World Politics Review

Washington is preparing to lend up to $414.2 million for a uranium mine in Niger, but the jobs and renewed ties it promises won’t last unless the deal also protects public revenues and the communities around the mine, Jared O. Bell writes.

A new book by Logan Wright traces China’s economic malaise not to a slowdown Beijing chose to manage, but to the credit boom it unleashed to weather the Global Financial Crisis, columnist Mary Gallagher writes.

For WPR’s 20th anniversary, we’re revisiting a Trend Lines podcast episode on the hazardous waste trade. Efforts to ban shipping that waste across borders have had limited success, because processing it is an important source of income where it lands.

Formula 1 races have each generated more than $1 billion in economic activity for Las Vegas and Singapore, while South Korea, India and Malaysia lost theirs to costs and disputes. Which path will Rwanda’s new African Grand Prix follow?

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s comeback win was not necessarily a mandate. He now faces a center-right Congress, scandals implicating some allies, challenges to his legitimacy, an anti-incumbent public and a hostile administration in Washington.

Serbia’s Student List is Europe’s first Gen Z movement to unseat a sitting head of government, and the first anywhere to do it at the ballot box, giving youth-led protests across Europe a boost, @judah-grunstein.bsky.social writes for @wpr.bsky.social.

Serbia’s longtime leader Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat Sunday as the student-backed Student List won a projected 140 of 250 parliamentary seats, ending his Serbian Progressive Party’s 14-year rule after nearly two years of protests.

Critics may dismiss Rwanda’s deal to host Formula 1’s first African Grand Prix since 1993 as a government buying a high-profile race. But Formula 1 sets the terms, and whether Rwanda and Africa benefit is still an open question, Olajumoke Ayandele writes.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defied the polls to win a record-setting fourth term on Sunday. Having proven himself a brilliant campaigner, he will now find governing harder than ever, columnist James Bosworth (@bloggingsbyboz.bsky.social) writes.

Flávio Bolsonaro wants Brazil’s presidential election annulled after losing to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva yesterday, citing a court order that kept polls open two extra hours—an extension he had also requested. Get the whole story from GlobalPost: bit.ly/3WNz1h5

A record $3.5 billion funding round has made Mistral one of Europe’s most valuable private tech firms. But as René Rabeder writes, the French AI startup risks becoming a European home for other countries’ models rather than a direct competitor to OpenAI.

As columnist @profpaulpoast.bsky.social writes, the most fundamental obstacle to counting the war dead is the fog of war itself. Battlefield chaos obscures losses, and it is often unclear whether a death came from combat or from famine and disease made worse by conflict.

With Washington restricting foreign access to some American AI models and Beijing weighing similar limits, French startup Mistral is giving European businesses more room to maneuver by running foreign models on infrastructure that stays in Europe.

Governments are not forthright about the deaths their forces incur, nor the deaths they cause, because they want to maintain the appearance that a war is going well. That is one reason an accurate count of the war dead is so hard to pin down.

Rivalry over the cocaine trade and ethnic tensions may help explain why Guinea-Bissau’s junta turned on ousted President Umaro Sissoco Embaló, Tangi Bihan writes.

More than 80 percent of Americans view Russian President Vladimir Putin unfavorably, and only 4 percent favor Russia in the war in Ukraine. As columnist @fridaghitis.bsky.social writes, that makes President Donald Trump’s turn toward Moscow a political liability at home.

Mistral, the French startup founded to build Europe’s answer to OpenAI, now offers its customers a Chinese AI model. The move shows it has chosen practical control over the impossible pursuit of a purely European tech stack, René Rabeder writes.

From the Pentagon’s disputed count of U.S. deaths in the Iran war to the wars in Ukraine and Sudan and even World War II, a precise tally of the war dead often eludes us—but counting them will always matter, columnist @profpaulpoast.bsky.social writes.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected US Embassy accusations that Canada is meddling in the Nov. 3 US midterms. Get the whole story with GlobalPost:

As Tangi Bihan writes, the army that seized power in Guinea-Bissau last year did so precisely to keep the PAIGC, the country’s most popular party, out of office. Now that elections have been postponed indefinitely, the junta may simply cling to power.

President Donald Trump is betting that buying Russian diesel will ease fuel prices before the U.S. midterms. But in a deeply divided country, disdain for Vladimir Putin is one thing most Americans agree on—and that makes the bet likely to backfire.

