump also reportedly told a group of European leaders yesterday he will hold a (so-far unconfirmed) trilateral summit with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump has been trying without success to get Putin to end the war – threatening further sanctions and secondary tariffs on Russian trade partners. Will his personal powers of persuasion do the trick?
Amid economic turmoil, Indigenous voters in Bolivia shift right
With the Bolivian election just 10 days away, economic grievances are causing Indigenous voters – who represent 62% of the population – to abandon the ruling Movement to Socialism (MAS) party, which has long acted as their standard-bearer and has held power for most of the last 20 years. Natural gas exports have plummeted and inflation has risen to a 40-year high. MAS now trails conservative rivals in polling. Bolivia’s election could be a bellwether for socialist difficulties elsewhere in the region: ruling left-wing movements in Chile and Colombia also face a challenging path to reelection in the next 12 months.
Brazil’s Lula goes global with anti-Trump stance
But if some LatAm leftists are looking cooked, at least one other is cooking. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is giving no ground in his clash with Trump, telling Reuters he won’t “humiliate” himself by calling the White House. The US president has threatened Latin America’s largest economy with steep tariffs over the prosecution of right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump pal, on charges he plotted a coup after losing the 2022 election. The aging Lula, now in his third term and debating a fourth, has gotten a bounce at home from telling the gringo president to stuff it. But his recent spate of high-profile international media interviews suggests he’s leaning into the “anti-Trump” role at the global level, too. Narendra Modi, take note?
People celebrate the one year anniversary since student-led protests ousted Bangladesh's former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, August 5, 2025.
Earlier this week, thousands of people flooded the streets in Bangladesh’s capital of Dhaka to mark the one-year anniversary of a student-led protest movement that brought an end to 15 years of rule under former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her political party, the Awami League. Hasina, who fled to India last August, had been accused of increasingly arbitrary and authoritarian rule.
The anniversary celebrations culminated with a nationally televised address by Bangladesh’s current caretaker leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who pledged to honor the spirit of the protests by working towards an orderly and inclusive democracy in the densely-populated country of 175 million.
But one year on, that path remains rocky.
“There are many that are disappointed, particularly students,” says Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, “The pledges for reform have taken much longer than we had earlier thought.”
While the climate of fear under Hasina has lifted, Bangladesh still faces challenges from security forces with a controversial human rights record, the rising influence of Islamist hardliners, and deeply entrenched political and communal divisions.
So why has reform stalled in Bangladesh? From the outset, Yunus faced an uphill battle. Under Hasina’s rule, Bangladesh’s key institutions – from the judiciary and civil service to the military and economy – were politicized and abused.
“[He’s] basically facing the challenges of putting a country back together after 15 years and increasingly autocratic rule,” says Jon F. Danilowicz, the former deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Dhaka. “The system is overwhelmed.”
And although Yunus set up no fewer than 11 commissions to propose legal and constitutional reforms, political infighting has stalled progress at nearly every turn.
“Whatever change they’re hoping for hasn’t really happened that much,” says Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for South Asia and Southeast Asia at the Council of Foreign Relations. “Yunus tried to get all these reforms, but the political parties wouldn’t agree.”
Yunus, after all, is the unelected head of an interim government that lacks a popular mandate to push through difficult reforms or unify the country’s fractured political class.
While conditions have improved overall since the Awami League’s exit, the failure to bring needed reforms to the military and police has enabled Hasina-era abuses to resurface.
Mob violence, political unrest, and Islamist attacks targeting women, LGBT communities, and religious minorities have escalated sharply, while rights groups have accused the interim government of using arbitrary detentions to target its political opponents.
But experts stress that the current government still marks a significant departure from its predecessor.
“When there’s a charge that this government is acting just like its predecessor, I’d say that in this government, you have good people who sometimes do bad things,” says Danilowicz. “In the past government, you’ve had a lot of bad people who consistently did bad things.”
What’s next for Bangladesh’s fragile democracy? With national elections slated for February, Bangladesh stands at a crossroads. The incoming government will inherit the same hopes for change and challenges of reform as the interim one.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the traditional rival of Hasina’s Awami League, is positioning itself for a comeback, but it faces challenges from the country’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, as well as the student-led National Citizen Party (NCP), which was born out of last year’s protests.
Still, Danilowicz maintains a positive outlook.
