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President of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves Robles, smiles and points finger up while listening to interpreter headphones during the opening of the Third United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice.

ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

HARD NUMBERS: Corruption bombshell in Costa Rica, Tax Protests in Kenya, flaming butts in Greece, and more…

7: Costa Rica’s attorney general’s office accused 7 government officials – including President Rodrigo Chaves – of illicit campaign financing in 2022. The prosecutors called on the country’s Supreme Court to lift Chaves’ immunity so he could be placed on trial. Chaves’ office has yet to respond to the allegations.

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East and West German citizens celebrate as they climb the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate after the opening of the East German border was announced, on November 9, 1989.

REUTERS

You had to be there: How our memories shape our politics

– By Willis Sparks

Sometimes I find myself talking with one of my super-smart, well-informed younger acquaintances about some major event from “recent” history. I’ll tell them I remember watching nightly coverage of the fate of Americans held hostage in Tehran by furious Iranian students while I was in high school. Or, sitting on the floor of my grad school apartment, watching live TV coverage of Chinese tanks crushing Chinese protesters, and later of giddy Germans dancing and drinking atop the Berlin Wall. Then there’s the sunny fall morning when a plane struck a tower in lower Manhattan.

Then I remember that the person I’m speaking with wasn’t yet born when most (or any) of these things happened.

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April 29, 1975: Vietnamese refugees line up on the deck of USS Hancock for processing following evacuation from Saigon.

Don Shearer, US Defense Department via National Archives

Saigon’s Last Day: The fall, the flight, and the aftermath of the Vietnam War

April 30 marks 50 years since North Vietnamese troops overran the capital of US-aligned South Vietnam, ending what is known locally as the Resistance War against America. Despite strong US-Vietnam reconciliation in recent decades, US President Donald Trump has forbidden American diplomats to observe the anniversary of this transformative moment — but those who survived the chaos that followed will never forget the trauma echoing down through the generations.

__________________

Saigon, April 29, 1975. For six weeks, South Vietnamese forces have been falling back in the face of a determined communist offensive. American troops have been gone for two years. The feeble government is in disarray. The people are traumatized by three decades of war and three million deaths.

Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” begins playing on radios across the capital.

Some Saigonese know it’s a sign: It is time to run.

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Paige Fusco

Opinion: After 25 years, has Putin "won"?

An aging, visibly infirm president is about to hand off power to an authoritarian-minded successor with a mandate to restore “order” and “sovereignty.”

Sound familiar? Da. It’s New Year’s Eve 1999, and a bloated, barely intelligible Boris Yeltsin is handing the Kremlin over to a shifty young spook named Vladimir Putin. “Take care of Russia,” he famously said before staggering out of the room.

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Russia & China's asymmetrical relationships | GZERO World with Ian Bremmer

Putin needs Xi to win the war in Ukraine

David Sanger, Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times journalist and author of "New Cold Wars," discusses the evolving relationship between China and Russia, highlighting its asymmetry and significance in today's geopolitical landscape. He points out how much the tables have turned. During the Cold War of the 20th Century, the Soviet Union was the dominant power when it came to its relationship with China. Decades later, it's clear that China holds the upper hand. "China holds more cards than the Russians do," Sanger tells Ian Bremmer. Not only that, Russia's Vladimir Putin needs China's Xi Jinping by his side in order to prevail in his war with Ukraine. "He [Putin] needs that Chinese technology desperately... He does not have a choice except to deal with the Chinese on Chinese terms right now."

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Are We on the Brink of a New Cold War? | GZERO World with Ian Bremmer

Are we on the brink of a new cold war?

“We are back in a period of superpower competition that will probably go on for decades. And that, if we're lucky, remains a cold war.” David Sanger, a Pulitzer prize-winning national security correspondent for The New York Times, joins Ian Bremmer on a new episode of GZERO World to offer a clear-eyed take on America’s adversaries. He’s out with a new book called "New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West." The takeaway: we’re entering a new and increasingly unstable era of geopolitics where the US, China, and Russia will be vying for power and influence like never before. China's rise as a world leader and economic powerhouse, along with Russia's nuclear saber-rattling and increasing military cooperation, poses an unprecedented challenge to US dominance.

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The next era of global superpower competition: a conversation with the New York Times' David Sanger


Transcript

Listen: In 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at a summit and described their “friendship without limits.” But how close is that friendship, really? Should the US be worried about their growing military and economic cooperation? On the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer sits down with Pulitzer prize-winning national security correspondent for The New York Times David Sanger to talk about China, Russia, the US, and the 21st-century struggle for global dominance. Sanger’s newest book, “New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West,” looks at the new and increasingly unstable era of geopolitics where the US, China, and Russia are vying for power and influence like never before. Bremmer and Sanger discuss the US intelligence failures that led to the current geopolitical reality, what the US needs to do to combat the growing cooperation between our two biggest adversaries, and why semiconductor factories are more important to national security than aircraft carriers.

Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.

Soldiers of the seven newest NATO members parade during a ceremony marking the expansion of NATO's membership from 19 countries to 26 at the alliance headquarters in Brussels April 2, 2004. NATO foreign ministers participated in an event marking the formal accession of the seven newest members, Bulgaria, Estonia Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slonevia.

REUTERS/Thierry Roge THR/CRB

NATO turns 75. Will it make it to 80?

Seventy-five years ago today, 12 leaders from the US, Canada, and Western Europe signed the North Atlantic Treaty, creating the world’s most powerful military alliance: NATO

Where it’s been: As World War II drew to a close in 1945, Europe faced the overwhelming challenge of reconstruction. Over 11 million displaced people were wandering the bombed-out cities and scorched countryside, including hundreds of thousands of war orphans. And on the east bank of the Elbe River stood the massive, battle-hardened Soviet Red Army, a worrying prospect as the USSR came increasingly into conflict with its erstwhile allies.

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