In the United Arab Emirates, women hold half of all parliamentary seats, a threshold reached by only six national legislatures on Earth. In Afghanistan, a fellow member of the same fifty seven nation bloc, girls are barred by law from...
Population ageing, including the point at which older adults outnumber younger people, is a global demographic phenomenon. Credit: Shutterstock By Joseph Chamie PORTLAND, USA, Jul 20 2026 (IPS) In many countries, older adults (aged 65 and above) now outnumber younger individuals (under the...
The June ceasefire did not produce a postwar order in the Strait of Hormuz. It produced a pause. And now that pause has given way to renewed U.S. strikes, Iranian retaliation across the Gulf, and another collapse in commercial confidence....
China’s construction of what may be the world’s largest naval replenishment ship signals its growing expeditionary ambitions — and highlights the vulnerability of the US’s base-dependent model of power projection. This month, multiple media outlets reported that satellite imagery and...
While the focus of global news remains on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz and the Russia-Ukraine war, a significant new arena of contestation has opened in the Bay of Bengal. In April this year, India’s National Maritime Security Strategy 2026...
Israel may be witnessing the twilight of Netanyahu’s era as security failures, war fatigue, and the rise of the Yashar party erode his aura of indispensability. In geopolitics, leaders who build their legacy on security often fall when that very...
Kenneth Jeyaretnam, a trained economist who gave up a career in finance to take over his father’s opposition Reform Party as secretary-general to tilt at unassailable Singaporean political windmills, died in London on July 18 at age 67, leaving a...
Delegates at the 11th Annual Global Conference on Energy Efficiency, organised by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS By Umar Manzoor Shah SRINAGAR, India, Jul 20 2026 (IPS) As geopolitical tensions, rising electricity demand and climate pressures reshape the global...
The conflict between the United States and Iran intensified on Monday, with both sides launching fresh military strikes that raised fears of a broader regional crisis threatening global energy supplies, maritime security and critical civilian infrastructure. While oil prices briefly...
A confrontation between Chinese coast guard personnel and Philippine navy sailors at the disputed Second Thomas Shoal has heightened tensions in the South China Sea, with Manila accusing Beijing of using force against its personnel during a resupply-related operation. The...
People collect signatures against the construction of a massive Mitsui Fudosan datacentre in Hino City, Tokyo, 19 April 2026. Credit: Yasushi Wada/The Yomiuri Shimbun via AFP By Andrew Firmin LONDON, Jul 20 2026 (IPS) Few things unite Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters with...
European stocks traded cautiously on Monday as investors balanced escalating geopolitical risks in the Middle East against the start of another crucial corporate earnings season. Rising oil prices, renewed concerns over inflation, and uncertainty surrounding central bank policy kept markets...
Elders meet with Danny Seidemann, founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem, to discuss the E1 settlement plan and Jerusalem’s holy sites. Credit: Maya Levin / the Elders By the Elders LONDON, Jul 20 2026 (IPS) We have just concluded a visit to the West Bank,...
The third India-Australia Annual Summit in Melbourne on July 9 produced outcomes across defense, energy, critical minerals, technology and education — 18 in all. But by far the most significant deliverable centered on Australian uranium exports to India. After nearly...
It is a small irony of American history that the tool Genêt left behind, organized domestic pressure campaigns built to serve a foreign patron’s interests, would prove far more durable and far more useful than the man who improvised it....
Britain enters a new political chapter on Monday as Andy Burnham becomes the country’s seventh prime minister in just a decade, replacing Keir Starmer and inheriting an economy weighed down by sluggish growth, rising living costs, and mounting pressure on...
Somewhere, a hard drive is filling up with secrets no one can read yet, and its owner is waiting for the machine that opens them all at once. On March 30, 2026, that wait got shorter.Two independent research teams lowered...
The secretary of defense’s November announcement on acquisition reform laid out an unprecedented vision across the entire acquisition spectrum to improve the delivery speed of critical capabilities to our warfighters. One foundational pillar is the implementation of a commercial first...
While oil prices have retreated from the record highs triggered by the latest Iran conflict, global energy markets remain far from stable. Brent crude has fallen from its wartime peak of around $118 per barrel to roughly $85, creating the...
The United States is racing to secure global leadership in artificial intelligence, expand domestic manufacturing, electrify transportation, and modernize its economy. Yet beneath these ambitious goals lies an overlooked vulnerability that threatens to derail them all: an aging and increasingly...
America’s Asia-Pacific defense decentralization policy is rooted in a systemic crisis gripping its military-industrial complex. The breaking point has come to light amid its ongoing conflict with Iran, combined with a protracted maritime campaign against Houthi militants in the Red...
The annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) is in full swing in Shanghai. At the opening ceremony, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech, putting forward four proposals on jointly building a fair and equitable global AI governance system....
I have talked about the depletion of several categories of US battlefield missiles on recent podcasts and decided to give you the best available data to help you grasp the enormity of the problem. The tables below are based on...
