Carnegie Endowment

President Joe Biden's departure Wednesday to the G7 in Japan was meant to launch a geostrategic masterclass on rallying the world's democracies against China. Instead, he will limp into an abruptly truncated journey facing concerns that the US debt ceiling row is about to tear up the global economy.

While we've been desperately trying to keep up with the breaking news as it rolls in almost every hour, we woke up on June 21 to see that Saudi King Salman bin Abdel Aziz had deposed his nephew, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, in favor of his son Mohammed bin Salman.

Iranians yearning for more freedom at home and less isolation abroad have emphatically re-elected President Hassan Rohani, throwing down a challenge to the conservative clergy that still holds ultimate sway.

The global economy is in better shape than it's been in years. Stock markets are booming, oil prices are on the rise again and the risks of a rapid economic slowdown in China, a major source of concern a year ago, have eased.

BELGRADE - The Svetozar Markovic University Library in Belgrade has received the biggest grant in Europe for 2016 from the US Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation - 106,000 dollars.

The grant was approved by the US Embassy in the AFCP project for the reconstruction of the historic building of the University library, which celebrated its 90th anniversary this year.

Bulgaria has appeared in Russian news outlet Vedomosti's list of states where certain people "concentrate political power and basic economoic assets".

Other countries mentioned as part of studies by several scholars include Guinea-Bissau, Montenegro, Burma, and Venezuela.

'The Puzzle of Non-Western Democracy' by Richard Youngs (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 213 pages, $20)

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavu?o?lu will visit Washington from April 18 to 21, during which he is likely to focus influencing the wording of the White House?s official commemoration on the upcoming centennial anniversary of the mass killings of Ottoman Armenians in 1915.

Turkish-Armenian relations are back under the spotlight ahead of the centenary commemorations of 1915 on April 24. The date will be especially strained this year, after Turkey opted to rearrange the international Gallipoli campaign remembrance service to compete with genocide commemorations in Yerevan on the same day.

'Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide' by Thomas de Waal
(Oxford University Press, 312 pages, $29.95)