The Middle Corridor is reshaping the region’s geopolitical landscape, offering participating countries a historic opportunity to free themselves once and for all from their role as ‘transit appendages’ to Moscow and become independent players.
Yesterday, the Turkish leader received the ecumenical patriarch at the presidential complex. One of the issued discussed was finding ways the historic school, closed in 1971, could reopen after the inauguration next September of the newly renovated building complex. Trump, expected at the NATO summit in July, has pushed for Ankara to give the green light. Renewed tensions with Greece over maritime borders lurk in the background.
The 2026 edition of the prestigious Ludovic Trarieux Prize was awarded to Imaan Mazari and Hadi Ali Chattha, two lawyers held in a Rawalpindi prison since last January for publishing posts expressing solidarity with Baloch and Pashtun peoples and criticising the country’s military. For human rights organisations, their case is a symbol of restrictions on freedom of expression.
On World Desertification Day, the United Nations warns that Central Asia is facing its worst drought in 45 years. It's no coincidence that the next UN conference on the topic will be held in Mongolia in August. Land degradation on the continent translates into food insecurity and migration to cities and abroad.
Leo XIV expressed “gratitude" for the memorandum to be signed on Friday during the general audience in St Peter's Square. In light of the "distressing news" from Ukraine, he called for a "just and lasting peace." On his apostolic visit to Spain, he stressed that Europe is “a living reality, not a thing of the past.” Asked yesterday at Castel Gandolfo about the episcopal ordinations that the Society of Saint Pius X plans to perform without papal mandate on 1 July, the pontiff said: “I am sorry. But we must move forward.”
In online scam centres across South-East Asia, thousands of young people are reduced to digital slaves in one of the forms of violation of human dignity also highlighted in the encyclical ‘Magnifica Humanitas’. On the border between Thailand and Myanmar, the NGO Global Alms treats the trauma and restores a name, dignity and a future to the survivors.
