Europe

By Dan Steinbock Renewed U.S.-Iran hostilities and Israel’s continuing military campaigns reflect rising risks of a wider Middle East conflict and elevated energy and food crises internationally. The United States and Iran traded new attacks overnight into Thursday, intensifying an exchange that has threatened the collapse of their agreement …

Hadi Elis The 2026 NATO Summit may ultimately be remembered not for its official communiqués, but for the questions it raised about the future direction of the Alliance. Beneath the familiar language of transatlantic solidarity, collective defense, and support for Ukraine, a more profound geopolitical shift appears to …

India has quietly crossed a threshold that Pakistan has no answer to —for the first time in the history of South Asian nuclear competition, one side may have nuclear warheads at sea, and the other has neither a submarine capable of carrying them nor a realistic timeline for …

Owen Kirby The Middle East – for many Western observers – is something akin to Long Covid. One day you believe you are through the worst of it, turning a corner, and the next you are back reliving all the headaches, fatigue and brain fog, short of breath …

Sanal Kan U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner walk with Pakistan’s Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar after arriving for peace talks with Iranian officials in Islamabad, Pakistan, …

Sachin Yadav America’s retreat from the developing world happened fast, and the numbers back that up. Foreign aid from OECD countries dropped by about 23 percent between 2024 and 2025, and most of that fall came from the United States, whose foreign aid shrank by nearly 57 percent …

Hadi Elis “Who cares about the NATO agenda? I’m here to see my good friend—an authoritarian, sure, but a loyal friend to the US—President Erdogan. I stopped him from attacking Israel. And just in case anyone disagrees too much, I gave everyone a handgun to shoot each other …

Key Takeaways Kazakhstan Cracks Down on Gasoline Smuggling — Amid severe fuel shortages in Russia caused by Ukrainian drone attacks, Kazakhstan has set up police checkpoints on nearly 60 border roads and introduced daily crossing limits to stop “gasoline tourism” and illegal exports. Kazakhstan Extends Ban on Petroleum Exports — …

Altaf Moti Key Takeaways Trump’s Intervention Turned a Sporting Decision into a Political Issue — The US President publicly confirmed calling FIFA President Gianni Infantino to request a review of Folarin Balogun’s red card, leading to the suspension being overturned and sparking widespread debate about political influence in football. …