“I’m still hopefully optimistic that the Bangladeshi people may take advantage of this opportunity and not squander it as they have in the past,” he says. “The spirit [of the protests] still exists… there is a group of empowered young people who don’t want to see the country move backwards.”
What We’re Watching: US envoy in Moscow, Tariffs rock South Africa’s government, Hezbollah dismisses disarmament
Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with US special envoy Steve Witkoff ahead of Ukraine war talks.
US envoy meets with Putin ahead of sanctions deadline
US special envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Wednesday ahead of US President Donald Trump’s Friday deadline for the Kremlin to end the war or face new US sanctions. Neither side has revealed details about the talks yet, but Putin is reportedly unmoved by Trump’s threats, seeing his own war aims as being worth the price of further economic pain. The Witkoff-Putin talks came a day after Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed Russia sanctions and increased defense cooperation.
US tariffs cause political trouble in Africa’s largest economy
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is facing a backlash from his coalition partners over his failure to deftly handle tariff negotiations with Trump. In May, Ramaphosa made a trip to the White House where he sought to allay the US president’s trade concerns and push back against largely fabricated stories about a “genocide” of South African white farmers. None of it worked — Africa’s largest and most industrialized economy is under a 30% tariff, the highest rate on the continent.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah rejects calls to disarm
Hezbollah on Wednesday said it would be a “grave sin” for the Lebanese government to try to take away its weapons. The defiant statement comes after Lebanon's cabinet, acting under US pressure, ordered the army this week to draft a plan by year’s end to place Hezbollah’s weapons under state control. Iran-backed Hezbollah faces its weakest moment in years: Israeli strikes have decimated its weapons and leadership, and it no longer has an ally in Syria. Click here for more on what it would take to disarm the group, and here for the most famous recent example of a paramilitary disarmament that actually worked.
Activists of All India National Congress burn an effigy of US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi during a protest in Kolkata, India, after the Trump administration announced a 25% tariff on Indian goods, on August 1, 2025.
The days of “Howdy, Modi” are over.
Six years on from a gigantic rally in Houston, Texas, where US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held hands, the two are fighting a war of words and tariffs.
The spat began last week when Trump, desperately seeking ways to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine (Putin has ignored Trump’s demands to do so for months), slapped tariffs and threatened fines on India, the second-largest purchaser of Russian crude. The idea was to force Delhi to stop buying Russian oil, starving the Kremlin of revenue for its war machine. On Wednesday, Trump upped the ante further, announcing he would double India’s tariff rate to 50% later this month.
But Modi has so far refused to back down – his Foreign Ministry reiterated on Wednesday that Trump’s proposed tariffs are “unjustified and unreasonable.” Adding fuel to the fire, the leader of the world’s largest economy and the head of the world’s most populous nation are still feuding over whether the US helped broker a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May.
So why is Modi now clashing head on with the man he once called a “true friend”?
Firstly, there’s a monetary component.
Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, India only sourced 0.2% of its oil from Russia. Now, Moscow is responsible for roughly one third of all Indian oil imports, with Delhi profiting from a discounted price that resulted from sanctions.
“Indian refineries save about $1 billion a month by buying Russian crude,” said Eurasia Group’s South Asia Practice Head Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, a lower amount than previously – the Russian oil discount has diminished in recent weeks – but still significant.
While India requires this fuel for its own energy needs, it also uses the discounted oil to generate major revenues from exporting refined petroleum products in which crude in an input, like diesel and jet fuels. In this trade, Europe is one of India’s largest markets.
“Purchasing crude oil from Russia and refining it for the market (which includes European countries) has allowed India to not only profit from the purchases but maintain its political and economic relationship with Russia,” Manjari Chatterjee Miller, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told GZERO.
Secondly, India sees this as part of broader trade talks with the US.
The savings that India has made from buying Russian oil have been “useful,” per Chaudhuri, “but losing this would hardly break the bank.” More vital for India are the broader trade talks with Trump, with the next round of negotiations set for Aug. 25.
“There is a belief in New Delhi that Trump’s tariff threats are being used as leverage to extract concessions in order to secure a favourable trade deal with India, reflecting Trump’s proclivity to connect trade and non-trade issues,” said Dr. Chietigj Bajpaee, a South Asia expert at Chatham House.
