China
Late last month, Japan’s defense ministry made an unsettling announcement. A U.S. ground-based missile system, known as the Typhon and capable of firing Tomahawk missiles, would not return to the United States after…
Kurds
On September 21, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq officially announced the completion of the long-delayed unification and reorganization of its Peshmerga paramilitary forces under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs (MoPA)…
Enewsletter
Reports that more oil is getting through the Strait of Hormuz have been heralded as a win for the Trump administration, but experts say this kind of happy talk hides the fact that the war remains in a quagmire. As…
East Asia
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Chinese Studies (Sinology) has undergone a radical transformation in recent years, no longer limited to the study of history and classical language but evolving into a strategic field focused on understanding China as a…
Africa
A community health worker examines a pregnant woman inside her home while family members look on, highlighting the growing challenges mothers face as extreme heat and climate-related pressures strain access to healthcare…
Larry C. Johnson
Once again Karl W. Miller has put numbers to a problem that most of the commentariat still treats as a temporary price spike. His latest forward outlook, “The Five-Year Global Energy Crisis,” dated October 3, makes an…
External
US and Britain launch Operation Enduring Freedom, beginning the bombing of Afghanistan; Thai police and royalist paramilitaries massacre students at Thammasat University as the military seizes power in Bangkok; Truman…
By: Toh Han Shih Six Battery Road (brown building on left), hosts Radiant World headquarters in Singapore. Photo from Wikimedia Commons Singaporean courts have become a battlefield where commodities trading companies are…
Ukraine War
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The Russians are struggling on land and at sea, and are having real difficulty protecting themselves from Ukrainian long-range attack. That has left them with one real strategic “advantage” and that is what we will see…
Geopolitics
The US strategy to convince Iran to surrender John Mearsheimer is a political scientist and international relations scholar and professor at the University of Chicago Cross-posted from John Mearsheimer’s Substack The…
AI
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It has been a busy year for sure. In 2026, artificial intelligence agents conducting cybersecurity tests crossed into real computer systems. The incidents had different causes and impacts. Some agents exploited flaws to…
External
Space-based solar power just got another powerful vote of confidence. The United States Department of Defense just inked a contract with solar energy company Overview Energy to “design, build, and test a homing beacon…
Americas
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Two Deadlines, One Date Last Thursday, in Denton, Texas, Donald Trump said Iran is “ready to fold up” and that the war would be won “right after the election” — or “maybe before”. The same week he told TIME that new…
Behind The Headlines
Oil facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have again been struck by ballistic missiles and drones, while evidence has emerged that the US could be plotting raids into north-eastern Iranian territory. In…
External
The renewable revolution is running out of space. Utility-scale solar and wind farms take up enormous tracts of land and are facing increasing legal pushback from many of the communities where their development is…
Zimbabwe
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My friend and former colleague Knox Chitiyo, who has died aged 65 of bowel cancer, was a Zimbabwean academic and later an important voice in Britain on his homeland and its future. He was regularly consulted by…
AI
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Before EDA becomes AI-native, focused agents have a window to prove measurable engineering value inside existing design flows. AI is entering semiconductor engineering from several directions at once. Some companies are…
External
Despite pressure from some governments and consumers for a global energy transition, private equity firms continue to invest heavily in some of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters. Following the Covid-19…
Economics
SuperImperialism, Dollar System, Financialization and China’s Economic Transition South South Dialogue on Sustainability Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a…
Economics
The August level of $132.6 billion is the second-highest trade deficit on record, topped only by last year’s March deficit. Dean Baker is a Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)…
Lever Weekly
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Opinion
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Poland's leadership has fulfilled a long-standing ambition. Poles will now have a new state institution tasked with identifying and combating what the authorities regard as disinformation on the internet and in the…
Economics
Recent AI security failures may point to something more troubling than runaway intelligence: models becoming highly capable while learning to game narrow goals in brittle and dangerous ways Daron Acemoglu is a 2024 Nobel…
Europe
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Wages Frozen, Gas Doubled, Warships Wanted On 1 October Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu unveiled €54 billion of savings in France’s 2027 budget. They include a public-sector pay freeze and limits on pension increases…
Politics/Diplomacy
In a revealing exchange from a Turkish television interview, former Turkish Foreign Minister and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu delivered an explicit account of how Ankara intervened in 2012 to block the United Kingdom…
