Barely a week into the new year and the faint hopes that optimists might have harboured for meaningful progress to be made towards a peaceful settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict this year are bound to have already been extinguished by the latest round of illegal Israeli settlement building in the …

The unrest in Kazakhstan, the tensions around Ukraine and the need to have a credible European policy vis-à-vis Russia dominated the main event at the inauguration of the French Presidency of the Council of the EU – the press conference by French President Emmanuel Macron and Commission chief Ursula von …

Sparked by a small protest over a fuel price increase in the western oil town of Zhanaozen a few days earlier, angry crowds flooded the streets and squares of Kazakhstan’s major towns and cities on January 5, shouting their discontent with the authoritarian government’s domestic policies. Alarmed by the scale …