Researchers hope to better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long-duration spaceflight.

Researchers hope to better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long-duration spaceflight.

Putin called the U.S. involvement in the FIFA investigation “strange” and said the country was overstepping its power.

Putin called the U.S. involvement in the FIFA investigation “strange” and said the country was overstepping its power.

Putin called the U.S. involvement in the FIFA investigation “strange” and said the country was overstepping its power.

Raffaello Pantucci, Research Director at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, has come out with a strong endorsement of Europe’s seizing the chance for grand economic cooperation with China along the New Silk Road in the European Observer journal.    

Pantucci writes that China will be a good and reliable partner for Europe, because the Silk Road project is a priority on the agenda of the Chinese foreign policy now. Pantucci says:   

“For Europe, China offers the opportunity to magnify effect — Europe’s economic and political force is substantial, but when bolstered by Chinese capacity and means, becomes an even more substantial force…As well as the $40 billion Silk Road Fund, there is the nascent Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the slowly developing BRICS [New Development] Bank, and the sometimes talked-of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Development Bank. And China has continued to sign massive bilateral deals in countries along the route, with a particular focus in Central Asia. Admittedly, some of this money is hyperbole around official high-level visits, but go on the ground across the region and it is impossible to deny the presence of the Chinese funding — tangible as it is in roads, pipelines, railway projects, energy infrastructure, and construction across the region.”  

 “There is also a larger political point to be made here about China’s relationship with the European Union…The EU has long sought to find ways to engage with China in a productive manner — Central Asia and the larger Silk Road Economic Belt offers an opportunity to work with China on something that is of direct interest to Europe, but also is clearly a strong strategic priority from the very top of Xi Jinping’s administration. For Beijing, Europe is the other end of the Silk Road — Europe needs to seize this opportunity to help advance its own interests.”