The US leader has used the Russian oil purchases to justify the pressure on India, but he has another trade interest at hand: he wants Delhi to lower its notoriously high tariffs and grant the US access to its vast agricultural and dairy markets, per Chaudhuri.
Viewing Trump’s moves as a negotiating ploy, Modi sees little interest in backing down.
Thirdly, the Indian public doesn’t want to see Modi surrender to foreign pressure.
Trump’s words have piqued some in India, especially when he suggested that it had a “dead economy.”
“They’ve been seen as a little insulting, to be honest, and it has certainly worsened public opinion [toward Trump],” The Asia Group’s India Practice Chair Ashok Malik, who was a policy adviser in India’s foreign ministry, told GZERO. Modi, he added, now “has to press back.”
This isn’t so much about Trump but rather about rejecting foreign interference, according to Miller. India sees itself as fiercely independent, with a long history of “non-alignment” to any one global pole.
“For India to back down in the face of US tariff threats and essentially downgrade its relationship with Russia will also absolutely not play well among the Indian public,” said Miller. “Modi cannot be seen kowtowing to any US administration.”
Finally, India doesn’t want to lose Russia.
India values its decades-long relationship with Russia, principally because Moscow is a hedge against its chief Asian rival, China. Delhi has long had tensions with Beijing – over border disputes, technological rivalries, and China’s support for Pakistan. While relations with China have thawed a little this year – Modi is visiting China for the first time in seven years at the end of the month – India doesn’t want to anger Russia by bending the knee to Washington, as such a move would risk pushing the Kremlin even closer to Beijing.
“India has a larger interest in keeping links with Russia,” said Chaudhuri. “It believes [in] a combination of ‘respect and money’ that keeps Russia neutral when India and China clash (so far true) and provides other geopolitical benefits.”
The repudiation of US pressure, though, may still have consequences for India’s foreign policy.
“Unless Modi and Trump can reach an agreement,” says Miller “this is an incredibly destabilizing moment for the US-India relationship, and recovery will be difficult.”
A school of fish swim above a staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) coral colony as it grows on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Cairns, Australia October 25, 2019.
39: Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – the biggest living ecosystem in the world – has suffered its largest annual coral decline since monitoring began 39 years ago. Tropical cyclones and coral-eating starfish are partly responsible, but experts say rising sea temperatures due to climate change are the main culprit.
5: Law and Justice-backed Karol Nawrocki began his five-year term as Polish president after his inauguration earlier today. Nawrocki will be a consistent thorn in the side of centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk: unlike Tusk, the new president supports tax cuts and doesn’t see a place for Ukraine in NATO nor the European Union.
$500 million: US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. canceled nearly $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine research. mRNA technology, which gives genetic instructions to the body on how to fight diseases, enabled the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine. Several large studies say mRNA is safe, but the technology has faced scrutiny from Kennedy Jr., vaccine skeptic groups, and other members of the Trump administration.
2: Just how big is the AI spending boom? Over the past two quarters, investment in artificial intelligence has contributed more to American GDP growth than consumer spending, according to Renaissance Macro, an economic research company.
30: South Korea announced it will temporarily allow Chinese nationals to visit with a tour group for 30 days without needing a visa. It’s the first time that Seoul has allowed Chinese tourists to enter without a visa like this. The pilot program, which runs from Sept. 29 to June 30 next year, is part of a cautious thaw in bilateral relations.
What We're Watching: Modi defies Trump on Russian oil, Bolsonaro put under house arrest, Israel proposes full occupation of Gaza
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures during a joint press conference with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 13, 2025.
India digs in heels amid Trump’s tariff threat
US President Donald Trump has doubled down on his tariff threat against India, warning he will “substantially” raise the duty on Indian imports in order to stop Delhi from buying Russian oil. India is unmoved, though, calling the threat “unjustified.” This spat might not just be about oil, though – amid ongoing trade talks, Washington is pressing India to open up its massive agricultural markets, a bitter pill for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to swallow.
Brazil’s top court puts Bolsonaro under house arrest
Brazil has placed former President Jair Bolsonaro under house arrest, after he violated the terms of a previous court order by posting on social media. The right-wing leader and Trump ally is on trial for allegedly planning a coup after his 2022 election loss. The latest move is certain to heighten US-Brazil tensions – last month Trump imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil, blasting current leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for a “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro.