John Metzler

Foreign investment flows worldwide have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels reaching nearly $1.6 trillion. That’s the good news. Yet as a new report warns, the war in Ukraine and widening global uncertainty make the prospects for expansion appear grim.

It was time to celebrate! The 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne in 1952 makes her the longest serving Monarch in British history. Thus, the grandly named Platinum Jubilee has not only dazzled the country with its Royal Pomp and circumstance, but as importantly invigorated it with its joyous celebrations of unity across the land.

Our world is beset by unthinkable tragedy; brash military aggression, widening instability and grinding humanitarian suffering.

Has Putin’s war against Ukraine, started during the Winter, proved a stroke of genius by the denizen of the Kremlin?

Thousands of miles beyond the widening tragedy in Ukraine, a new threat has reemerged on the Korean peninsula with a provocative long-range missile test by communist North Korea.

The second salvo of diplomatic condemnation slammed into Russia as the UN General Assembly once again soundly and overwhelmingly condemned Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered a rising tsunami of refugees fleeing their beleaguered homeland and heading for neighboring Poland, Slovakia and Hungary.

For nearly a decade now, China’s “Belt and Road” commercial infrastructure initiative (BRI) has been expanding globally.

The ongoing Beijing Winter Olympics have averted our attention from a possible geopolitical clash of titans.

In a truly bizarre twist of international diplomacy which would have baffled even the denizens of Monty Python, the Islamic Republic of Iran whose UN membership dues were in arrears and thus barring the country’s General Assembly voting rights, was figuratively bailed out by an unlikely source, a hidden hand.

Russian tanks and mechanized infantry are churning dangerously close to Ukraine’s borders.

When the Taliban forces overran Afghanistan a few months ago, not only did they capture a country continuously in conflict since the initial Soviet invasion in 1979, but they equally seized huge stockpiles of American supplied weapons provided to the defeated Afghan military.

Following the Taliban’s lightning takeover of Afghanistan and America’s humiliating withdrawal, the remote South Asian country soon morphed into the political netherworld.

The setting is remote. The players are highly improbable. Yet in the deep and forgotten forests along the Belorussian/Polish frontier, thousands of migrants from far off Syria, Iraq, and even Afghanistan are massing and milling trying to enter Poland.

The ongoing global COVID pandemic combined with a shroud of secrecy and indifference has hidden the fast-deteriorating human rights situation in North Korea.