Geopolitics & international affairs
The $1.8 billion fund is dead on paper now. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general and President Trump’s nominee for the job permanently, formally rescinded the so-called anti-weaponization fund on Sunday night, issuing the written order that two Republican senators had demanded as the price of his confirmation. He also signed a second order narrowing […]
The dollar opened the week in retreat. On Monday morning it briefly slipped under 156 yen, down from the upper 157 level in New York and from 160 in Tokyo on Friday, after the two governments confirmed they had bought yen together late last week. The move was the first coordinated currency intervention between Tokyo […]
President Trump has an explanation for why the United States spent billions supporting the Japanese yen, and it is not about exchange rates. Asked aboard Air Force One why Washington had joined Tokyo in buying yen, Trump said it was because the two countries have a good relationship, that Japan wanted a little help with […]
The American debate over Chinese artificial intelligence has reached a fork in the road. One would punish Chinese AI labs caught stealing American trade secrets. The other would restrict the technique those labs use, a method called distillation that is also used by every serious AI company in the world, including the Americans. The two […]
The Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers that rain cruise missiles on Ukrainian cities take off from Engels, a strategic airfield in the Saratov region roughly 600 kilometers (373 miles) from Ukrainian territory. In the early hours of Sunday, Ukraine struck that airfield and, at the same time, the oil refinery next door that keeps Russia’s war […]
A year of mass deportation has produced a strange stability in American public opinion. The numbers have barely moved. A fresh AP-NORC survey finds that roughly half of the country believes the administration has overstepped in removing immigrants who are in the United States without legal status. The figure has not budged for more than […]
The bombs were being prepared. Washington had been threatening Iran with force on a scale not seen in this war, and the strike plans reportedly included the country’s energy infrastructure. Then the phone rang. The man on the line was Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, and after the call the strikes were halted. That sequence, reported […]
The People’s Liberation Army is one year away from a deadline Beijing set for it. August 2027 marks the centenary of the PLA’s founding, and China has committed itself, in the language of official documents and the speeches of its leader, to achieving its centenary goals by then. What those goals are, exactly, has never […]
King Mohammed VI has decided that the most fitting tribute to the American president is a road. Not a medal, not a state visit, not a statue, but a ribbon of asphalt running more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from southern Morocco down the Atlantic coast into the disputed territory of Western Sahara. The Tiznit-Dakhla […]
Japan is the only country in the world that has been bombed with atomic weapons, and its people have not forgotten what that means. A nationwide poll reported Sunday found that 76 percent of Japanese support keeping the three nonnuclear principles intact, the postwar pledges to produce no nuclear weapons, possess none, and allow none […]