Serbia’s elections on Sunday cap a two-year showdown between student protesters and longtime leader Aleksandar Vučić. Polls give the protesters’ Student List 40 to 45 percent, against about 40 percent for the ruling party. Get the whole story: bit.ly/4sjPq8R

The Franco-German relationship has been declared dead many times before and survived, @rikefranke.bsky.social writes. But this time, both countries face rising political extremes at home, and cash-strapped France cannot match Germany’s defense spending.

It is easy to assume Syria’s new government has put justice for Assad-era crimes at the heart of its reconstruction. But much of its focus on prosecuting former regime officials seems symbolic and, at times, almost performative, Francisco Serrano writes.

This week’s Classroom Discussion Prompt starts with Alberta’s vote to stay in Canada and explores how a country weighs one region’s interests against those of the whole nation. Teachers and students get GlobalPost free. Learn more at the link below. globalpost.com/signup/

Guinea-Bissau’s 2025 coup was widely seen as a sham staged by then-President Umaro Sissoco Embaló to cancel an election he had lost. Instead, the junta has turned on him, barring his return from exile and postponing new elections indefinitely.

U.S. voters are likely to punish, not reward, President Donald Trump’s increasingly open alignment with Russia in the Nov. 3 midterms—all the more so amid reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered business deals to Trump’s allies, @fridaghitis.bsky.social writes.

Italy’s government will deploy 500 more soldiers to Milan and make violent participation in a protest punishable by up to five years in prison, after weekend riots driven by anger over fuel prices and living costs. Get the whole story here:

France and Germany’s joint tank and fighter jet programs have been scaled back, and a German search engine just dropped France’s leading AI lab. The Franco-German partnership’s pageantry remains intact even as its substance thins out.

In post-Assad Syria, former security chiefs face death sentences while regime-linked tycoons settle with fines and stay in business, and alleged abuses by the new government’s own forces draw far less scrutiny. That uneven justice could undermine the country’s recovery.

The Trump administration has replaced U.S. democracy promotion with funding for right-wing populist causes abroad. But by tying those movements so visibly to the U.S. state, is Washington undermining their appeal to their own audiences?

Norms are often most visible in how people react when they’re violated. The outcry over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream a U.S. military execution gave troops clear evidence of what the public sees as acceptable, @charlicarpenter.bsky.social writes.

Azerbaijan’s 2023 offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh ended both the West’s push for a negotiated peace and Russia’s “frozen conflict,” tilting the South Caucasus toward illiberal regional powers, Laurence Broers argues. Revisited for WPR’s 20th anniversary:

Paris and Berlin still agree on European strategic autonomy in principle. But when it meets concrete trade-offs on cost, performance and national industry, German actors increasingly go their own way, @rikefranke.bsky.social writes.

Syria is convicting Assad-era officials of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a court created by decree, with no transitional justice law. It seems built for speed over a full accounting, Francisco Serrano writes.

Voters in the Canadian province of Alberta rejected independence by about 76.5 percent to 23.4 percent, a major win for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s push for national unity amid a trade war and annexation rhetoric from the US. bit.ly/4hTr2HC

MAGA treats durable power as a matter of embedding ideas in a society’s educational institutions, intellectual networks and media. Under Trump, the U.S. is now exporting that approach to promote right-wing populism abroad.

The exodus of more than 100,000 Karabakh Armenians after Azerbaijan’s 2023 offensive set reconciliation back by at least a generation and set the stage for a new cycle of disputed claims, Laurence Broers writes in a piece we’re highlighting for WPR’s 20th anniversary.

Lawmakers from both parties, 8 in 10 Americans, the U.N., faith leaders, retired generals and troops all objected to livestreaming the Fort Hood shooter’s execution, and Trump backed down. It shows how international norms constrain even the most powerful states.

The experiences of Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile, Pakistan and Honduras suggest countries should judge ties with Beijing not by the access they gain to China’s market, but by whether those ties strengthen their own productive capacity, Juan Fernando Herrera Ramos writes.

About 70 percent of Ecuador’s power comes from water, and dry conditions have pushed reservoirs to critically low levels weeks before Nov. 29 local elections—and voters may blame President Daniel Noboa for failing to keep the lights on as promised.