Новости за 22.12.2016

Peter Apps, Reuters
The killing of Russia's ambassador to Turkey on Monday evening might have prompted knee-jerk comparisons to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, but it almost certainly won't spark a World War One-type conflict. The lethal truck attack that killed 12 in Berlin a few hours later, however, could ratchet up the prospect of yet another political shock in Europe.

The American Interest
The Indian Prime Minister's abrupt demonetization drive could prove politically costly as public patience wears thin.

Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Boston Globe
The two have unwittingly boosted each other's fortunes.

Van Hipp, Fox News
Make no mistake. What we are seeing in Europe is the hard lesson of what happens when you put out the “welcome mat” to hundreds of thousands of refugees from known terrorist hotspots.

David Pilling, FT

Yahya Jammeh is the type of leader who gives African dictators a bad name. Having taken over Gambia in a coup in 1994 as a 29-year-old lieutenant, fresh from Fort McClellan, Alabama (no less), he has clung grimly to power ever since.

Andrew McCarthy, National Review
German investigators have named a Tunisian refugee, Anis Amri, as the jihadist whom they suspect carried out Tuesday's mass-murder attack.Â

Rod Dreher, The American Conservative
Secular liberals of the left and right still cannot bear to see man as he actually is. This won't last.

Mike Jay, London Review of Books
In October 2013 a Time magazine article entitled ‘Syria's Breaking Bad' alerted Western media to the prevalence across the region of a little-known stimulant drug, Captagon. Lebanese police had found five million locally produced tablets, embossed with a roughly stamped yin-yang . . .

Smeltz, Kafura & Wojtowicz, Chicago Council
The survey shows a downturn in overall American views of Russia.

John McLaughlin, Ozy
What happens in Ukraine will affect the key pillars of European stability, argues senior OZY correspondent John McLaughlin.

Jiayang Fan, New Yorker
Trump's bluster speaks to a deeply misguided understanding of Sino-American relations.

Joshua Keating, Slate
This is the seventh in a series of posts looking at how Donald Trump's presidency could impact countries and regions around the world. The FBI has now ...

James Kirchick, NY Daily News
Monday's devastating terrorist attack at a Berlin Christmas Market was bleakly inevitable.

Paul Goble, Jamestown
The Kremlin has deliberately obscured the so-called Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), in eastern Ukraine, under a fog of confusion.Â

Clifford May, Washington Times
Over the last five years, Syria has been descending into a hell on Earth. Over the last four months, the lowest depths of the inferno have been on display in Aleppo, an ancient city, once among the most diverse and dynamic in the Middle East. On Friday, in the final press conference of his presidency, Barack Obama addressed this still-unfolding humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.

Kaitlin Lavinder, The Cipher Brief
Mexico's homicide rate is surging. Government and independent sources are reporting an up to 18 percent increase for 2016, compared to last year.

Frederick Deknatel, WPR
A bomb ripped through a church in central Cairo last week, killing at least 26 people in the most brutal and brazen attack on Egypt's Coptic Christian community in years. The self-declared Islamic State, which has been waging an insurgency against the government in the Sinai Peninsula since 2014, claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of St. Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, the seat of the Egyptian Orthodox Church. It vowed to escalate what it called a “war... Читать дальше...

Parmy Olson, Forbes
Officials are worried that Moscow is exploiting Facebook and other social media platforms to influence Western elections.

Kit Gillet, NYT
BUCHAREST, Romania — In a surprise move, Romania's largest political party nominated a woman from the country's Tatar minority for prime minister on Wednesday. If she wins approval from the president and Parliament, she will be both the first Muslim and the first woman to hold the post.Â

Andrew Sparrow, Guardian
A review of five of the best EU referendum books offers up some surprising insights into the campaigns and landmark vote

Economist
Liberals lost most of the arguments this year. They should not feel defeated so much as invigorated