The Week in Headlines: News Coverage of current events, which stories matter, and which do not

The Week in Headlines: News Coverage of current events, which stories matter, and which do not

    Monday, July 18, 2022   No comments

News Coverage of current events, which stories matter, and which do not.

History is made one headline, one image, one sound at the time. Here, we freeze time to explore how the global media outlets saw the events of the week ending July 16, 2022.

The story is not only which event was covered and how, but also which stories were not covered and why.

Review the Week in Headlines here:

Week ending July 16, 2022 | 

  

Russian authorities set to allow new non-credit financial institutions specialising in Islamic banking.

Russian authorities set to allow new non-credit financial institutions specialising in Islamic banking.

    Monday, July 18, 2022   No comments

Russia is drafting a new law to regulate Islamic banking in the country, a growing sector that could help state-run banks hit by Western sanctions to attract investors from Muslim-majority countries as well as cater to domestic customers.

Islamic banking, assuming the absence of any interest income, may be legalized in Russia soon. Non-credit financial institutions of a new type - partnership financing organizations (OPF) will be able to deal with it. The Central Bank will become their regulator, it will also keep a register of such companies and exercise supervision over them. OPFs will be able to raise funds from citizens and legal entities and invest them in projects that comply with Islamic law on a partnership basis, which is generally reminiscent of trust management. The Central Bank is ready for innovation, but prefers to first test the new regime in a limited number of regions. 

The mass-circulated Russian daily Kommersant reported that the non-credit banking institutions would operate as financing partnership organisations (FPO) and offer Sharia-compliant financial products to their customers.

Tony Blair: The world is on the verge of geopolitical changes; the era of Western hegemony is nearing its end

Tony Blair: The world is on the verge of geopolitical changes; the era of Western hegemony is nearing its end

    Sunday, July 17, 2022   No comments

Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, pointed out that the world is on the verge of geopolitical changes, pointing out that the era of Western hegemony is nearing its end, and is moving towards multipolarity.

"The biggest geopolitical changes of this century will be provoked by China, not Russia," Blair said, in a lecture at a symposium organized by the British-American "Ditchley" Foundation.

He added that "the world will become, at least, bipolar, or perhaps multipolar, and we are approaching the end of Western hegemony in politics and economics."

He continued, "For the first time in modern history, the East can be on an equal footing with the West."

He added that China "is the second superpower in the world, and its economic potential and degree of participation in the global economy is higher than that of Russia."

He believed that "China has caught up with the United States in many technological fields, and is threatening to overtake the United States."

He pointed out that "the Chinese leadership is behaving more and more aggressively, and does not hide that it treats the West with contempt and is getting close to Russia, and it wants to solve the Taiwan problem at last."

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that China will try to take Taiwan by force any time soon, however, we can no longer base our policy on the certainty that it won't," Blair said. China in the near future.

He described the differences in the positions of the Group of Twenty countries on the Ukrainian issue as a warning to the West, calling for building relations with China on the basis of the principle of strength and participation.

He called on the West to "increase military spending and remain strong enough to resist China in any future scenario, while maintaining relations with Beijing, acting in a pragmatic rather than aggressive manner, and demonstrating a willingness to mutual respect."

The former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had confirmed, earlier, that the global geopolitical situation "will witness changes after the end of the war in Ukraine. It is natural that the interests of Russia and China will not be identical on all issues."

French President Emmanuel Macron also emphasized that the world is no longer bipolar, but rather multipolar.