The most important foreign affairs events of the week

June 26, 2023

“During the past Weekend, the Russian tycoon and head of the notorious private army Wagner Group, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, mounted a brief rebellion against Russia’s military leadership. The armed uprising called into question Russia’s justifications for its war in Ukraine and the competency of its generals. Wagner forces marched toward Moscow with the aim of challenging Russia’s military leadership, and while they took control of a midsize Russian city, Rostov-on-Don, they failed to gather much public support. By Saturday night, Aleksandr Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus, had stepped in and arranged for Prigozhin to go to Belarus and avoid criminal charges, and for the Wagner fighters to avoid repercussions. The impact of such a direct challenge to the Kremlin, which went unpunished, might not be felt for days or weeks. It could have profound implications for Russia’s global standing as partners like China reassess the strength of Putin’s authority.”

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The noun tycoon means “a wealthy and powerful businessperson or industrialist; a magnate.” 

The phrasal verb step in means “to enter into an activity or a situation; to intervene.”

June 27, 2023

“On Tuesday, the World Resources Institute, a research organization, released a survey in which it found that the world lost 10.2 million acres of primary rainforest in 2022, a 10 percent increase from the year before. It is the first assessment to cover a full year since November 2021, when 145 countries pledged at the COP-26 in Glasgow to halt forest loss by the end of this decade. Tropical deforestation not only emits tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but also degrades some of the planet’s richest ecosystems. According to the study, Brazil, the country with the largest portion of tropical rainforest, had the highest rates of deforestation globally. It accounted for more than 40 percent of tree loss globally, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo and Bolivia. One of the few bright spots in the report came from Southeast Asia, where efforts to curb deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia continued to yield results. Brazil also seems to be changing course. President Lula took office in January vowing to protect the Amazon rainforest.”

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The noun assessment means “analysis of the security, effectiveness, and potential of an existing or planned intelligence activity; the act of assessing; evaluation; estimation; appraisal.”

The transitive verb vow means “to promise solemnly; to make a pledge or threat to undertake.”

June 28, 2023

“Mexico has registered at least 112 heat-related deaths so far this year, with more than half of those occurring in one northern state, Nuevo León, according to the health ministry. That compares with just four heat-related deaths registered in the same period last year across the country. Blistering temperatures are baking parts of northern Mexico. Temperatures in the city of Hermosillo in northwestern Mexico are forecast to hover around 109 degrees through the weekend, after surging to 121 degrees on Sunday, among the highest temperatures registered anywhere in the world that day. A 22-day span of abnormally hot weather that finally abated last week was the first heat wave since 2017 to have lasted so long. At the same time, soaring temperatures drove up record electricity consumption during the first three weeks of June. People across the country have been complaining about blackouts and recurring power outages, even though the federal government has sought to play down those reports.”

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In this context of weather prediction, the adjective blistering means “intensely hot.” But it can also be used as “extremely harsh or severe,” to make a criticism.

The expression/phrasal verb hover around means “to position oneself near or around someone or something else; to linger near or around someone or something else; to hang or wait around someone or something.”

June 29, 2023

“On Thursday, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that race-based admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina were unconstitutional. The decision means that elite campuses in the U.S. that have sought to increase diversity among their students are likely to become less Black and Latino. The ruling was decided 6-3 by the court’s conservative majority. Chief Justice John Roberts said that race-conscious admission programs ‘unavoidably employ race in a negative manner’ and ‘involve racial stereotyping.’ In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that ‘the devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated.’ The court, she added, was ‘further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society.’ The ruling could drastically alter admissions processes across the U.S. and prompt employers to rethink how they consider race in hiring.”

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Pay attention to the negative prefix “un” in unconstitutional. In Portuguese, the word is “inconstitucional” and you can easily misspell the word in English as “inconstitutional.”

The adverb unavoidably means “impossible to avoid; inevitable; certain.” Close synonyms are “ineluctably, inescapably, inevitably.”

June 30, 2023

“Down in the polls, the far-right president warned of voter fraud, despite no evidence. After losing, he claimed the vote was rigged. Thousands of his supporters — draped in the national flag and misled by conspiracy theories — then stormed Congress in a bid to overturn the results. That scenario describes the latest elections in the Western Hemisphere’s largest democracies: the United States and Brazil. But while the behavior of the two former presidents — Donald J. Trump and Jair Bolsonaro — were remarkably similar, the political aftermath has been drastically different. On the one hand, more than two years after leaving the White House, Trump again appears poised to become the Republican nominee for president, with a wide lead in the polls. On the other hand, Bolsonaro has faced much swifter and fiercer blowback. On Friday, less than six months after he left power, Brazil’s electoral court voted to block Mr. Bolsonaro from political office for the rest of the decade.”

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In this context, the transitive verb rig means “to manipulate dishonestly for personal gain.”

The transitive verb poise means “to cause to be ready or about to do something; to hold, as in readiness.”