Premier Li Qiang emphasized 'the need to accelerate self-reliance in high-level science and technology' against a background of 'unilateralism and protectionism escalating abruptly,' referencing Trump administration trade policy, while highlighting China's recent advances in independent chip research and development and noting integrated circuit output rose 10.9 percent last year.
Iranian forces have launched an operation targeting Kurdish groups in their semi-autonomous region of neighbouring Iraq, as they also began their 19th wave of missile and drone attacks against Israel and United States assets in the Middle East on the sixth day of a regional war that has embroiled much of the region in the conflict.
I remember my commander, one day before my first strike, talking to us about how they expect us to lose half of the airplanes. He was our boss. He was the commander of the squadron. He was only 39 years old at the time. I remember when he turned 40. He was such a great guy, a great leader, and he was under so much pressure. And he wasn't even the guy that made the decision to send us there. But you could just feel, just in his core, that he understood, you know, how significant of an issue this was that some of us might die.
We were told it would leave several times shortly, but nothing happened. People were exhausted and worried about what was going on. The aircraft never left the runway, and passengers were eventually disembarked after hours of waiting.
The scale of what is at stake cannot be overstated. Oil companies can likely absorb a one- to two-week slowdown. A full or near-full closure lasting a month or more would require demand destruction at levels that could push crude well into triple digits and European natural gas prices toward or above the crisis levels seen in 2022.
The US decision to cut the UK out of the official loop on the airstrikes came alongside Keir Starmer's decision to decline permission for the US to use British military bases for the operation. Since then, Donald Trump has attacked Starmer for his refusal to let America use the military sites, saying the special relationship is not what it was and calling him no Churchill.
Youth-led protests under a loose gen-Z banner began as a demonstration against a brief social media ban, but were fed by wider grievances at corruption and a woeful economy. Nearly 19 million voters will choose who replaces the interim government in place since the September 2025 uprising, in which at least 77 people were killed, and parliament and scores of government buildings were torched.
