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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wins the general elections in India but falls short of gaining a majority in parliament

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wins the general elections in India but falls short of gaining a majority in parliament

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory for his alliance on Wednesday (5 June) in India's general election, claiming a mandate to advance his agenda despite his party losing seats to a stronger-than-expected opposition, which challenged his mixed economic record and polarising politics. 
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Opinion
Opinion: Are France and Azerbaijan drifting back to normal?

Opinion: Are France and Azerbaijan drifting back to normal?

Relations between France and Azerbaijan have been on a downward slope since the 44-day war in 2020, when Paris emerged as Armenia’s major international supporter, and the French parliament even voted, almost unanimously, for a resolution calling for the recognition of independence of the so-called “Republic of Artsakh”. Already during the war, Azerbaijani MFA claimed that Paris “ceased to be an honest broker”, and this position only hardened over time. Since then, the bilateral ties have been progressively deteriorating, especially after Azerbaijan’s military operation in Karabakh in September 2023: France became the country where calls to sanction Baku for its “ethnic cleansing” were the most vocal, while Azerbaijan started to attack Paris over its “neo-colonial” policies, targeting continued French sovereignty over several overseas territories, primarily New Caledonia whose independence movement has been active for decades.
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UN agency UNRWA urgently suspends aid to Rafah

UN agency UNRWA urgently suspends aid to Rafah

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has suspended its operations in Rafah. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the organisation that provides aid to Palestinian refugees, conveyed this information on Saturday evening (1 June) via X. 
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Editorial
Approaching the end game for Armenia-Azerbaijan peace

Approaching the end game for Armenia-Azerbaijan peace

Nikol Pashinyan has taken Armenia on a long journey, and brought it close to peace with Azerbaijan. Few if any believed that he could achieve what has been done so far. It is true that Azerbaijani military superiority, the victory in 2020, and the puzzling events of September 2023, which saw the overnight collapse of the Armenian political project in Nagorno-Karabakh and the subsequent exodus of the entire Armenian population from the territory, in many ways pre-determined what is about to follow. But given the entrenched nationalist positions and hard-line narratives that have traditionally characterised Armenia’s political thinking, even these developments were not enough to guarantee peace. The last part of the journey had to be done in the minds of Armenians, and Pashinyan set about doing this with conviction and determination, challenging the narrative of a historical Armenia, that is only the imagination of the nationalist elites and advocating instead, "a real" Armenia with fixed border.
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G7 explores ways to use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine 

G7 explores ways to use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine 

The G7 will explore ways to use future revenues from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the G7 and its allies froze around $300 billion in Russian assets. "We are making progress in our discussions on potential avenues to bring forward the extraordinary profits stemming from immobilized Russian sovereign assets to the benefit of Ukraine," the draft statement said. G7 negotiators have been discussing for weeks how best to use these assets, which include major currencies and government bonds held mainly in European vaults. The United States (US) has been urging its G7 partners - Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada - to support a loan that could provide Kyiv with up to $50 billion in the near term. The cautious language of the statement, lacking figures or specifics, underlines the many legal and technical issues that would need to be resolved before such a loan could be issued. A G7 source indicated that there would be no significant changes to the statement before the final version is released later on Saturday (25 May).
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Opinion
Opinion: The anatomy of the current protests in Armenia

Opinion: The anatomy of the current protests in Armenia

Armenia is still absorbing the implications of the protests that overwhelmed Yerevan on May 9. On April 19, 2024, the Armenian and Azerbaijani border delimitation and demarcation commissions signed the protocol on the delimitation and demarcation process in the Tavush region of Armenia. That agreement granted Azerbaijan control over a patch of territory along that border that had been officially part of Soviet Azerbaijan but controlled by Armenia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.