Global Voices

China’s expanding zero-tariff access for 63 lower-income countries — 53 of them African — is far more than a developmental courtesy or a technical adjustment of customs schedules. It is a deliberate geostrategic lever in Beijing’s long-term competition with the...

When Hong Wang and Yu Deng received Fields Medals at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia on July 23, they became the first citizens of the People’s Republic of China to hold mathematics’ highest honor in its 90-year history....

For much of the past three years, Europe’s strategic attention has been fixed further south. The Red Sea crisis, instability around the Strait of Hormuz, recurring disruptions at the Suez Canal, and Eastern European calamities like Ukraine have understandably dominated...

“[I]ntelligence, that counterentropic conjoined twin of information, must become the most powerful force in the universe, the energy to which all other physical laws must eventually kneel…Intelligence was destiny, manifest.” — Ian McDonald, “Verthandi’s Ring” Not a lot of people...

The first week of July witnessed the resumption of strikes between the U.S. and Iran after a fragile Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was reached. Continued violation of ceasefire and international humanitarian law has left peace in limbo. However, the war...

China’s latest sea-based rocket launch shows how mobile launch platforms, onboard artificial intelligence and expanding commercial constellations are converging into a broader Chinese effort to strengthen military resilience, accelerate satellite deployment and compete for economic influence across an increasingly contested...

The unexpected rise of the right-wing populist, anti-immigration One Nation party in the polls, helped by leader Pauline Hanson’s relationship with mining magnate Gina Rinehart and often uncritical treatment by mainstream media, has seen the reemergence of another historical curio:...

Last week was a momentous one for Ukrainian democracy, and possibly for how the war develops over the next period. After two and a half years, overall command of the Ukrainian army was transferred from General Oleksandr Syrskyi to General...

“Economic statecraft is not self-sustaining.” That is the wager embedded in America’s Syria policy, and the first Syrian-American business forum held on July 13, 2026, at the Dama Rose Hotel is where the wager became visible. American and Syrian officials,...

By: Nava Thakuria India’s renewed debate over whether passports prove citizenship has revived anxieties among Muslims, particularly as political leaders speculate about a possible nationwide update of the National Register of Citizens that critics say could disenfranchise as many as 80...

India’s Cockroach Janta Party ended its five-week multi-city protest after the youth-led movement’s key demand – the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan – was met. “We have done it,” CJP spokesperson Saurav Das told a jubilant crowd at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on...

Oil prices plunged by more than 5% in early Asian trade on Monday as the U.S. and Iran halted attacks after two weeks of escalation that had driven Brent above $100. At the time of writing, WTI crude was trading...

One of the defining failures of modern American government has been the steady erosion of Congress’s constitutional authority over war. The Constitution grants Congress — not the president — the power to declare war. Congress decides to go to war....

During a military raid on the small town of Tell, southwest of Nablus, a moment of direct defiance shattered the illusion of total Palestinian submission. Faced with relentless military incursions, land confiscation, and settler harassment and violence, local villagers and...

Nine European nations – Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Great Britain – joined Ukraine on July 13th in Paris to create the Integrated Anti-Ballistic Missile Coalition. The political message was important: Ukraine is now Europe’s...

The Democracy Perception Index 2026 is a global survey covering over ninety percent of the world’s population. It has produced results that confound nearly every assumption underlying the Western foreign-policy consensus. The United States, self-declared champion of the rules-based international...

Beijing is now desperately attempting to bring rare earth manufacturing back inside its own borders, exclusively. New Chinese export restrictions specifically target American plans to begin the country’s first commercial production of rare earth magnet materials by 2027. To counter...

By Thang Tran, CEO of Simplex Micro and Umesh Sisodia, CEO of CircuitSutra Performance models have a reputation problem. They’re often treated as a long-lead, high-effort undertaking — something a design team commits to early and then waits on for months...

