Taiwan

When China’s Defense Minister Admiral Dong Jun visited Jakarta on August 21, he and Indonesia’s Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin agreed to deepen military cooperation. At a joint press conference, Dong said Indonesia and China would work together against the “malicious...

Bangladesh has spent 55 years avoiding military alliances. It may now be contemplating the rather more complicated business of joining one. Humaiun Kobir, the state minister for foreign affairs, said this week that Bangladesh had expressed interest in the Mecca...

Three of China’s top solar market players reported deepening losses over the first half of the year, reflecting weakening demand for solar in the world’s top manufacturer and generator. Jinko Solar, JA Solar Technology, and Tongwei all reported six-month losses...

After decades of sporadic conflict in South Sudan, many civilians have been left with life-changing injuries from gunshots and landmines. The country also has high rates of disability resulting from disease and snake bites. The photographer Kieran Seager followed patients and...

Walk through any major electronics hub in Shenzhen, Seoul or Taipei right now, and the neon glare of artificial intelligence is blinding. It’s also intensifying: order books for advanced chips are overflowing, stock tickers are melting upward and tech executives...

Haakon Becomes Norway’s New Monarch Crown Prince Haakon became Norway’s king on Friday following the death of his father, King Harald. The 53 year old monarch is now Norway’s fourth king since the country gained full independence from Sweden in...

Editor’s note: This is the first article in a new occasional series featuring battles that just didn’t matter, may look important, but in fact had negligible strategic or political effects or were absurd, anticlimactic, or structurally irrelevant to the wars...

Tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz slowed below the ten-day average this week, with only seven commodity vessels traversing the waterway on Thursday, Reuters reported today, citing preliminary data from Kpler. This compared to 17 vessels passing through Hormuz...

Bank of America (BofA) expects the Central Bank of Türkiye to deliver its first and only policy rate cut of 2026 in October, lowering the benchmark rate by 100 basis points to 36 percent after annual inflation falls to around...

The US and China are about to meet this September to talk about AI. As the world’s two leading AI superpowers, the US and China’s engagement with AI have strategic implications for not only the AI and chip industries but...

Mojtaba Khamenei Remains Out of Public View Six months into the war with the United States and Israel, Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has remained completely absent from public view, raising growing questions about his health, authority and ability to...

Crude oil prices were on course to book another weekly loss despite no sign of any progress being made towards peace between Iran and the United States. At the time of writing, Brent crude was trading at $89.17 per barrel,...

The U.S. State Department has abruptly recalled its ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, who also served as the President’s Special Envoy for Syria and Iraq. This sharp personnel pivot has raised numerous questions: was this decision a consequence of pressure...

Russia is not about to collapse. It still occupies a large part of Ukraine, continues to fire hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities, and retains an enormous advantage in population and resources over its smaller neighbor. Yet four...

Understanding global geopolitics is complicated and challenging, especially today. Governments have complex relationships with each other at both the bilateral and multilateral levels. This situation certainly applies to the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, and the Democratic People’s...

Prof Pierre Akilimali, who heads DR Congo’s response to an outbreak that has so far killed more than 2,700 people, says tackling the disease requires trust and respect The statistics, says the man responsible for overseeing the Ebola response in the...

Other governments could seek similar concessions, while separate legal action is pending in places ranging from Kenya to the Netherlands In October 2021, Abrham Meareg’s father, a professor of chemistry in Ethiopia’s northern town of Bahir Dar, was shot at close...

Every Wednesday and Friday in August we will publish some of our favourite audio long reads of 2026, in case you missed them, with an introduction from the editorial team to explain why we’ve chosen it. This week, from February: After...

Ten years have passed since the International Arbitral Tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines in its maritime case against China. The July 2016 award was hailed at the time as a landmark in international law, affirming Manila’s rights under...

The answer depends on a combination of steadfast official Chinese pronouncements that hinge on self-identity and how “developing country status” is defined. The truth is that there is growing criticism of the distinction between these two-group-only categories. A more recent...

By: Khanh Vu Duc Trump: like it or lump it Canada was supposed to be safe. America’s closest neighbor, a NATO member, a G7 democracy and a critical security partner, Canada is deeply integrated into the US economy. Energy, automobiles, minerals, food and...

