Across Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy and northern Kharkiv, Russian forces are pressing defended towns and the roads that keep them supplied. This battlefield assessment examines the fighting around Dobropillya, Kostyantynivka, Orikhiv and Ukraine’s northern border, explaining how drones, contested routes and competing demands for reinforcements shape Russia’s uneven advance—and why local pressure has yet to produce a decisive breakthrough.
Britain has chosen AI, quantum technology, clean energy, life sciences and advanced manufacturing as engines of future growth. But the Government admits official statistics cannot properly measure several of them. As ministers pour money into strategic industries, the country faces a basic problem: how can it judge whether its industrial strategy is working when parts of the economy remain statistically invisible?
Defence and Law / United States
Three US aircraft carriers, two amphibious groups, missile destroyers and Marine forces are converging around Iran as Washington rebuilds a damaged logistics network stretching back to Diego Garcia. The deployment does not prove an attack order has been given, but the military timetable is beginning to converge with Donald Trump’s post-midterm political timetable.
For almost two-thirds of a century, Washington has tried to make Cuba’s revolutionary government economically unviable. The island survived through Soviet support, rationing, public healthcare, Venezuelan oil and the endurance of its people. Now an American energy siege is turning chronic decline into a struggle for electricity, water, medicine and national sovereignty.
Britain did not merely fail to resolve the conflict in Palestine. From the Balfour Declaration to the Mandate, mass immigration, the crushing of the Arab revolt and the chaotic withdrawal of 1948, British rule helped create the political and military conditions in which Israel emerged and the Palestinian Nakba became possible.
Defence and Law / Iran / United States
Tankers are concentrated in the Gulf, B-1 bombers remain at RAF Fairford, surveillance aircraft are watching Iran and another carrier is heading towards the region. The United States has much of the machinery for another major bombing campaign already in place, although the final signs of an imminent attack have not yet appeared.
Middle East / Iran / Saudi Arabia
Public shipping maps make the Strait of Hormuz look almost deserted, but satellite imagery and specialist maritime tracking reveal a different picture. Saudi tankers are crossing with AIS switched off, Gulf oil is being transferred between ships outside the strait, and millions of barrels are still reaching world markets despite the war, raising questions about Iran’s remaining leverage over Washington.
Uncategorized / China / Defence / Iran
China is not insulated from the Iran war. Disruptions to oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, constrained shipping access, and rising global energy prices are transmitting pressure directly into its economy. While stockpiles and energy diversification provide resilience, the effects are spreading into supply chains and export demand.
Iranian missile and drone strikes have disrupted American bases and naval supplies across the Gulf. As Donald Trump threatens another bombing campaign, Washington faces depleted interceptor stocks and uncertainty over Iran’s surviving missile force. Diplomatic exchanges continue, but they offer no assurance against escalation. The question is what further destruction could secure, and how American forces would be protected while delivering it.
Britain and its European allies are becoming more deeply involved in the war in Ukraine, while Moscow increasingly describes NATO as a participant. A direct conflict remains avoidable, but the risks deserve serious examination from attacks on military and energy infrastructure to pressure on shipping, industry and Europe’s already vulnerable fuel supplies.
The House of Saud built a durable state over older tribal, religious and regional loyalties. Could Yemen change the bargains that have held the kingdom together?
A century ago, British money, weapons and air power helped Abdulaziz ibn Saud defeat his rivals and consolidate the kingdom that bears his family’s name. Now Ansarallah’s advance from Yemen is exposing the older tribal and political landscape beneath the modern Saudi state.
Attacks on Saudi Arabia and Houthi advances in Yemen are testing its defence pact with Turkey and Pakistan. What have the partners promised, and how far are they prepared to go?
Pipeline attacks and Ansar Allah’s coastal advance have exposed Saudi Arabia’s alternative to Hormuz. Repairing the damage may prove easier than securing the route.
BRICS wants to connect national payment systems such as India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix. Currency conversion, costs and control remain obstacles to seamless international transfers.
Ukraine goes unmentioned and Middle East divisions persist, but the BRICS New Delhi declaration advances a shared ambition for greater control over finance, trade and development.
Putin’s warning exposes a central obstacle to a Ukrainian ceasefire: Europe wants troops to help secure the peace, while Moscow regards their presence as grounds for war.
Houthi forces have seized Mayun Island at the entrance to the Red Sea as drone attacks shut Saudi Arabia’s East–West pipeline, threatening the kingdom’s alternative oil export route and deepening the energy crisis surrounding the war with Iran.
As Putin, Xi and other BRICS leaders gather in New Delhi, the bloc is confronting a larger question than the creation of a new currency. India, China, Russia and Iran have very different ambitions, but they increasingly share one objective: building payment, trade and financial systems that leave them less dependent on the dollar and Western controlled institutions.
As BRICS meets in New Delhi, we trace its journey from the pursuit of a multipolar world to a development bank and an expanded membership, examining its achievements and the differences that constrain its ambitions.
The war with Iran is exposing the financial costs of American power. Higher energy prices and expensive borrowing threaten to squeeze households already struggling with housing costs and student debt, while narrowing Washington’s room to provide relief.
Five years after Meng Wanzhou returned to China, her negotiated admissions are being used against Huawei. As witnesses testify in Brooklyn, the case revives Chinese suspicions that Washington is using the law to contain a technological rival.
Ansar Allah’s advance to Bab el Mandeb has placed Yemen once again at the centre of a struggle over global trade, regional power and foreign intervention. The road to the Red Sea runs through British colonial rule, Saudi influence, failed unification, a devastating war and the Iranian support that transformed the Houthis into a regional military force.
