Friday, May 14, 2021
The United States (US) marked a new stage in re-opening its economy this week, allowing vaccinated citizens to remove masks in a number of situations and opening vaccinations up to adolescents as young as 12. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration’s support for negotiating a TRIPS Agreement waiver for COVID-19 related vaccines at the World Trade Organization (WTO) continues to cause debate in the United States and European Union (EU).
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai faced questions from US lawmakers focused on the TRIPS waiver and other trade issues this week, when testifying before the congressional trade committees. The EU27 Heads of State and Government focused on green and digital transitions at an informal Summit in Portugal. In addition, the United Kingdom (UK) Parliament adopted a measure this week that provides post-Brexit certainty to its services sector.
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Pro-Palestinian protesters stop a London bus as they participate in a demonstration against Israel, in central London on May 11, 2021. (JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP)
JTA As the body count in hostilities between Israelis and Palestinian rises, so do fears that European Jews will be targeted in a phenomenon that many in the continent call “the import of the conflict.”
That’s what happened when Hamas and Israel exchanged blows in 2014, triggering the worst wave of antisemitic violence in Europe since the Holocaust in terms of its prevalence and scope.
That summer, dozens of men, most of them from a Muslim background and some of them coming from a large pro-Palestinian rally, besieged a crowded synagogue in Paris. For long minutes, Jewish men held the crowd at bay as the attackers hurled heavy objects at them, including pieces of furniture from a nearby café.
Modern Diplomacy
Published 1 week ago
Democracies have an inbuilt flaw when their own processes can be employed to undermine them. It is what has happened in Hungary in the last decade, and Hungary is not alone.
In his youth the current prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, was an ardent dissident leading a youth movement, Fidesz, and in 1989 he was calling for the removal of Soviet troops and free democratic elections. Opposition to single-party socialist rule was eventually successful, and he was elected a Fidesz member of the National Assembly in 1990.
In 1998, his party won a plurality, and he served his first term as prime minister until 2002 when the socialists returned to power. However, a landslide victory in 2010 gave Orban a two-thirds supermajority, and with it the power to amend constitutional laws.
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People gather reclaimable debris from the site of a building previously destroyed by an airstrike after an 11-day war between Gaza s Hamas rulers and Israel, in Gaza City, Saturday, May 22, 2021. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
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A woman attends a protest in support of Palestine in Queens in New York on May 22, 2021. (Photo by Kena Betancur / AFP)
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A migrant is assisted by soldiers of the Spanish Army near the border of Morocco and Spain, at the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, on Tuesday, May 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
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A cat sits between subway rails in Frankfurt, Germany, Sunday, May 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)