| Hello and welcome back to the Daily Review. | Today at WPR, Oliver Lawson reports from Colombia on the wave of violence that’s top of mind for voters ahead of elections this weekend. And Ulrike Franke looks at what Europe will need to do to transition to a post-American security environment. | Scroll down for more on those items. But first, here’s our take on today’s top story: |  | Red cross workers bury a person who died of Ebola in Rwampara, Congo, May 23, 2026. (AP photo by Moses Sawasawa) |
| Ten days after the World Health Organization declared a fast-spreading outbreak of Ebola in central Africa to be a public health emergency of international concern, responders are struggling to contain the spread of the virus. “We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment the epidemic is outpacing us,” said the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, during an online meeting of the African Union this week. | The outbreak started in Ituri province in eastern Congo, but there was a nearly monthlong delay between the first known patient dying on April 24 and the WHO declaring an emergency on May 17. That has set local health officials at a severe disadvantage. So far, at least 220 people have died and some 900 cases have been reported, seven of which are in neighboring Uganda. | Making matters worse, hospitals and quarantine centers in eastern Congo have faced violent attacks by … Purchase a subscription now to get the full top story in your Daily Review email every day. |
|
| | Colombians will go to the polls on May 31 to elect a new president in a contest defined by political violence. As the candidates campaigned, armed groups in the southwest of the country staged one of the most shocking sprees of bombings in Colombia’s history. The attacks, which largely took place in the state of Cauca, bordering the Pacific Ocean, punctuated an anxious sense of insecurity that has lingered since the assassination of presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay last year, Oliver Lawson reports. | | | There has been warning shot after warning shot since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, and so many “wake-up calls” that European policymakers’ ears have been ringing constantly. But according to a recent report from Der Spiegel, European NATO members have finally been confronted in concrete terms with what defending the continent will look like without full buy-in from America, Ulrike Franke writes. | | | Note: Today we’re including the full On Our Radar in your free edition. To get the full On Our Radar every day, upgrade now. | United States, Gaza: The Trump administration’s “Board of Peace” has no money in its official World Bank-administered fund to oversee postwar reconstruction in Gaza, the Financial Times reports. Instead, a separate account at JPMorgan, which is not subject to the same oversight and transparency requirements, has received all donations to the board so far. | In addition, it appears very little of the $17 billion pledged from member states, including $10 billion promised by the U.S., has been donated so far. The State Department intends to manage allocations for the board’s agenda itself, rather than giving funds directly to the Board of Peace, and it remains unclear whether the financial controls necessary for the board to receive U.S. government funds are in place, the FT said, citing a senior congressional aide. | As WPR’s Frida Ghitis pointed out in January, the Board of Peace was structured in a highly unusual fashion from its inception. It was nominally established to coordinate the redevelopment of Gaza, but its charter does not even mention the war-torn enclave. What’s more, as chairman of the board Trump is given “full veto power” and “final authority” over all board actions, Ghitis wrote. | | Canada, Germany: Canada will export up to 1 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas per year to Germany under a new agreement, starting early in the 2030s. The deal gives Canada a new market for its LNG as it seeks to diversify away from its dependence on the United States, and it gives Germany a much-needed new source of energy. | To wean itself from Russian energy supplies after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Germany has pursued a long-term transition toward renewable energy, known as Energiewende. That effort has come under more scrutiny as fossil fuel supply disruptions caused by the Iran war have increased energy prices, necessitating finding new energy supplies in the short term while the country simultaneously pursues its clean energy transition over the long term, Aaron Allen explained in WPR earlier this month. | “The current crisis is likely to produce a dual effect: a short-term reliance on fossil fuels and other expedient measures to manage immediate pressures, alongside a longer-term, though politically contested, strengthening of the Energiewende as both a climate and energy security strategy,” Allen wrote. | As for Canada, the deal furthers its goal of diversifying its trade relationships. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney predicted in a well-publicized speech at Davos in January that other U.S. allies would also pursue such hedging strategies if the United States opts to “continually monetize” its relationships. | In related news, Canada on Wednesday announced that it will buy a fleet of six early warning planes from Sweden’s Saab rather than from Boeing. Saab is also reportedly in the running to sell Canada some of its Gripen fighter jets if Canada cuts back on the number of F-35s it had ordered from U.S. firm Lockheed-Martin, as Carney has said it is considering. | Climate Change: A recent technical paper about climate modeling written by an international team of researchers has abandoned one of the most dire global warming scenarios as implausible. The revision has set off a heated debate among climate scientists and activists about whether the extreme scenario, known as RCP8.5, should have been revised earlier. | “The majority of climate scientists still say global warming is a serious problem, and that even more plausible, medium-emissions scenarios can carry grave dangers,” The New York Times writes. “But the new paper has raised questions about whether some of the risks of climate change have been poorly communicated or overstated in years past and how best to think about those risks going forward.” | While climate experts say the extreme high-emissions scenario represented by RCP8.5 was never meant to be a prediction and was only meant to demonstrate how the Earth would respond under a worst-case scenario, the conclusion that the pathway it represents is implausible is now being instrumentalized by climate change denialists. In a social media post earlier this month, President Trump claimed that the new paper amounted to an emission that climate change warnings were “WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!” | China: In the wake of the country’s deadliest mining accident since 2009 last week, in which 82 people were killed by a gas explosion in Shanxi province, Chinese state media has published damning evidence that “concealed mining tunnels, falsified drawings and outsourced and unregistered miners, who had not been provided with required life-saving location trackers, were contributing factors to the deadly incident,” Reuters reports. | In her WPR column yesterday, Mary Gallagher examined how the central government’s prioritization of mining production to satisfy the country’s growing demand for energy has compromised China’s mine safety record. Gallagher predicted that “a flurry of investigations” and “prominent displays of intrusive inspections” would follow the Shanxi disaster, but that “the underlying problems will remain unaddressed.” | | | More from WPR | Mary Gallagher on the hazards of Xi’s push for energy security in China. Gaia Mastrosanti on the unlikely European origins of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Paul Poast on why Xi is getting the “Thucydides Trap” all wrong. Corinne Dufka on why Mali’s jihadists are looking to Syria as a template for wielding power.
| Read all of our latest coverage here. |
|
Comments
Post a Comment
Welcome to my geopolitics blog site. This is a Hawaii Island news site focusing on geopolitical news, analysis, information, and commentary. I will cite a variety of sources, ranging from all sides of the political spectrum.