Backgrounders

Since its postwar founding, the UN agency has garnered both praise and criticism for its response to international public health crises, including the pandemic of a new coronavirus in 2020.

As China’s power continues to grow, some fear that the considerable autonomy Hong Kong has enjoyed over the last three decades could slip away.

The race to find a vaccine for the new coronavirus is well underway. Governments and researchers are aiming to provide billions of people with immunity in eighteen months or less, which would be unprecedented.

The coronavirus pandemic is placing enormous budget pressure on state and local governments, threatening deep and potentially lasting cuts to education, infrastructure, and other important investments.  

The coronavirus pandemic is slowing global commerce to a crawl, but many of the world’s largest economies are taking extraordinary actions to propel them through the crisis.

Emergency spending in response to the coronavirus pandemic, after years of steadily increasing debt, is projected to take U.S. debt to levels not seen since World War II.   

Yemen’s mounting internal divisions and a Saudi-led military intervention have spawned an escalating political, military, and humanitarian crisis.

Endemic to the African tropics, the Ebola virus has killed thousands in recent years, putting the World Health Organization and major donor countries in the limelight as they’ve grappled with how to respond to outbreaks.

The European Union has navigated a thicket of external and internal crises in recent years, including mass migration and Brexit. What are the union’s core institutions, and what roles do they play?

Singapore, one of the world’s wealthiest and most trade-dependent countries, punches above its weight in regional and global affairs.

Here’s how different health-care systems, including single-payer and government-run, have contended with the coronavirus.

Western leaders have long criticized OPEC’s power to raise oil prices, but the bloc’s influence is on the wane as U.S. oil production has soared and alternative energies have come to the fore.

The U.S. census, one of the few in the world to directly count every resident, is used to distribute political power as well as federal funding. In 2020, it faces complications due to the coronavirus pandemic, as well as controversy over immigration, cybersecurity, and rising costs.

Over the past decade, the Fed has deployed trillions of dollars in stimulus while expanding its regulatory oversight. Under the Trump administration, the central bank is back on the front lines to fight the coronavirus crisis.

A new coronavirus that originated in China has spread worldwide, sickening hundreds of thousands and halting economic activity. Many countries have imposed unprecedented measures to stop local outbreaks.