China faces a dilemma in the six-month war between Iran and the United States, wanting the conflict to drag on and drain American military and government resources, yet wary of becoming a target of Washington’s newly announced economic campaign against...

Islam Times - An informed Emirati official told Nournews that Trump’s August 17 threat against Oman came after a phone call with Mohammed bin Zayed—a narrative that, alongside the Manama meeting and a Wall Street Journal report, sheds light on...

Islam Times - Iran will not allow the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] to inspect nuclear facilities targeted by the United States and “Israel” until the agency drafts and formally approves a special protocol for inspecting sites subjected to military...

Islam Times - The historical trajectory of US sanctions against Iran, whose roots date back to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, through trade bans and efforts to constrain the oil sector in the 1990s, the internationalization phase and nuclear negotiations,...

When Donald Trump launched the Iran War on February 28, the usual suspects were in full support. From the moment the conflict ignited, many couldn’t help but immediately express admiration for the president, saying that only a brave, noble, and...

One of the great foreign policy disappointments of Donald Trump’s first term was the failure to advance his initial promising initiative to begin normalizing relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Trump had abandoned the threats and bluster...

Egypt’s gas sector is running short of domestic gas just as Cyprus prepares to become a producer. The recently approved Cronos project offshore Cyprus (expected to deliver up to 2.8 million tonnes per year of LNG from 202 offers...

The High Commission of Jamaica in Pretoria marked Jamaica's 64th Independence with a vibrant Jamaica 64 Sports Day, bringing together members of the diplomatic community, friends of Jamaica and guests for a day of friendly competition, camaraderie and Jamaican spirit. Jamaica...

Africa's economic narrative is changing — driven not by sentiment but by investment, infrastructure, innovation and a growing determination to turn the continent's enormous potential into tangible opportunities. This was the message at a recent engagement hosted by Africa Rising Global,...

Last month, we reported that Nigerian billionaire and Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has agreed to build a $17 billion (Ksh2.2 trillion), 700,000-barrel-per-day refinery on Kenya’s Lamu Island that would process crude not only for Kenya but also its neighbors...

The Trump administration is no friend of wind and solar. Axed subsidies and project suspensions have been the attitude towards those alternative forms of energy. Geothermal, however, is something else. The current Department of Energy is very much for it....

Intel’s Crescent Island is a discrete data-center GPU designed for agentic AI inference, where performance is constrained by more than matrix arithmetic. Multi-step agents impose latency through repeated model calls and tool interactions, consume large memory capacity for weights and...

Europe is heading for the winter with one of the lowest levels of gas in storage in the past two decades as the war in the Middle East crippled LNG supply from Qatar, sent gas and LNG prices in Europe...

Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack. This week’s Q&A is tonight at 7:00 p.m....

MANY GOVERNMENTS’ pro-Israeli votes in international forums like the U.N. starkly disregard the expressed views of their people, and they get away with it with help from media inattention and misdirection. From Albania to Morocco vociferous crowds show their low opinion...

The Trump administration is reportedly in active discussions with Venezuela’s interim government to acquire a direct U.S. ownership stake in key Venezuelan oil fields. According to senior U.S. officials cited by Axios, the talks involve equity stakes in a select...

When Donald Trump and Xi Jinping meet again in Washington, the most important question will not be whether they shake hands, announce another trade arrangement or produce a carefully worded communiqué. It will be whether two governments that increasingly treat...

United States President Trump has strongly criticised wind power since coming into office, introducing several executive actions aimed at restricting the development of wind farms. Trump has particularly targeted offshore wind, leading to several projects being put on hold or...

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are tossing figurative darts at a US trial balloon connected to the intensifying race between the United States and China for leadership in AI development. Reuters reported on August 14 that the US State Department had drafted a note stating that...

As part of our continuing series, Geopolitics Made Simple, devoted to developments in the Middle East, we have already discussed the military power of the United States, Iran's response, the objectives of the war and the way domestic politics influences...

Cyber security remains a persistent concern for public and private sector organizations alike. Given the potential impact of cyber threats from criminal groups, adversarial states, and extremists, the topic draws substantial attention. Yet, in a field that evolves so quickly,...

Energean is in exclusive talks to buy a package of BP’s Egyptian oil and gas assets in a deal that could raise about $1 billion for the British energy major, Reuters reported Thursday exclusively, citing two people involved in the...