Alec Mally
Co-founder and Executive Director for Global Economics and Southeast Europe at NE Global Media. Former US diplomat with previous assignments in Eastern Europe, the UN, SE Asia, Greece, across the Balkans, as well as Washington DC.
Kazakhstan accelerating efforts to expand the strategic Middle Corridor
The Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, which is frequently referred to as the Middle Corridor, is a multilateral institutional development project linking the containerized rail freight transport networks of the People’s Republic of China and the European Union through the economies of Central Asia, the Caucasus, Turkey, and when possible,...
World Health Organization highlights Kazakhstan’s historic role
The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) held a major regional conference and celebration in Astana, Kazakhstan October 23-26 on the subject of Primary Health Care (PHC). A large-scale celebration of Kazakhstan’s pioneering role in establishing the European and global framework for primary health care marked Day One of...
UN General Assembly 2023: More progress urgently needed on Sustainable Development Goals
The 78th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) kicked off in New York as planned on September 18, with global attention focused on the so-called high-level week -- that all have come to know -- which is invariably full of pomp and circumstance, meetings of important leaders, along with dozens...
Zelensky Athens visit eclipses Mitsotakis’ informal Western Balkans Summit
Receiving a full house of Western Balkan leaders, as well as several EU luminaries, in Athens on an evening when much of northern Greece was desperately battling a fire emergency that had already claimed 18 lives, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis hosted a protocol-focused event to mark the 20th...
Latest gambit in North Macedonia seeks to break impasse with Bulgaria
At the end of July, the largest ethnic Albanian political party in North Macedonia, the Democratic Union for Integration, presented an innovative proposal to try to clear the way for the country’s European Union accession talks to move forward.The DUI, as it is known locally, suggested that it could...
Back to Business: Greek conservatives rout socialist opposition parties in second round elections
Delivering an undeniable demonstration of Greece’s current focus on stability and the need to generate continued economic growth, the June 25 election produced the near-landslide outcome that most Greek voters have long understood was necessary to achieve that result – a single party center-right government was overwhelmingly elected for...
Serb boycotts, protests trigger new unrest in Kosovo
The latest cycle of unrest in Kosovo, a direct result of Serbian interference in Kosovo’s April 23 municipal elections, exploded into violence on May 26 when a newly elected Kosovo Albanian mayor was prevented from peacefully occupying his office by an ethnic Serbian mob in the north Kosovo town...
Boomerang! Greek socialists’ election jiggering backfires
Even though the Greek left-socialist party Syriza massively reconfigured the electoral system in 2016 to favor their long-term return plans before being ousted by New Democracy in the 2019 parliamentary elections, Greece’s May 21 parliamentary elections produced another massive loss for the socialists, with the new election rules requiring...
Washington issues reward offer for Russian ransomware actor
On May 16, the State Department announced a reward offer, under the Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program, of up to $10 million, for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Russian national Mikhail Pavlovich Matveyev for transnational organized crime.The impacts of ransomware attacks are significant and far-reaching, with...
Silicon Valley Bank financial contagion contained – for now
The world’s top policymakers and international financial leaders acted effectively in the days following the collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank. They appear to have dealt positively with the risk of wider global financial contagion.