China’s export earnings and vast financial reserves provide a cushion against the Middle East energy crisis. But smaller manufacturers face a harder calculation as rising costs meet customers unwilling to pay more, exposing the uneven strength of the world’s industrial powerhouse.
Britain is already absorbing the economic cost of the Iran war as oil approaches $100, gilt yields rise and debt interest costs increase. If crude climbs towards $140, the pressure on inflation, interest rates and the Chancellor’s Budget could intensify sharply.
Eight years after Meng Wanzhou’s arrest, Huawei faces a sweeping American criminal trial whose timing threatens to overshadow Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington.
The AfD has won 43.8 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt but remains three seats short of a majority. Its historic victory exposes the political and economic failures that carried it from an anti-euro protest party to regional dominance.
Defence / China / United States
Chinese military thinkers are developing a strategy built on a brutal equation: force America to spend more than it can replace and turn its technological superiority into a contest of industrial endurance.
From robotic wolves and intelligent tanks to drone carriers and electromagnetic catapults, China is building a connected military designed to operate across every domain.
After 264 consecutive days without a full port call, the USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in Thailand carrying an exhausted crew. Its refuge was Pattaya, a city transformed by American servicemen during the Vietnam War.
After US forces removed Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela rewrote its oil law and granted a Pentagon-linked venture century-long rights over 65 billion barrels. The agreement could revive production but will it rebuild Venezuela or extract its wealth?
China and Nepal are working across their shattered Himalayan frontier as rescuers search for the missing, monitor unstable lakes and begin the immense task of rebuilding.
The glacier collapse that unleashed a devastating flood through Tibet and Nepal has created a new danger. Debris has dammed the upper river again, and millions of cubic metres of water are accumulating above communities still recovering from the first disaster.
More than half of Britain’s electricity is generated from renewable sources, yet international gas prices can still determine the wholesale price of power. As conflict in the Middle East pushes bills higher again, Britain faces an uncomfortable question: why does expensive gas retain such influence over electricity increasingly generated from wind and other renewables?
China / Iran / United States
Washington’s attempt to tighten the economic isolation of Iran faces a fundamental obstacle: China, the dominant buyer of Iranian oil. Beijing is warning against expanded US secondary sanctions, raising questions about international law, American financial power and the risk of a wider economic confrontation.
Opinion / Iran / United States
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promises to sever every economic lifeline sustaining Iran. Tehran says Washington is claiming authority over other sovereign states. History, geography, China’s resistance and Iran’s leverage over Gulf commerce suggest America can inflict enormous suffering without securing surrender or controlling what follows.
America’s $40 trillion debt is more than a fiscal warning. For half a century, deficits and dollar dominance financed consumption, Wall Street and global military reach. Now interest costs are overtaking defence spending, political consent is weakening, and the machinery of American hegemony is becoming an increasingly expensive constraint.
Washington believes unprecedented sanctions can force Iran into submission. But the strategy depends upon Chinese cooperation, while Tehran retains the power to disrupt Gulf oil exports, increase global energy costs and turn America’s economic offensive against the wider world economy.
Europe’s 2026 drought is spreading through the continent’s physical economy. From nuclear shutdowns on the Danube to restricted shipping on the Rhine and declining harvests in England, the crisis is exposing how electricity, industry, food production and new data centres all depend on increasingly scarce water.
The yen should be strengthening as the interest rate gap with America narrows. Instead it remains stubbornly weak. The market may be signalling a deeper problem: Japan needs higher interest rates to support its currency, but decades of cheap money have left the government with an enormous debt burden that becomes progressively more expensive as rates rise.
Britain has exploited its command of the English Channel to tighten the pressure on Russia’s shadow fleet. Now Moscow is turning the map around. The Pacific Fleet has identified European-owned merchant ships passing close to Russia’s Far Eastern bases, exposing a maritime vulnerability Britain would struggle to defend.
Britain’s seizure of the Smyrtos, carrying 101,400 tonnes of Russian crude towards India, has exposed the extraordinary machinery behind Moscow’s shadow oil trade. The tanker had lost its flag, its ownership leads to Hong Kong, and its captain now faces prosecution. But the most important question remains unanswered: who owns the £35 million cargo Britain has seized?
Europe’s drought is damaging crops, draining rivers and constraining power generation just as the Iran war disrupts oil and fertiliser supplies through Hormuz. Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea escape route is under pressure too. The consequences are already reaching the 2026 harvest; what happens to Europe’s rain and the war this winter could determine the harvest of 2027.
Japan spent three decades exporting cheap capital and became America’s largest foreign creditor. As the yen slid towards ¥164 to the dollar, Washington intervened not just to support Japan, but to contain a threat to the Treasury market and the financial system built on cheap Japanese money.
Africa is building the financial infrastructure its continental market has long lacked. PAPSS, direct African currency trading and regional settlement networks are beginning to connect economies once linked more efficiently to London, Paris and New York than to each other — reducing the dollar’s role without pretending it can simply be replaced.
Britain has world class finance, universities, science and enormous pools of capital. Yet it invests less than any other G7 economy and struggles to build infrastructure, housing and productive capacity. The deeper British malaise is not simply a shortage of money, but a failure to turn wealth, research and investment into things the economy needs.
From Yemen and Iraq to Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, the war with Iran is reactivating older conflicts with grievances and political agendas of their own. Even a settlement between Washington and Tehran may no longer be enough to bring the wider Middle East crisis to an end.
The confrontation with Iran is becoming something larger than a war. From the Strait of Hormuz to Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, the old American-led security architecture is being challenged by regional powers determined to impose costs of their own. Out of the conflict, the outlines of a different Middle East are beginning to emerge.