Raphael Stevens

Iran and China have quietly drafted a sweeping economic and security partnership that would clear the way for billions of dollars of Chinese investments in energy and other sectors, undercutting the Trump administration’s efforts to isolate the Iranian government because of its nuclear and military ambitions.

The partnership, detailed in an 18-page proposed agreement, would vastly expand Chinese presence in banking, telecommunications, ports, railways and dozens of other projects.

In exchange, China would receive a regular — and, according to an Iranian official and an oil trader, heavily discounted — supply of Iranian oil over the next 25 years. More

The British government is providing more than a dozen repressive regimes around the world with wiretaps, spyware and other telecommunications interception equipment they could use to spy on dissidents, public records show.

Despite rules saying the UK should not export security goods to countries that might use them for internal repression, ministers have signed off more than £75m in such exports over the past five years to states rated “not free” by the NGO Freedom House.

The 17 countries include China, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, as well as the United Arab Emirates, which was the biggest recipient of licences totalling £11.5m alone since 2015. More

Half of girls are at risk of never returning to school in Africa and Asia in the wake of the coronavirus emergency, a troubling report has found.

The study, which polled 24,000 girls, warns that families will prioritise pushing their daughters into marriage at a young age or making them do child labour over returning to education once schools can safely open up.

Room to Read, which helps children in low-income communities develop literacy skills, said teenage girls had already dropped out during the Covid-19 crisis and this was likely to be the direct result of economic hardship. More

The Trump administration has announced that it is designating four more Chinese state-run media organisations that have operations in the United States as foreign missions, in a new round of restrictions likely to lead to some form of retaliation from China. State Department officials said they were taking the action to make it clear to […] More

China has issued a lengthy rebuttal of what it said were 24 “preposterous allegations” by some leading US politicians over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak. The Chinese foreign ministry has dedicated most of its press briefings over the past week to rejecting accusations by US politicians, especially Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, that China had withheld information […] More

Luis Miguel Barbosa, the governor of the Mexican state of Puebla has claimed that poorer people are immune to Covid-19, while the president has told citizens to carry on as normal. Mr Barbosa made the comments in reaction to Mexican officials revealing that around 75 per ent of Mexico‘s 475 confirmed cases are related to people travelling internationally, […] More

The president of the European Commission has criticised EU member states for throwing up border controls to each other during the coronavirus pandemic. Ursula von der Leyen warned of “crucial equipment stuck in bottlenecks at borders for days” following the decisions to impose movement restrictions and export controls on vital medical equipment. Her call comes […] More

The European Union’s passportless Schengen area is spending its 35th anniversary effectively suspended and locked down, with temporary restrictions and border controls erected between its member countries because of the coronavirus pandemic. The border-free zone, named after the eponymous Luxembourg village where the agreement was signed, first came into effect on 26 March 1995 including just five countries: […] More