Author: ANC News Desk

Credit: Russian Presidential Press and Information Service Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on May 20 with a delegation built for a deal: five deputy prime ministers, eight Cabinet ministers, and the chiefs of Gazprom and Rosneft. He left two days later with declarations of friendship, a visa-free travel arrangement extended through 2027, and […]

Khurram Husain, one of Pakistan’s most widely read business and economy journalists and a columnist at Dawn, joins host Tushar Shetty to examine whether Pakistan’s recent diplomatic gains are translating into meaningful economic progress.  They discuss the tangible but limited economic benefits of Pakistan’s geopolitical revival, the impact of the Iran conflict and Hormuz blockade […]

The closing day of RightsCon 2025, held in Taipei, Taiwan, Feb. 27, 2025. Credit: Flickr/ RightsCon On April 29, the shocking news broke that RightsCon 2026, one of the world’s largest human rights-related convenings, would be cancelled. On April 30, Access Now, the organizers of RightsCon, issued a statement saying that RightsCon would not take […]

Credit: helen35 from Pixabay One of the most interesting democratic movements of recent years has been Australia’s Community Independents Project. The movement is a grassroots initiative, built on an intimate understanding of local concerns, and sharing political organizing tactics. Although its origins were in a rural electorate, the movement has had its most success in […]

Credit: Depositphotos Europe’s China policy is stuck in a strategic dead end. Instruments aimed at reducing asymmetric dependencies, strengthening competitiveness, and building economic resilience either already exist or are currently developed. But the impression is building that these policy measures are too little, too late. At the same time, the European Commission lacks a sustained […]

Credit: Office of the President, ROC (Taiwan)/ Liu Shu-fu Within the span of four weeks, two planes told the story of Taiwan’s presence and absence in the world. One carried U.S. President Donald Trump to Beijing, where China’s leader Xi Jinping had every opportunity to press his case about Taiwan. The other was nearly prevented […]

Credit: Depositphotos North Korea fired several close-range ballistic missiles into the ocean on May 26, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said. It was North Korea’s eighth ballistic missile test this year, and the first since the test of several short-range ballistic missiles over a month ago. According to the South’s JCS, the missiles […]

Credit: Tim Broadbent on Unsplash Central Asia is home to one of the most infamous human-caused ecological catastrophes: the dramatic drying-up of the Aral Sea. That disaster was rooted in systemic mismanagement of the region’s water resources in pursuit of cotton production, primarily during the Soviet period. Today, the region is in hot pursuit of […]

The Luohe, a Type 054B frigate in service with the People’s Liberation Army Navy, during its commissioning in Qingdao, China, July 28, 2025. Credit: Sina Weibo/ 央广军事 China’s newest generation frigate, the Type 054B, has for the first time been confirmed operating as part of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) aircraft carrier Liaoning’s strike […]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined his Nordic counterparts in Oslo for the 3rd India–Nordic Summit, May 19, 2026. Credit: Indian Ministry of External Affairs Coming at the back of a recently signed India-EU Free Trade Agreement as well as the India-EFTA Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA) signed with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, […]