Loneliness wears its finest clothes on Saturday afternoons, and it gathers by the hundred in hotel ballrooms, drawing the accomplished and the ordinary, the celebrated and the overlooked, each one quietly hoping to be chosen, each one just as quietly...
The August 4th Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat pits Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), backed by nearly $15 million (to-date) in support from a super PAC controlled by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), against Abdul El-Sayed, a...
In May and June, Bolivian police violently dispersed massive demonstrations in La Paz, detaining hundreds of protesters and injuring many more. The crackdown, capping over 50 days of protests demanding President Rodrigo Paz’s resignation, marked the sharpest escalation yet in...
Late last week, the Trump administration imposed what Brazilian officials had spent weeks bracing for: a fresh 25% tariff on most Brazilian exports, set to take effect July 22. The United States Trade Representative (USTR) framed the move as the conclusion...
Central Asia is a complex and geopolitically significant area, comprising five ethnic-based republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The region’s current security system is shaped by the interaction between external geopolitical competition and complex internal vulnerabilities. Externally, the geopolitical...
The debate over whether convicted child sex offender Shabir Ahmed should be deported from the United Kingdom to Pakistan is about far more than one offender. It has evolved into a test of how modern states balance domestic political pressures,...
AI companies increasingly want to move their operations into space. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has applied to launch over a million AI data center satellites and ultimately build them on the moon. Jeff Bezos, Google, OpenAI and others have similar plans....
The current state of democracy in the world is fragile. According to the V-Dem Project, which measures global democracy, 41% of the world’s population live in autocratizing countries — that is, those becoming more authoritarian. In fact, a “third wave...
Five months after Israel and the United States launched strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader and ignited a wider war, the Strait of Hormuz has become the conflict’s most stubborn front, a 21-wide chokepoint where military power and diplomatic paralysis...
Ma: fallen tiger Since Chinese President Xi Jinping launched his anti-corruption campaign in late 2012, millions of Chinese officials have been taken down, including “flies” (minor officials) and “tigers” (senior officials). Recently, complications have emerged in Xi’s crusade, involving a tiger...
The war with Iran is driving fuel shortages and inflation around the world, deepening anti-American sentiment at a time when international confidence in the United States is already in decline. A June Pew survey found unfavorable views of the rising across 36...
A death sentence is supposed to be the moment a legal system proves it can be trusted with its gravest power. In November, Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal handed down exactly that verdict against former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, for crimes...
For a few weeks at the start of 2026, the Taiwan Strait looked almost quiet. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense recorded no People’s Liberation Army incursions into the island’s air defense identification zone on 13 of 28 days in February,...
Dr. Il Park is the Founder and CEO of Primemas Inc. Prior to founding Primemas, he was Vice President at SK hynix where he led memory solutions, design innovation, and CAE. Prior to that he was the head of the...
Here is the bottom line: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of leaving Gaza, either before Israel’s general elections – likely to be held in October – or after. Conceding an inch from the roughly 70 percent of...
Reprinted with permission from Trita Parsi’s Substack. We have seen a major escalation between the US and Iran over the past 24 hours, but it is likely only a prelude to what appears to be coming next week. Tehran continues...
One thing that is always thrown by the wayside in times of war is the maintenance of the national soul. When faced with the inherent brutality of war, the emotions of the moment can overshadow the values we seek to...
The joint military exercises between Egypt and Turkey, particularly the Golden Eagle exercises, are a crucial strategic axis for reshaping the security landscape in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. They directly impact the protection of international economic interests,...
Nuclear giant Holtec International is betting big that its 300-megawatt small modular reactors are the future of atomic energy. On Friday, the Florida-headquartered firm filed paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in order to sell shares in the company on the...
Mohit Gupta founded TYLsemi to build chiplet-based intelligent power and connectivity solutions for AI infrastructure—an area where custom silicon has long been underserved. TYLsemi exists to provide the foundational chiplet platform that enables tailored custom silicon solutions for the evolving...
As Himalayan glaciers retreat and monsoon patterns collapse into unpredictability, the suspension of the world’s most durable water treaty is no longer a bilateral grievance. It is a governance gap opening at the worst possible moment. In June 2026 Pakistan’s...
While the Western media continues to hype Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia as incredible military achievements that are sapping Russia’s will to fight, the reality is that Russia continues an unrelenting bombing and missile campaign that is destroying critical Ukrainian...
JULY 19, 2026 – I have had many requests to discuss the removal of Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. However, I wanted to hold off until this update to see how issues were developing. This is still a fast-moving and chaotic...
On the morning of 7 July, an Iranian vessel struck three commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Within 48 hours — at the NATO summit in Ankara, of all places, a continent away from the Gulf — President Trump...
Chinese intelligence and defense agencies are assessing the performance of the new Mossad chief, Roman Gofman, with great caution and interest, considering him a field military commander brought in to implement the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid...
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