Taiwan

Following a year of tighter sanctions and Ukrainian attacks on refineries, ports and tankers, Russia’s crude output has fallen further in the second half of 2026, severely affecting the nation’s crude production outlook. Factoring in these disruptions, Rystad Energy has...

Bethlehem / PNN / Farmers in the town of Battir, west of Bethlehem, head to their fields, where agriculture has been tied for hundreds of years to a traditional irrigation system fed by spring water. The system remains in use today...

Over the past 15 years, Mexico has faced a severe seaweed problem, with vast quantities of a brown seaweed known as sargassum washing up on beaches along the Caribbean coast and hitting the tourism industry hard. Researchers are yet to...

Good things are happening! Meta loses to a bunch of kids, Israel’s greatest friend makes enemies, Missourians keep Republicans in check, and climate protectors get justice. You Love To See It is a benefit of a Lever paid subscription. If you...

There is a temptation to read current American foreign policy as incoherent. A transactional presidency dismantles alliances, antagonises partners, and lurches between confrontations without apparent strategic logic. On that reading, the contradictions accumulate until only one conclusion seems available, that...

As the United States-Iran conflict draws renewed global attention to energy security, a quieter transformation is underway. Driven by the combined effects of El Niño and accelerating warming, the Gulf region is heating up significantly. Rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, and...

There is a single sentence in a 2025 defense-industry study that ought to end a certain kind of complacency in Washington. Researchers at Govini, a firm that maps the Pentagon’s supply chains, found that more than 80,000 parts across roughly...

Before the launch of Operation Epic Fury back in February, the Islamic Republic’s lashing out at both enemies and erstwhile friends, and the grinding stalemate that has ensued since major combat operations ended, the Gulf was one of the fastest...

Islam Times - A Washington Post report on the loss of at least 45 Reaper drones and the expenditure of hundreds of THAAD interceptors paints a troubling picture of the erosion of US military capacity, where the gap between the...

Islam Times - The war between Iran and the United States is increasingly becoming less a test of military strength and more a test of the two sides’ economic and political resilience. The Strait of Hormuz, energy markets, mounting debt,...

Islam Times - Two informed Egyptian military and political officials have revealed to Nournews why Cairo was absent from the announcement of the Saudi Arabia–Türkiye–Pakistan defense agreement: Egypt wanted to participate as a founding member, but rejected the formula of...

Reports in the military press and by MSNOW confirmed that a sailor aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln jumped into the Arabian Sea in an attempted suicide on August 3, and that other Navy personnel had been restrained from...

The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced hundreds of commercial ships onto longer routes around Africa, and Somali pirates are moving quickly to exploit the sudden increase in traffic off the continent’s eastern coast. Oil tankers MT...

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ’s administration just quietly greenlit Elon Musk ’s long-running ambitions to build his own banking system into X, The Lever has learned from public records. The approval, which has not been previously reported, appears to...

In yet another remark that triggered alarm around the world, President Donald Trump said Friday that he planned to declare the Strait of Hormuz – which Iran has blockaded for much of the past five months over his and Israel’s illegal war...

On Monday, August 10, 2026, the 24th contingent of Chinese peacekeepers in Lebanon completed their mission of cleaning and restoring the UNIFIL Integrated Training Area in Naqoura, Lebanon, to high standards. They successfully passed the official inspection conducted by UNIFIL...

Big Tech companies are quietly moving farther and farther away from their decarbonization goals. Back in 2019, Amazon pledged to become carbon neutral by 2040, thereby setting a goalpost ten years ahead of the Paris climate agreement in a show...

Only an exceptionally strong El Niño will meaningfully ease Europe's LNG needs this winter, and forecasters currently rate that outcome as a long shot. Rystad Energy's analysis indicates that European winter temperatures would need to be at least 2 degrees...

On August 7th, with American warships blockading Iranian ports and Iranian fast boats still harassing tankers off the Omani coast, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan gathered in Mecca and signed a single-paragraph pledge: an attack on one...