#Culture
Darius helps select new guards for the Five Star caravan, and a fun trip to the suq comes to a sudden, chaotic end. Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11…
Larry C. Johnson
Benjamin Netanyahu has a talent for round numbers, and for knowing which audience gets which one. On the night of October 17, 2024, after Israeli soldiers stumbled on Yahya Sinwar in Rafah and killed him, the prime…
Long-read
The current war with Iran and its chaotic unfolding open a door of great danger for the U.S. and the planet. At best, we are condemned to negotiations dominated by personal and political imperatives that seem to fit with…
When Nguyễn Thành Nam released In Conversation with Thanh: A New Account of the Light in April, Vietnam’s state media fell in line. Twenty official outlets, including major Communist Party mouthpieces, coordinated their…
Economics
On Sunday, 4 October, Brasil is holding a general election Michael Roberts is an Economist in the City of London and a prolific blogger . Cross-posted from Michael Roberts’ blog The most important election in South…
External
Years ago, I saw a viral video where a blacksmith debunked the whole “fire doesn’t melt steel” line from 9/11 conspiracy theories. That blacksmith was an old friend of mine named Trenton Tye. I got a chance to chat with…
Hebron / PNN — Monjed Jadou Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa, accompanied by a number of ministers and officials, visited Al-Rabieh Feed Company and its manufacturing plant in Beit Awwa, Hebron province, to…
External
Several countries across Latin America have been rapidly expanding their wind energy capacity to diversify the energy mix and strengthen energy security, with far more expansion planned for the next decade. Brazil and…
This statement was originally published on mfwa.org on 18 September 2026. Mamadou Diawo Labboyah Barry, publishing director of the Guinean press group Le Lynx and correspondent for the French media outlet Jeune Afrique…
This statement was originally published on mfwa.org on 4 September 2026. In this piece, our Senior Manager for Freedom of Expression and Digital Rights, Vivian Afoah, unpacks Mali’s shrinking civic space, examining the…
You Love To See It
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Good things are happening! Watchdogs clean up dirty justice, Dolly’s greatest hits keep rolling, states kick the vape habit, and a prediction market gamble goes belly up. You Love To See It is a benefit of a Lever paid…
Recipes
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Chia seeds and goji berries have something in common beyond their reputation as fashionable “superfoods”: both have much older food traditions than their recent popularity in Western supermarkets suggests. One comes from…
World
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Just days before Brazil’s presidential election, the issue of foreign interference has unexpectedly acquired a Russian dimension. Reuters reported on closed-door September consultations between Brazil’s intelligence…
Energy News
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The Trump administration’s discussions with Russia to end the war in Ukraine have included a potential multibillion-dollar oil deal. This deal would benefit Middle Eastern business executives linked to US negotiators…
Science & Technology
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Investments in artificial intelligence (AI) are unprecedented, surpassing previous technological booms like railways and the internet. A report from PwC predicts that global spending on data centers could exceed $30…
GAZA / PNN / With schools and educational centres absent from several areas where Palestinians have been displaced, school principal Rana Muslim has launched a personal education initiative in the Al-Zawaida area to…
Libya
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Western Libya’s GNU say working with Saddam Haftar ‘impossible’ as US-backed merger plan breaks down Allegations that the son of the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar oversaw a “terror cell” that launched drone attacks on…
Diplomacy
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The 81st UNGA, which is the main deliberative, policymaking, and representative organ of the United Nations, was held late September 2026 in New York. It attracted global leaders and several delegations, who delivered…
Brussels /PNN/ Palestinian Ambassador to the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg Amal Jadou Shakaa met with the EU’s Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process, Christophe Bigot, to discuss the latest…
Arts & Life
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In hospitality, standardisation creates a sense of trust; in gastronomy, it can sometimes disconnect a restaurant from the place it inhabits. While speaking with Mark Vaessen, Global Culinary Chef of OKU Hotels, in…
World News
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Latvians are voting in a parliamentary election that could keep pro-Ukrainian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs in power, but political divisions may make forming a government challenging. Concerns about potential Russian…
Eurasia
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On 30 September, Russia put a nuclear threat in writing and sent it to NATO. The diplomatic note, seen by Reuters, warned that Moscow was prepared to use every capability at its disposal, nuclear weapons included, if…
Opinion
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In February 2026, weeks after Cambodia’s National Assembly approved a draft law to ratify the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a convention Phnom Penh signed in 1983 but never ratified, Japan unveiled…