Allies of Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro are set to win leadership roles in Congress on Monday, bolstering his standing but not necessarily his economic team’s reform agenda, analysts and politicians said.

• February 1, 2021

By Benyamin Poghosyan, PhD, Chairman, Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies

2020 was disastrous for Armenian foreign policy. The defeat in the 2020 Karabakh war which resulted in the November 10 capitulation has sent shock waves across Armenia and Diaspora. Within only 44 days Armenia lost what it gained during the 1992 – 1994 first Karabakh war. Significantly reduced Nagorno Karabakh was effectively turned into a Russian protectorate and its current status can be compared with Karabakh status in 1989 when the Soviet Union put Karabakh under the direct Kremlin control through the establishment of the Special Committee led by Mr. Arkadi Volski. Now approximately 3000 square kilometres of territory with some 100,000 Armenians there is again de facto governed by the Kremlin, while the head of the Russian peacekeeping mission LtG Muradov had assumed the role of Volski. READ MORE

• January 26, 2021

By Benyamin Poghosyan, PhD, Chairman, Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies

The four years of President Trump’s rule will most probably remain in the history of the United States as years of unprecedented turmoil. It started from Presidential executive orders to ban visas for several countries, continued with the tumultuous Russian investigation and impeachment process, almost permanent skirmishes with the key US allies, and ended up with an attack on the Capitol, suspension of the incumbent US President’s Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, and the prospects of the second impeachment in the last days of the current administration. These extraordinary developments may force many to conclude that President Biden will make significant policy shifts in all major domestic and external issues. READ MORE

• January 19, 2021

Shortly after rampaging Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a fan of the president posted a message on the pro-Donald Trump website TheDonald.win. Inspired by the mob’s attempt to stop lawmakers from confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral win, user CONN_WYNN said in an all-caps message, replete with an expletive, that it was “TIME TO LEAVE THE KEYBOARD” and “FIGHT FOR MY...COUNTRY.”

• January 15, 2021

The United States has told India it is unlikely to get a waiver on its planned acquisition of Russian S-400 air defence systems, raising the risk of sanctions similar to those imposed on Turkey for buying that equipment, people aware of the matter said.

• January 15, 2021

WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has chosen David Kessler, the ex-head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for a senior role in the new administration’s efforts to boost the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, his transition team said on Friday.

• January 15, 2021

The group behind a global cyber-espionage campaign discovered last month deployed malicious computer code with links to spying tools previously used by suspected Russian hackers, researchers said on Monday.

• January 11, 2021

At least eight businesses are set to price initial public offerings (IPOs) in New York in the next three days, seeking to raise a total of nearly $5 billion in what could be the biggest week for new listings in more than five years.

• January 11, 2021