Several fires broke out at industrial facilities across Europe in a single day, with some of them ending in explosions. Three of the incidents occurred in close succession in the same city. The causes have not yet been announced, but...

Since returning to the White House in early 2025, President Donald Trump has consistently argued that the war in Ukraine should end through negotiations. He initially believed that direct engagement with Russian President Vladimir Putin could create conditions for a...

Who’s processing your taxes? How many data centers can a state have? And how’d Wisconsin’s elections go? The answers to these questions and many more can be found in LeverMind , our weekly news quiz testing your knowledge of the developments...

Kabul’s dispute with Islamabad over Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan sanctuaries is not a border quarrel. It is the clearest evidence yet that five years after seizing power, the Taliban has mastered control of Afghan territory without accepting what control is supposed to...

The total number of active drilling rigs for oil and gas in the United States rose this week, according to new data that Baker Hughes published on Friday, with the total rig count in the US rising to 593, up...

At their Beijing summit on May 14, 2026, Chinese President Xi Jinping asked US President Donald Trump whether China and the United States could avoid the “Thucydides Trap,” in which rivalry between a rising power and an established one ends...

US Space Command is putting offensive satellite-killing weapons at the top of its future requirements as China and Russia expand their ability to threaten satellites in orbit. This month, The War Zone (TWZ) reported that US Space Command (SPACECOM) Commander...

South Africa’s Constitutional Court has blocked Shell-led exploration along the country’s Wild Coast, adding another legal setback to an offshore sector already struggling to keep pace with neighboring Namibia. The country’s highest court on Friday overturned a 2024 Supreme Court...

There is a good Russian word, pokazukha, meaning a show put on for appearances, and it perfectly describes the real state of affairs in the American military-industrial complex. But Russia should not let its guard down. Plastic Shells at the Texas...

Brent heads toward a 5% weekly gain as stalled US-Iran talks and Hormuz attacks push oil prices toward $100. Friday, August 14, 2026 Crude oil prices are set to post a 5% weekly gain after this week quashed hopes (for...

Vietnam’s first domestically designed anti-submarine frigate marks an ambitious attempt to leverage limited naval resources to achieve asymmetric deterrence while accelerating the country’s shift toward a more self-reliant and diversified defense-industrial base. This month, multiple media outlets reported that Vietnam...

A cargo of fuel oil from Malaysia is making its way to a refinery on the U.S. West Coast in the first such shipment in three years as global supply of feedstock for refineries has tightened in recent months due...

On Tuesday, three Houthi ballistic missiles slammed into the Tihamah, an Egyptian-owned cargo ship easing through Bab-el-Mandeb’s eighteen-mile channel. A fourth missile hit the rescue boats that came for survivors. Six people died — the first shipping fatalities of the...

Researchers at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and TSMC Corporate Research engineered a 0.42-nanometer aluminum-oxide interface that protects electron transport in monolayer MoS₂ transistors while enabling strong gate control. Silicon transistors are approaching physical limits that make each new generation…...

Kevin Rideout, who was abducted by unknown assailants in Niamey, said to be in good health and in care of US officials An American missionary who was kidnapped in Niger in October has been released, his organisation has said. Serving in Mission...

Kazakhstan has alleged in a confidential arbitration case that some of the biggest international oil firms that have developed the giant Kashagan oilfield awarded $10.7 billion worth of contracts with unjustified cost increases or through bribes, the International Consortium of...

Every week, the shopping lists of Iranians become shorter as inflation soars and purchasing power plunges. “As things disappear from the dining table, fruit goes first, then dairy products, then anything considered non-essential,” a woman in the Iranian capital, Tehran,...

A gambling licence may appear like paperwork concerned with the gambling business and lawyers. Its impacts extend far beyond. Licensing rules affect revenue, business investment, consumer confidence, and government control over money flowing through digital platforms. Online gambling also raises...