West Africa’s cocoa industry is struggling to comply with new European Union anti-deforestation rules, raising concerns about supply disruptions and higher costs for chocolate makers. The EU law, known as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), will require importers to prove...
Global Voices
Amna Idres Musa Mahamod leads the Al-Wifag Women’s Association in Toker, Sudan. Photographed for the Through Her Lens: Women Rising for Peace Exhibition . Credit: UN Women/Mona Elfateh By Shuli Wong UNITED NATIONS, Aug 17 2026 (IPS) Women-led and women’s rights organizations (WLOs) in...
Emerging from the chaos of supplying the U.S. Army during the War of 1812, the War Department sought to foster domestic production of standardized muskets. Out of this industrial project arose an invention that laid the foundation for automation and...
One of the first tasks of Whitehall’s mandarins – the permanent government – is to indoctrinate a new prime minister in the need for official secrecy, especially around the intelligence agencies. Andy Burnham should be more sceptical judging by his comments...
India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation has secured a license from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control to return to Venezuela, Indian media have reported. India’s largest oil and gas company has a 40% stake in the San Cristobal...
Taiwan is set to increase defence spending by 16% next year, taking its proposed military budget above T$1 trillion ($31.40 billion) for the first time as the island faces growing military and political pressure from China. President Lai Ching-te said...
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) announced his opposition to Medicare for All on the same day a CBS News poll found 90 percent of Democratic voters support the idea — and 72 hours after a Yale University study showed...
The Financial Times has run a striking assessment: Pakistan, it argues, has become an emerging “hinge power” – a state whose simultaneous ties to Washington, Beijing, the Gulf and Tehran let it broker where others can only choose sides. The...
International Criminal Court Under Attack
Full ArticleA poster depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as wanted by the International Criminal Court is displayed in a corridor of the European Parliament in Brussels, June 2026. Credit: Frédéric Pétry/HansLucas via AFP By Andrew Firmin LONDON, Aug 17 2026 (IPS) In a...
Western-Led Green Revolution Failing Africa
Full ArticleBy Timothy A. Wise and Jomo Kwame Sundaram CAMBRIDGE, MA, USA / KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug 17 2026 (IPS) As AGRA turns 20, a new report exposes its worsening failure to double productivity and incomes and halve undernourishment in participating African nations...
Far Away [Part 24] – The Whipping
Full ArticleWhen a fire destroys the Silk Store, Darius risks his life to save Weili and Arslan – only to face the consequences of the secret he kept. Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part...
U.S. President Donald Trump has instructed the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” joint military exercises with South Korea, citing the cost of the drills and Seoul’s refusal to participate in U.S. actions against Iran. Trump said on Sunday that he was...
For more than a century, cafes in the Italian city of Padua have welcomed customers for an early evening aperitivo, with people gathering outdoors before dinner. But as Europe faces its fifth heatwave of the year, the traditional 6 p.m....
No Ultimatums, No Ceasefire: Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov Labels the US as Both Combatant and Interlocutor
Full ArticleHey Mr. Trump? Are you paying attention? In a long interview broadcast on Russian state television on August 14, 2026, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov delivered Moscow’s sharpest characterization in months of where relations with Washington stand in the fifth year...
The head of South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, Chung Dong-young, announced recently that the ministry will restart work on railroad sections leading north to the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula’s eastern shore. Chung’s initiative provoked Foreign Minister Cho Hyun to criticize...
The United States has always asked extraordinary things of its service members. But this week, a series of remarkable news stories came out documenting the dire conditions of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln , a ship that has been...
At a glance, the Hanover Institute for Public Policy looks like a new think tank dedicated to Israel/Palestine. The organization churns out think-tank style reports on questions such as “Does AIPAC Use ‘Dark Money in Elections?” and “Is Israel Carrying...
Bangladesh’s ousted dictator vows to return home
Full ArticleBy: Nava Thakuria In a much-anticipated press conference by ousted Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina in New Delhi that drove relations between the two countries to a new low, Hasina reiterated that she intends to return to Bangladesh in December but did...
It is now official: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flatly rejected the core conditions of the Board of Peace framework, explicitly stating that Israel will neither adhere to a ceasefire nor withdraw its forces from Gaza. During a cabinet...
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright this week said that the oil exports from the Middle East have rebounded to 15 million barrels per day (bpd) and even topped the pre-war average of 20 million bpd on Sunday. Vessel-tracking services and...
Leon Lauritsen is the CEO of Aras, a leading provider of digital thread solutions for product lifecycle management and engineering AI. He joined the company in 2022 through the acquisition of Minerva PLM, where he had been for over 20...
In late October, in a boardroom in Riyadh, executives from Red Sea Global and three Saudi lenders signed off on a SAR 6.5 billion ($1.73 billion) loan facility for AMAALA, the ultra-luxury wellness resort rising on the kingdom’s northern Red...
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Iturup in mid-August 2026 has sparked debates and generated fresh discussions on ownership of the territory between officials in Russia and Japan. Iturup is the largest and northernmost of the Kuril islands, ownership of...
