Funds

After more than a week of waiting, the Republican Party finally got over the line to win control of the US House of Representatives. It was somewhat of an expected outcome, even if not the “red wave” as predicted by pundits, but still one that can frustrate Biden’s agenda and the passage of legislation. For matters of foreign policy, this could include the “first ever” Pacific Partnership Strategy announced earlier this year, tipped to cost US$810 million. The fate of this most recent bout of Pacific promises from the United...

International media response so far has been mixedIt’s fair to say that so far the reaction to the cover text produced at Cop27 is mixed. While most celebrate the wins – in particular the establishment of a loss and damage fund – there is a sense that the final deal was a missed opportunity, and that time is running out.The Washington Post in the US notes the significance of the creation of the loss and damage fund, in particular for the US. “Negotiators reached a deal on a “loss and...

Late on Thursday night in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the Cop27 UN climate talks seemed stuck in an irretrievable logjam. Rich and poor countries had reached deadlock, a “breakdown between north and south”, according to the UN secretary general, António Guterres.By Friday morning, the talks had been upended and the battleground dramatically redrawn, in a way it has not been in 30 years of these annual talks. At stake is the question of whether some of the world’s leading economies – countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and...