In the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most strategic waterways where oil tankers pass by like cars on a motorway, even a hint of obstruction can cause global jitters. So last week’s attacks on two oil tankers set nerves on edge as Iran, withering under ever-tightening sanctions, continued to stare down a United States determined to get its way over renegotiating the 2015 nuclear deal. Our big story this week assesses the likelihood of another major conflict in the Gulf where, as Julian Borger reports, Donald Trump may be realising his traditional negotiating strategy is futile in the face of regional diplomatic complexities.
An estimated 2 million people took to the streets of Hong Kong last weekend to protest against the semi-autonomous city’s plans to introduce a law that would allow criminals to be extradited to China. As Emma Graham-Harrison reports, it was an extraordinary show of grassroots political power in a city where residents cannot choose their leaders but are free to take to the streets to denounce them, and where a younger generation fears the creeping erosion of their civil liberties by Beijing.
Food is often the tie that binds families together, and never more so than when communities migrate to new countries. But what effect does displacement have on culinary traditions that have been achieved by generations of fine-tuning? In our features section, Aleksandar Hemon, a writer of Bosnian heritage who grew up in Canada, considers how 20 years of life in a foreign land has resulted in a hybrid food legacy for his family that is both familiar and different.
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