Oil prices have soared in recent months as a result of the almost complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key trade corridor connecting Asia and Europe. High fossil fuel prices have helped to drive up the profits of...
"Beidaihe Break" is over; Jiang Zemin's 100th; RIP Zhu Rongji; US-China; July economic data; New Qiushi
Full ArticleIt is always hard to restart after vacation. I know I have missed things and will be doing some catchup over the next few days. The “Beidaihe Break” is over and I wanted to send out a shorter note before the...
AI's energy footprint is out of control. Hyperscalers are building out data centers faster than the energy industry can keep up with, pushing for the rapid buildout of any form of energy we have at our disposal, clean or dirty....
The Board of Peace is not a ceasefire-management mechanism drifting toward failure. It is a governance model built with the same structural fault line as the 1922 Mandate for Palestine: trusteeship over a population’s path to self-rule, with no authority...
This update focuses on the role of allies in the Russo-Ukraine War (which was the fascinating and distressing story of the last week). Ukraine’s allies (I use that word knowing it is loaded) should have helped Ukraine win the war...
The Republic of South Africa formally assumed the chairship of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Council of Ministers on 12 August 2026 in Durban, South Africa, from August 2026 to August 2027, following its tenure as interim chair since...
One of the things that I wish to address is the alienation, rejection, social isolation and the longing to belong that the mental patient has to suffer from and endure. I want to talk about psychosis, my personal experience, my...
As the British state seeks to destroy Palestine Action, a new trial is underway in which a judge has threatened defendants with a ‘terrorism connection’ if they explain the motives behind their activism. It is one of three such trials in...
Alastair Crooke – Netanyahu’s réprise of the ‘Iraq WMD deceit’ – re-launched to promote war on Iran
Full ArticleTrump’s pivot to economic pressure as the key to Iranian capitulation is not a credible strategy. Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum Cross-posted from the Stategic Culture Foundation President Trump took Secretary of War...
The government of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz approved a landmark bill to expand the powers of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the Domestic Intelligence Service (BfV) by 2027. This expansion grants them offensive and operational tools, including cyber counter-sabotage...
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Richard Murphy – The YouTube problem
Full ArticleAs is the case of so many corporate internet media the youtube is being corrupted in soporate interest and propaganda. Richard Murphy is an economic justice campaigner. Professor of Accounting at Sheffield University Management School., and Chartered Accountant, and Co-founder of...
Southeast Asia may be winning the race to host the AI economy before it has answered a more uncomfortable question: how much power will the region actually gain from becoming indispensable to it? The signs of success are increasingly difficult...
Michael Roberts – A value theory of inflation
Full ArticleWhat actually causes inflation? There are a number of theories. Part 3 Michael Roberts is an Economist in the City of London and a prolific blogger . Guglielmo Carchedi is Senior Researcher in the Department of Economics and Econometrics the University of...
Branko Milanović – Apocalypse, When?
Full ArticleOn a new film about the Reagan-Gorbachev 1986 summit in Reykjavik Branko Milanović is an economist specialised in development and inequality. His latest book, The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World , was published November 2025. Cross-posed from...
Andrei Fesyun, deputy director for research, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University: “The timing was indeed good, I mean. This came during an inspection of naval exercises in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan....
The joint US–Japan yen intervention was not a currency-stability measure. It was Washington making sure Tokyo could keep funding its $550 billion commitment to American AI infrastructure — and it marks the moment monetary policy formally joined chip controls and...
The US-led coalition leaves Iraq on Sept. 30, and Washington has attached a price to the exit: the country’s most powerful militias must hand their weapons to the state by the same day. Two months out, Baghdad is demonstrating the...
Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman looks on during a meeting with US President Donald Trump, White House, Washington, November 18, 2025. The telephone call from the US Vice-President JD Vance to Prime Minister Narendra...
The recent mass irregular migration incident in Ceuta should be seen as more than a border security issue. It is a significant test of the current relationship between Morocco and Spain—two neighboring states whose interests are increasingly entangled across migration,...
Ukraine functions as a privateer vessel launched by a greater power to impose continuous costs on Russia. The campaign is deliberate, the alternatives are known to both sides, and the pace of events is designed to force Moscow into the...
The Tail That Couldn’t Keep Up: How the US Navy Ran Its Own Sailors Short on Food and Soap
Full ArticleT-AOE 6 Supply Fast Combat Support Ship The images were mundane in a way that made them land harder than any battle footage: half-empty meal trays, a gray slab of processed meat, sailors rationing food among themselves so no one got...
Aviation is often treated as one of oil's safest remaining markets. In 2026 that still looks like a reasonable assumption. Airlines are expected to consume around 104 billion gallons of fuel this year, sustainable aviation fuel remains below 1% of...
Six weeks before US and Israeli aircraft killed Iran’s supreme leader on February 28, a cluster of new, previously dormant crypto wallets began buying “Khamenei out by March” contracts on Polymarket. In the hours before the strike itself, six accounts...
The Trump administration is pushing for a homegrown nuclear power renaissance. The United States is still the largest producer of nuclear energy in the world, but that won’t last long without drastic changes in energy policy and investment at the...
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