I have watched Pakistan-Afghanistan relations long enough to distrust easy headlines, and last week’s news produced a few of them. At the Center-2026 (Tsentr-2026) war games in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region, Taliban officers stood among the foreign observers. Reports say it was the first time Moscow…
Paul Krugman is the greatest econ writer in the world, and also a legendary economist. But I sometimes feel that he has a blind spot when it comes to the value of new technologies. In 1998 he famously wrote: The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which…
Hydrogen-powered passenger cars have been left far behind by electric vehicles and hybrids, but the hydrogen truck market is growing and new technology developed for auto racing is keeping hopes for hydrogen cars alive. Toyota and its European partners are in the vanguard of these developments. On…
Indonesia is buying the weapons of a modern military at a pace rarely seen in its recent history. Rafale fighter jets are entering service, and the country has contracted for 48 KAAN fighters from Turkey. The navy has taken delivery of two Italian PPA warships and commissioned a former Italian…
On September 19, Dou Xiankang, who heads the National Natural Science Foundation of China, described a grant that most young scientists anywhere would envy. Researchers under 35 will get 15 years of support. The money doubles after five years and doubles again after ten, and there are no short-term…
Yemen is spiraling back toward full-scale war after its Saudi-backed government launched a major offensive on Sunday to retake territory captured by the Iran-backed group Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis. President Rashad al-Alimi said the armed forces would seek to retake all…
Certain ideas define us. Some earned names of our own along the way. Others have run through nearly 240 pieces without ever being formally christened. Put together, they amount to a worldview. That worldview has been assembled one essay at a time since 2023. Many readers have walked in…
The Russians are struggling on land and at sea, and are having real difficulty protecting themselves from Ukrainian long-range attack. That has left them with one real strategic “advantage” and that is what we will see the next few months. As reports this week made clear, the Russian strategy is…
The apparent attempted hijacking of a Flydubai flight carrying 170 mostly Israeli passengers was another reminder to Israelis of the constant threat of terror and war. Only the bravery of the chief pilot and passengers prevented a major disaster. A few hours earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin…
No one knows how the US Supreme Court will rule in Suncor v. Boulder, the case that will kick off the court’s fall term next week and will likely decide whether the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, will be able to put oil giants ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy on trial for deceiving the public…