World

Tehran blocked most foreign messengers in 2018, arguing they were used to incite violence in anti-government protests Iran’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) has started talks with Telegram and other social media platforms, aimed at getting them to comply with Tehran’s conditions and unblocking the messengers, the Mehr news agency reported on Wednesday. Tehran will cease blocking the …

Power shifts begin in places most people never see – on assembly lines making batteries and robots, along transmission lines feeding data centre clusters, in local offices selling land and in labs training artificial intelligence models. The United States and China are using these quiet levers to construct different futures. The contest will be decided not by slogans but by …

The ghosts of the Cuban Missile Crisis are back, this time haunting Ukraine, Venezuela, and Washington’s divided politics In world history, the Caribbean Crisis – or the Cuban Missile Crisis – refers to the tense October of 1962, when the US and the Soviet Union stood on the brink of nuclear war. The confrontation began with the deployment of American …

Donald Trump and the US have been issued a chilling threat by the Kremlin just hours after the US President ordered the Pentagon to restart nuclear weapons tests for the first time in over 30 years. On Thursday, the Russian Government rejected claims that it had resumed its own nuclear testing, despite an announcement on Sunday (October 26) by Vladimir …

Just days after reports emerged of paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) executing 2,000 civilians in a horrific 48-hour killing spree in El-Fasher, Sudan, claims of a new atrocity are beginning to emerge. A maternity hospital, the city’s last remaining hospital, was “attacked for the fourth time in a month, killing one nurse and injuring three other health workers,” on Sunday …

OPINION — One of the most enduring security issues in South Asia has been rekindled by the recent border conflicts between the Taliban-led Afghanistan and Pakistan military regimes. Diplomatic efforts by Qatar and Turkey have resulted in a tenuous ceasefire after days of fierce fighting that claimed scores of lives on both sides, offering a little respite from the rising …

Meanwhile, in Warsaw and Vilnius, shoppers flee as flames engulf two of the largest city malls. Investigators soon discover the arsonists are teenagers recruited online, guided by encrypted messages, and paid by actors connected to hostile state agencies. The chaos sows fear, erodes social trust, and sends shockwaves through European communities—proxy sabotage that destabilizes societies while providing plausible deniability to …

Brazil’s soybean producers are downplaying concerns over a freshly minted US-China trade agreement that will see Beijing resume large-scale purchases of American soybeans, insisting the 12 million tonnes (13.23 million tons) pledged represents routine seasonal trade rather than a market upheaval. Mauricio Buffon, president of Brazil’s Soybean Producers Association (Aprosoja), said the volume announced by Washington and Beijing on Wednesday …

Since President Donald Trump’s second term began, his administration’s approach to China has been arguably the toughest aspect of its foreign policy to parse. In part, that’s because the top members of Trump’s team haven’t always seemed to be on the same page with each other or with the president on the question of just how confrontational to be with …

Russian kids have been receiving exploding suicide drone toys from their parents for Christmas, recreating the deadly battlefields in Ukraine. Ozon, one of Russia‘s largest online retailers, features listings for a hand-launched “toy airplane” that closely resembles the design of the long-range Iranian drone involved in last week’s strike on a nursery in Kharkiv, which housed 48 children. According to …