Pakistan has long grown used to external shocks derailing its best-laid economic plans. Few, however, have arrived with quite the speed or expense of the short, sharp war between America and Iran. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif complained to his cabinet…
Imagine standing on the frozen edge of the world, where the wind slices like a blade and the ice stretches endlessly toward a horizon that seems to touch another planet. Beneath your boots lies not just snow and ancient ice,…
With the presidential election just weeks away on 31 May, Colombia finds itself confronting a sharp deterioration in security that has thrust the failures of the past four years into the spotlight. While the government’s “total peace” strategy promised dialogue…
Donald Trump has spent half a century turning setbacks into spectacles. From brash Manhattan developer to reality-TV ringmaster to twice-elected president, his career has been a masterclass in branding resilience. Yet the past three years have added a darker chapter:…
“He is ready to rumble,” declared Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, on the red carpet outside the Washington Hilton on April 25th. “This speech tonight will be classic Donald J. Trump. It will be funny. It will be…
The latest wave of coordinated militant attacks across Mali has laid bare the depth of a crisis that has been building for more than a decade — one shaped not only by insurgency but also by shifting geopolitical alliances, economic…
A curious piece of political theatre unfolded in the Indian capital on April 24th. At a joint press conference, three Aam Aadmi Party Rajya Sabha members—Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak and Ashok Mittal—announced that they and four colleagues were merging with…
The confrontation between Tehran and Washington has entered a precarious new phase, one unfolding not in the skies or on battlefields but along the narrow maritime corridor through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s traded oil passes. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard…
With a fragile ceasefire in the West Asia conflict hanging by a thread and US negotiators preparing for another round of talks with Iran in Pakistan, President Donald Trump’s approach to the region is under intense scrutiny from the American…
They were supposed to be miracle injections: weekly shots that could tame type 2 diabetes and melt away stubborn kilograms with remarkable ease. But for growing numbers of patients around the world, the promise of Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound…
On the evening of April 17th, as rain pattered on the Parliament complex, a small knot of women MPs from the ruling BJP-led coalition raised slogans under sodden umbrellas. Their protest was theatrical but heartfelt: the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill,…
The Strait of Hormuz, a channel barely three kilometres wide at its narrowest point, has once again demonstrated its power to unsettle the global economy. On April 18th, Iranian gunboats fired on a tanker in the waterway, and Tehran announced…
On April 16th China’s National Bureau of Statistics released its first-quarter GDP figures for 2026. The economy expanded by 5.0% year on year, beating analysts’ forecasts of 4.8% and accelerating from the 4.5% recorded in the final quarter of 2025.…
Barely three weeks after being sworn in as Nepal’s youngest-ever prime minister on 27 March 2026, Balendra Shah – the 35-year-old former underground rapper known as Balen – is discovering that winning power is easier than wielding it.His Rastriya Swatantra…
The global economy today stands at a critical inflection point. Geopolitical tensions, particularly in keyenergy-producing regions, have once again exposed the fragility of global supply chains and the deep interlinkages between politics and economics. Oil prices remain volatile—hovering in the…
Two days after the collapse of direct negotiations between the United States and Iran in Islamabad, President Donald Trump held a nearly 40-minute telephone conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 14. The call, the third between the…
History will record that the great dealmaker came to Islamabad, saw, and somehow still managed to tweet about it as a tremendous success. Donald Trump’s much-vaunted diplomatic foray into brokering peace between America and Iran has ended, as so many…
The collapse of direct talks between the United States and Iran in Islamabad marks a sobering setback for efforts to stabilise a region already strained by six weeks of conflict. After 21 hours of negotiations, which began on April 11…
More than three million enumerators fanned out across India this week to begin the monumental task of counting the country’s roughly 1.4 billion people, launching a yearlong exercise that for the first time in nearly a century will systematically record…
Voters in India turned out in record numbers Thursday in Assam, Kerala and the union territory of Puducherry, kicking off a sprawling set of state assembly elections that will shape the country’s political landscape heading into the next national vote…
