By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 21 January 2025 (IDN) —The West, the US especially, has got itself into a fretful mood over the rise of China. Quite unnecessarily so. The Chinese growth rate is slowing. As a BBC commentator said recently, reviewing this week’s government-issued statistics, China never will hit double digit growth again. […]
India Takes Yet Another Step Toward Sending Humans to the Moon
By Devinder Kumar* NEW DELHI | 17 January 2025 (IDN) — The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)—which has been working on key technologies to realise its vision of setting up a space station by 2035 and sending humans to the Moon by 2040—on January 16 morning successfully demonstrated space docking, or the joining of two […]
Sri Lanka: Better Manage the Water Tanks to Ensure Food Security
By Mohan Seneviratne* COLOMBO, Sri Lanka | 16 January 2025 (IDN) — Water is at the centre of economic and social development. It influences whether communities are healthy places to live, whether farmers can grow food and underpins natural ecosystems. Moreover, humans experience Climate Change through water be it floods, droughts, cyclones or tsunamis. Sri […]
Twenty Million Radicalizing Muslims Pose a Challenge
By Jonathan Power LUND, Sweden | 14 January 2025 (IDN) — Besides dealing with Ukraine, Russia stands at a major crossroads as it works out how exactly to deal with the 14.5 million ethnic Muslims that live inside its borders. If, added to this are the migrant workers from Central Asia and Azerbaijan, the total […]
Trump, again… Everything About Him Is Unsettlingly Peculiar
The writer is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It. ABUJA, Nigeria | 14 January 2025 (IDN) — On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 45th President of the U.S., on 19 January 2017, I wrote an article I could easily write now. It was […]
Europe Ignores the Risk of Economic Nightmare as Ukraine Attacks TurkStream Pipeline
By Stephen Bryen* This article was issued by Weapons and Strategy and is being republished with their permission. WASHINGTON, D.C. | 13 January 2025 (IDN) — The Ukrainians sent nine drones to attack a natural gas compressor station in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia. The compressor station was part of the TurkStream pipeline. All […]
Ukraine War: Neutrality Remains the Key to Peace
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies NEW YORK | 13 January 2025 (IDN) — President-elect Trump said on January 9 that he is planning a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine. He said “Putin wants to meet,” because “we have to get that war over with.” So what […]
Will Putin and Trump Meet in Budapest?
By Fehér Péter* BUDAPEST | 12 January 2025 (IDN) — Vladimir Dzhabarov, the first deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s upper house committee on international affairs, mentioned in an interview that he considers Hungary an ideal location for a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. This was the first specific indication that the Hungarian […]
Is the World Ending War — Despite Ukraine?
By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 7 January 2025 (IDN) — An ugly cloud of pessimism hands over many parts of the world. War that seemed to be in retreat, has returned with a vengeance with the second largest military in world, Russia’s, battling a very under-resourced neighbour, Ukraine. It’s getting a lot of people […]
A Renewed Ukrainian Kursk Offensive as Talk of Negotiations Swirls
By Stephen Bryen* This article was issued by Weapons and Strategy and is being republished with their permission. WASHINGTON, D.C. | 6 January 2025 (IDN) — A so-called Ramstein Format Meeting will take place in Germany on January 9. The meeting format addresses Ukraine’s defense needs. Ukrainian President Zelensky will attend, and the US side […]