Paul Manafort, a businessman and long-time Republican Party operative, surrendered on Monday to the FBI to face the first charges produced by a special counsel investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election

• October 30, 2017

China’s Communist Party revealed its new leadership helmed by President Xi Jinping on Wednesday, breaking with recent precedent by failing to include a clear successor to the president among the seven-man line-up.

• October 24, 2017

By Benyamin Poghosyan, PhD, Executive Director, Political Science Association of Armenia
A raft of issues are complicating relations between long-time allies Turkey and the United States. But both sides continue using diplomatic back-channels to get as many concessions as possible from each other without fatally harming bilateral relations.
US - Turkey relations are probably at their lowest point since the start of the Cold War in late 1940s. Turkey, as a NATO member, played a key role in fortifying the alliance's southern flank against the Soviet threat. The collapse of the Soviet Union created new geo-strategic conditions, and both the US and Turkey were in quest of new rationales for fostering their relationship. In the 1990s, Turkey was perceived in the US as a potential model on how to develop democratic institutions in newly independent republics with Muslim majority populations from the Caucasus and Central Asia. READ MORE

• October 23, 2017

Israel said on Tuesday it would not hold peace negotiations with a Palestinian government dependent on the Islamist Hamas group, responding to a new reconciliation agreement between the two main Palestinian factions.

• October 17, 2017

Sea trips between Vladivostok, Russia and isolated North Korea have resumed after a two-month break, with the transport of cargo, the RIA news agency reported on Monday, quoting the head of the company operating the route.

• October 17, 2017

Ukraine has filed a World Trade Organization complaint challenging Russian trade restrictions on beer, vodka, juice, wallpaper and a product close to President Petro Poroshenko’s heart: confectionery.

• October 17, 2017

By Benyamin Poghosyan, PhD, Executive Director, Political Science Association of Armenia

President Trump's decertification of the Iran deal will put in jeopardy a number of regional projects.
One of the key events shaping the geopolitics of the Middle East in the coming days most probably will be the US President Donald Trump's decision to decertify Iran nuclear deal (formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action - JCPOA), signed in 2015. President Trump has been a vocal opponent of the deal since he entered the Presidential race, and continued his tough stance on Iran after his election. The latest vivid example of this approach was President Trump's speech at the 72 Session of the UN General Assembly in September. READ MORE

• October 17, 2017

A senior official in the Russian parliament will discuss North Korea’s missile and nuclear program in separate talks with parliamentarians from Seoul and Pyongyang on Monday, TASS news agency said.

• October 15, 2017