India’s proposal at the G20 presidency to phase out all fossil fuels, including gas and oil, sustainably and equitably construes the much-needed step away from planet-scale extinction of habitats and destruction of livelihoods.
Germany is changing, its strategic worldview is evolving, and its arrival on the global stage as a geopolitical player comes with immense possibilities. This was displayed during German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock’s maiden visit to India last week. Her clear and confident articulation of Berlin priorities was in sync with expectations in New Delhi about the need for a robust India-Germany and India-European Union (EU) partnership to tackle the formidable challenges that the world faces.
President Xi Jinping is visiting Saudi Arabia from December 7-10 for his second bilateral visit to the Kingdom since 2016, when he visited Cairo and Tehran as well in an epoch-making and biggest-ever Chinese diplomatic initiative in the Arab world.
On December 1, India assumed the presidency of the highly influential global grouping of major world economies- G20 from Indonesia for one year.
China will exit Zero Covid and freezing Europe will force Ukraine to sue for peace.
In Europe, where anger against high prices has triggered political upheavals, leading to the mainstreaming of right-wing politics in Italy, Sweden, and France, strikes for higher wages that promise to entrench inflation and depress growth, and persistent demands for fuel subsidies. This spells the beginning of the end of the war in Ukraine.
The sensible thing for India to do is to keep buying Russian crude, set up a BRICS Re to offer reinsurance to those who insure the safe passage of Russian crude without price caps to wherever it is welcome, and to keep engaging both sides in the Ukraine war
The protests have spread to over 25 cities and over 80 universities, totaling over 50 since the last week of November when nearly a dozen residents were charred to death at Urumqi in Xinjiang in a locked-down high-rise building that caught fire. China witnessed “mass incidents” periodically after the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989. According to official estimates, over 5500 such incidents were reported in 1991, rising continuously to over 87,000 in 2005 and to 1,80,000 in 2010. However, China’s Premier has discontinued providing such statistics anymore.