Headlines

With USAID gone, Indo-Pacific allies face the fallout

For more than 60 years, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was the backbone of American development diplomacy. Today, it is gone. But the most immediate consequence is not what many assume. It is not simply the loss of funding. It is the collapse of

Asia

The EU-Mercosur trade agreement

The EU-Mercosur trade deal that applies provisionally from 1 May 2026 creates a trading zone of 700 million people altogether. It is agreed between the EU and the South American trading bloc, which includes Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The deal boosts Europe’s

The internet has a Strait of Hormuz problem

The next attack on the global economy may not arrive with a missile strike or a cyberattack on a server farm. It may arrive as silence — the sudden, eerie quiet of severed fiber-optic cables resting on the floor of the Persian Gulf, cut by a vessel whose crew will claim it was

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US fast-tracks new ship-killer missile to point at China

The US Army’s fast-tracked anti-ship missile could fill a key Pacific gap, but its deterrent value will hinge on production capacity, launcher survivability and China’s continued preference for coercion over invasion in Taiwan. Naval News reports the US Army is accelerating

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EU outlines plans for 'clear' legislation

The European Commission admits the EU needs “clear” law making. This is why it says it has presented its plan to modernize EU lawmaking. The aim is to “ensure that laws are clearer, simpler, more efficiently enforced, based on solid evidence and better aligned with the needs of

Africa: The Past and Future(s) of the Postcolonial University

[African Arguments] In Femi Kayode's thriller Lightseekers (2021) the protagonist Philip Taiwo investigates the brutal murder of three students in the fictional university town of Okriki in the Niger Delta. Woven into the plot are aspects that shape the everyday life of many

Korea and Taiwan: When an AI boom lifts a nation

I have had the rare privilege of conducting on-the-ground equity research in both Korea and Taiwan at different stages of my career. They are often spoken in the same breath, partly because of their regional proximity and parallel growth trajectories, and partly also because of

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