Headlines

Lebanon tries to find a place on the map

In the jigsaw puzzle of Middle East peace talks under way, Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun is trying to remind the warring parties in the current Middle East wars that his country is important, too. He worries because two powerful adversaries, Iran and the United States, appear

Asia

China sanctions US defense, rare earth firms in retaliation

China hit back at Washington on Monday with a sweeping two-pronged retaliation, barring government departments from buying products from 46 US defense contractors and blacklisting 10 American companies from receiving Chinese dual-use exports. The Ministry of Finance announced

Asia

Before SpaceX IPO, investors in China secretly acquired stakes

This article was originally published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom. A businessman with ties to Chinese military contractors was among the overseas investors who acquired stakes in SpaceX while it was still a private company. An entity linked to the Qatari

Asia

Peace or not, the Middle East will now lean more toward China

The most important question about the US-Israel-Iran war is no longer one of who has lost. It is obvious that everyone has lost but that Iran has lost less badly than the others. Nor is it important to ask how humiliating the peace “memorandum” Iran and the US signed this week

Asia

Keir Starmer latest casualty in Britain’s premiership carousel

Keir Starmer has resigned as leader of the Labour party, and so in time as the UK’s prime minister. In the end, despite his numerous assurances that he would fight on, after Andy Burnham’s resounding win in the Makerfield byelection, the pressure on Starmer became too great to

Asia

China in hot pursuit of a wave-skimming hypersonic edge

China’s pursuit of a sea-skimming hypersonic missile could redefine naval warfare in the Pacific — but only if it can overcome the immense technical and operational barriers standing in its way. This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that the Chinese Academy

Asia

Why Gaza’s genocide death toll is deliberately undercounted

The mainstream media has no problem guesstimating the deaths (500,000) from the Assad dictatorship’s civil war in Syria, nor the estimated deaths in the wars in Ukraine, Sudan or Iran. Somehow, media editors do not let their investigative reporters assess the extent of Israel’s

Asia