Leadership

Lay off our eggs market, French producers tell Ukraine

The import of Ukrainian eggs is causing cracks in unity. Photo: JOEL SAGET / AFP/FileSource: AFP The leading French eggs association has sounded alarm over the import of hundreds of thousands of eggs from Ukraine, warning they breach with European production standards and may contain banned antibiotics. Since spring, several …

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Vandalism hobbles Nigeria’s mobile telephone services

A telecoms antenna downed by Boko Haram Islamists in Nigeria’s Borno state in 2017. Photo: FLORIAN PLAUCHEUR / AFP/FileSource: AFP When cell phone and internet networks went down across nine states in Nigeria earlier this summer, leaving millions without service, telecoms officials pointed to an increasingly familiar culprit: vandalism. Destruction …

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Japan seeks record defence budget, to triple drone spending

Japan in recent years has been shedding its strict pacifist stance, moving to obtain ‘counterstrike’ capabilities and doubling military spending to two percent of GDP. Photo: Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP/FileSource: AFP Japan’s defence ministry is aiming for a major boost to its drone arsenal as part of another record spending …

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Cash-strapped Taliban look to airspace for windfall

A view from inside a commercial plane flying over Kabul city in November 2021, after the Taliban takeover in August of that year. Photo: Hector RETAMAL / AFP/FileSource: AFP Far above Kabul, the cash-strapped Taliban government has located a potentially lucrative revenue stream: Afghanistan’s airspace. As Israel and Iran’s exchange …

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Trump thumbs nose at decades of India courtship

Activists burn an effigy of Trump to protest against tariff hikes during a demonstration in Kolkata. Photo: Dibyangshu SARKAR / AFP/FileSource: AFP India once united US policymakers like few issues. For nearly three decades, US presidents of both parties courted New Delhi as an emerging ally, politely overlooking disagreements for …

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