Amid a Global COVID-19 Resurgence, Oil Prices Are Poised to Stall

Efforts to alter the central bank's policies to accelerate Ukraine's economic growth following the COVID-19 crisis could precipitate a falling out with the IMF by appearing reckless.

Modi has signaled a willingness to use force to manage border tensions with Beijing, which would mark a dramatic shift from India’s decadeslong strategy of dialogue and deconfliction.

Although China's official policy is still one of peaceful reunification with Taiwan, the island's political evolution and shifting international relations are pushing Beijing down a more coercive path.

Amid rising anti-China sentiment, Beijing's aggressive response raises two potential challenges -- that it backfires overseas, and that Beijing loses control of the nationalistic narrative.

With rising international efforts to constrain China's economic and political rise, Beijing cannot allow Hong Kong to remain a challenge to central authority.

Rather than trumpet Russia's praises overseas, Moscow's propaganda machine is focused more on undermining the Kremlin's enemies.

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis fought Saddam Hussein, engineered attacks on Western embassies and took on the Islamic State. His death in the same strike that killed Iran's Qassem Soleimani increased local hostility to the U.S. presence in Iraq.

The country's new president is likely to use the questions surrounding the implementation of the 'safe third country' agreement to wrest additional support from the U.S.

By sending Turkish troops to defend Libya's U.N.-backed government, President Erdogan hopes to force a cease-fire that will protect his country's oil and gas interests in the Mediterranean and burnish his regional reputation.

While there are few obvious historical analogies for the political crisis Britain's scheduled exit from the European Union has precipitated, there is one suggestive parallel -- and it prompts some sobering thoughts.

Whether and how people celebrate Christmas is clearly a complicated affair, bearing only a subtle relationship to Christianity itself. The contemporary, increasingly international version of Christmas is less a religious festival than a celebration of affluence, modernity, and above all Westernness. Without anyone willing it, Christmas has become part of a package of Western soft power.

The world's stronger powers hold the upper hand over its weaker ones but the underdogs may find a few "stones" to help them hold their own.