Brics to admit six new countries to bloc including Iran and Saudi Arabia

The five Brics nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – have announced the admission of six new countries from next year as the club of large and populous emerging economies seeks to reshape the global order. Argentina, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE are to become full members from 1 January 2024, the group announced at its summit in South Africa. “This membership expansion is historic,” said the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, whose country is the most powerful in the group of non-western states that…

China has its own reasons for being at Ukraine peace talks in Saudi Arabia

When the Chinese envoy Li Hui arrived in Saudi Arabia, to join international talks on a peace deal for Ukraine this week, it was a pointed contrast with Beijing’s decision to skip a similar forum in Copenhagen in June. At the summit, which excluded Russia, Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy promoted his vision for ending the war to a large gathering of countries from the global south. His 10-point plan would mean the total, humiliating defeat of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping’s closest and most important major ally. China’s representative, a mid-level…

Brutal heat and heavy rain: a week of extreme weather

52.2C in China A remote township in the north-western region of Xinjiang set a Chinese record of 52.2C (125.9F) on Sunday – in a country that was battling -50C weather six months ago. Sanbao is in the Turpan Depression, an arid basin of sand dunes and dried-up lakes where 50.3C was recorded in 2015. Beijing topped its record for high-temperature days in a year on Tuesday, with 27 days above 35C. The temperature in its southern suburbs soared even higher on Wednesday to 36.3C. 53.3C in the US Temperatures at…

China’s Palestinian moment is about global standing rather than peace

The Palestinian Authority president imminent state visit to China is aimed at bolstering Beijing’s credentials on the world stage rather than a serious attempt to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, experts have said. Mahmoud Abbas’s four-day visit, which is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, has been described by Chinese state media as aimed at facilitating new peace talks predicated on a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict. It also comes on the heels of Beijing’s recent success in brokering a detente between the Middle East’s two major religious and geopolitical…

Kissinger at 100: Statesman or war criminal? His troubled legacy – in pictures

Kissinger with the founding father of Kenya, President Jomo Kenyatta, during his whirlwind tour of Africa in 1976. Over two weeks in April, Kissinger visited six countries, also meeting presidents Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, William Tolbert of Liberia, and Senegal’s Léopold Senghor. Despite these visits, critics said Kissinger was more interested in white minorities in southern Africa, with whom he had more sympathy. Photograph: World Politics Archive/Alamy The Guardian

China and Saudi Arabia boycott G20 meeting held by India in Kashmir

India’s presidency of the G20 group of leading nations has become mired in controversy after China and Saudi Arabia boycotted a meeting staged in Kashmir, the first such gathering since India unilaterally brought Kashmir under direct control in August 2019. The meeting, a tourism working group attended by about 60 delegates from most G20 countries taking place from Monday to Wednesday, required a large show of security at Srinagar international airport. In 2019 the Indian government stripped the disputed Muslim-majority region of semi-autonomy and split it into two federal territories…

Putin was indicted by the ICC … so why not the butcher of Damascus? | Simon Tisdall

The grotesque rehabilitation of Bashar al-Assad’s regime – Syria’s criminal president has been cordially invited to this week’s Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia – makes sense to cynical Arab governments. They hope to reduce Damascus’s dependence on Iran, encourage refugees to return, halt state-sponsored drug rackets and cash in on reconstruction. But from a human perspective, their decision is utterly shameful. More than 300,000 civilians have died since Assad turned his guns on Syria’s 2011 Arab spring pro-democracy uprising. About 14 million people, half Syria’s population, have fled their…

James Cleverly on taking a new approach to foreign policy – and belting out the Beatles with Blinken

In the early hours of Friday morning New Zealand time, James Cleverly was holed up in the British high commission in Wellington calling international partners about the mounting crisis in Sudan. It didn’t take long for him to realise that he would have to cut short his visit and make the long journey back to London. Emergency meetings were already under way in Whitehall preparing for the evacuation of British diplomats from Khartoum. The clashes, which began last weekend as a power struggle between rival military factions, have derailed a…

China ready to broker Israel-Palestine peace talks, says foreign minister

China’s foreign minister told his Israeli and Palestinian counterparts his country is ready to help facilitate peace talks, state media reported. The separate phone calls between Chinese foreign minister, Qin Gang, and the Israeli and Palestinian top diplomats comes amid recent moves by Beijing to position itself as a regional mediator. Qin encouraged “steps to resume peace talks,” and said that “China is ready to provide convenience for this,” in a Monday phone call with Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen, state media agency Xinhua reported. In his conversation with Palestinian…

Nuclear nightmare: reckless leaders push the world back to the brink | Simon Tisdall

Leaders of unstable nuclear-armed states do dangerous and foolish things when under stress. They miscalculate, provoke, overreach. Given the febrile state of bilateral relations, last week’s aerial military clash between Russia and the US over the Black Sea inevitably intensified fears of nuclear escalation. The incident dramatised how dangerous Vladimir Putin, cornered by his existential Ukraine blunder, truly is – and the risks he is increasingly prepared to run. But he’s not the only one. As often the case over the past year, Putin relied on American restraint. US forces…