Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić tepidly apologized Wednesday for calling Slovenians “disgusting,” clarifying that he was only referring to their politicians. “If I have offended anyone, I want to apologize to the entire Slovenian public, and at the same time, I want to say that I will not apologize to Slovenian politicians because they pursue a disgusting policy toward Serbia,” Vučić said in New York, where he is attending a United Nations Security Council session on Kosovo. He hit out at Slovenia, a non-permanent member of the Security Council, on the sidelines of the meeting by accusing t ..read more

Just as the stock market’s record gains this year have been driven by anticipation of interest rate cuts, Donald Trump’s prospects have been propelled by an irrational exuberance in the political markets. This week demonstrated how the conventional wisdom around Trump’s inevitability has solidified — and why those assumptions, much like the ones around rate cuts, are due for a correction. It has been close to an open secret in the diplomatic corps that America’s allies and adversaries are anticipating a Trump restoration. Discussing who will fill his second-term Cabinet and White House isn’t j ..read more

Governments be warned: You must protect your citizens from climate change — it’s their human right. The prescient message was laced throughout a dense ruling Tuesday from Europe’s top human rights court. The court’s conclusion? Humans have a right to safety from climate catastrophes that is rooted in their right to life, privacy and family. The definition-shifting decision from the European Court of Human Rights means nearly 50 governments representing almost 700 million people will now have to contend with a new era of litigation from climate-stricken communities alleging inaction.  Whil ..read more

Switzerland violated its citizens’ human rights by failing to protect them from climate change’s catastrophic effects, Europe’s top human rights court said Tuesday in a ruling expected to reverberate across future lawsuits. The judgment — dubbed KlimaSeniorinnen after the senior women taking the country to court — came after a trial that saw elderly Swiss women allege Bern wasn’t cutting planet-warming emissions fast enough to avoid climate disasters such as heat waves that disproportionately harm older people. The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights is the judicial arm of the ..read more

LONDON — In 2019, Boris Johnson promised his Brexit deal would do away with checks on the Northern Irish border. Five years later, the region is about to be whacked with yet another trade headache. The latest tension comes from net zero rules, with the U.K. and EU preparing separate schemes on either side of the border to tax climate-damaging imports. Britain’s proposals on high-carbon imports don’t kick in for at least a year after the EU’s start — leaving Northern Ireland, and its half-in half-out status, at risk of getting caught in the middle of yet another Brexit-driven political row.&nbs ..read more

LONDON — On the Red Sea coast at the northwest tip of Saudi Arabia, plans for an outlandish £400 billion ‘mega-city’ featuring an artificial moon and flying taxis are starting to take shape. While far from completion, the enigmatic project — known as NEOM — has become a symbol of the vast oil-derived wealth of the country that the U.K. government hopes to tap into through a free trade agreement with Gulf states. Bruised by a recent breakdown in talks with Canada and disheartened by sluggish progress with India, Rishi Sunak’s government is increasingly setting its sights on this gold-lined pock ..read more

OTTAWA — Chrystia Freeland is in her element in Davos. That was obvious when Canada’s deputy prime minister and finance minister — one woman, two jobs — jetted to the Alpine village in January to rally support for Ukraine from global influencers she’s known for 30 years. On a panel meant to bolster Western solidarity with Ukraine, Freeland traded remarks with the Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, whom she first met in her Kyiv apartment in 1991, and CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, whom she met in London decades ago (she thinks they were introduced by Pulitzer-winning journalist Anne Applebaum). T ..read more

The Chinese government on Thursday announced that Irish, Swiss, Hungarian, Austrian, Belgian and Luxembourgish citizens will be able to travel visa-free to China. “I would like to inform you that starting from March 14, China will further implement the visa-free policy for Switzerland, Ireland, Hungary, Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg on a trial basis,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at a press conference during the National People’s Congress meeting in Beijing. Citizens from the named countries will be able to stay in China up to 15 days for business, tourism, family visits and transit pu ..read more

Michael Shank is director of engagement at the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. For years, the priority of many environmentalists has been to get the public to care about climate change via data and science — to agree that we do, indeed, have a problem that needs fixing. But to truly connect with people, we need to understand what they care about. And it’s time for the climate community to reorient toward empathy, and approach people’s pressing day-to-day needs with understanding. Let’s face it, the planet isn’t everyone’s priority. According to a Climate Reality Barometer survey conducted acro ..read more

The Czech government of Prime Minister Petr Fiala has scrapped a tradition of informal joint cabinet meetings with its Slovak counterpart, with whom it sharply disagrees over policy toward Russia. “We don’t think it’s appropriate to hold intergovernmental consultations with the government of Slovakia in the next weeks or months,” Fiala told journalists Wednesday after a Czech cabinet meeting in Prague. The meetings — eight have been held since 2012 — aim to showcase warm relations between the neighboring countries that emerged from the split of Czechoslovakia in 1993. Relations between Bratisl ..read more