The world’s focus on biodiversity, climate change and desertification, first seen at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, has expanded significantly as the global effects of climate change have become more obvious and global temperatures have increased each decade since.

The Turks love tea, with each one consuming an average of 1,300 cups per year. The associated transactions, though small, are sufficiently numerous that they play their part in keeping the economy ticking over. Unfortunately, inflation has become almost as identifiable with Turkey as tea.

Iran’s Guardian Council disqualified all but seven of last month’s 592 presidential hopefuls — including the country’s longest-serving parliamentary speaker, a vice president and a former president — in the most extreme interference by a supreme leader in the electoral process.

Mass public gatherings have been rare in Iraq since security forces and militia groups stifled anti-government protests last year and amid regular government curfews to combat the spread of COVID-19.