Oil prices gave up earlier gains on Friday after reports that Pakistan is trying to broker a return to U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations. China is strongly backing the effort as the conflict and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz continue...

As renewed tensions between Iran and the United States unsettle the Middle East, Pakistan’s quiet diplomacy offers a reminder that sustainable regional security depends not on coercion, but on dialogue, strategic restraint and political compromise. The Middle East has become...

The current semiconductor memory boom is mainly an AI-driven capacity-allocation problem, not simply a lack of factories. AI accelerators require enormous quantities of high-bandwidth memory, or HBM. HBM is used alongside GPUs and custom AI chips because it can move data...

Ohad Agami is the co-founder and CEO of Hiveware , a semiconductor verification company he started in Tel Aviv in 2023 with CTO Yaniv Pascal. He has a systems-focused engineering background with deep experience in semiconductor architectures and complex verification...

U.S. airlines are grappling with soaring jet fuel costs again after the return of hostilities in the Middle East shattered the three-week-long U.S.-Iran ‘deal to make a deal’ and sent Brent crude oil prices soaring past $100 per barrel again....

I fully expected that Trump would deliver on his vow to open the Gates of Hell on Iran. All the warning indicators were flashing red: i.e., Europeans were closing their embassies in Tehran and evacuating staff, major surge in US...

Argentina’s massive shale oil and gas boom is going from strength to strength. The economically crisis-prone South American country yet again reported record monthly oil and natural gas production for May 2026. This couldn’t come at a better time for...

Gaza /PNN / The death toll from the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip has risen to 73,326, with 173,997 Palestinians injured, since October 7, 2023, according to medical sources in Gaza. Local health authorities said hospitals across the Strip received nine...

MADRID /PNN / Spain on Sunday strongly condemned settler violence in the occupied West Bank, saying attacks against Palestinian civilians are being carried out with impunity. In a statement, the Spanish government said a recent wave of escalating violence included an indiscriminate...

domestic nuclear energy sector is set to bounce back as the technology finds favor among the public and policymakers alike for its ability to provide round-the-clock clean energy. At a time when data center hyperscalers are driving up energy insecurity...

Less than a month ago, analysts were warning of a looming glut of crude oil as tanker traffic via the Strait of Hormuz began to recover amid a U.S.-Iran ceasefire. Within days of these warnings, the ceasefire was a painful...

For much of the modern era, terrorist organizations have been understood through the prism of ideology. Ethno nationalist insurgencies have pursued territorial autonomy, while jihadist organizations have sought transnational religious objectives. This distinction has long shaped intelligence assessments, military strategies...

Australia has big renewable energy ambitions and is well on its way to shifting dependence away from coal to cleaner alternatives. Having long depended on coal, the government now aims to establish a more diverse energy mix to ensure that...

For three-quarters of a century, the Middle East operated inside an American frame. Washington was not the only actor, but it was the reference point — the guarantor whose fleets, bases, and diplomatic weight set the outer boundaries of what...

AMMAN / PNN / Jordan's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and the Jordan Tourism Board, in cooperation with the country's tourism associations, have launched the integrated digital platform "Ahlan Bel Urdun" ( Welcome to Jordan ), targeting Arab markets with a...

“As to [nuclear war] dangers arising from an American president, the best protection is not to elect one.”-General Maxwell D. Taylor (ret.), 14 March 1976.[1] More than fifty years ago, retired USA four-star general Maxwell D. Taylor sent me a...

From July 17 to 20, the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) was held in Shanghai, China. In this context, China was trying to promote international cooperation in AI governance; developing countries generally face shortcomings such as a weak foundation...

Much of the Western debate about artificial intelligence centers on the machine itself. Will AI become conscious? Will it surpass human intelligence? Could it acquire goals of its own and escape human control? Japan’s Society 5.0 begins from a different...

One of the outcomes of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the DPRK was the decision to hold celebratory events to mark the 65th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between the DPRK...