Eurasia

It may seem like technology advances year after year, as if by magic. But behind every incremental improvement and breakthrough revolution is a team of scientists and engineers hard at work. UC Santa Barbara Professor Ben Mazin is developing precision optical sensors for telescopes and observatories. In a paper published …

While the leaders of NATO were meeting in Madrid last week, another gathering was taking place 5,300 km to the east in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, where the leaders of the five littoral states of the Caspian Sea (Russia, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan) gathered for the 6th Caspian Summit. It was …

As the European bond market falls, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde said on June 28 that the central bank will start a bond-buying program on Friday to curb possible debt crises. The ECB is considering maintaining “flexibility” in its reinvestment allocation to its massive EUR 1.7 trillion bond-buying …

Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s shuttle diplomacy to Ukraine and Russia this week offered some hope for peace but he needs to follow up with further dialogue to ensure his efforts are not a mere flash in the pan, analysts said. While his mission to persuade Moscow to declare a …

Ever since Russian troops first crossed the Ukrainian border on February 24, the Kremlin has employed characteristically euphemistic language in order to downplay the criminal nature of the unfolding invasion. This has led to the creation of an entire alternative reality where Russian troops are noble liberators waging a chivalrous …

Since Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the United States and Europe have deployed tools of economic warfare with the explicit goal of crippling the Russian economy and rendering the Kremlin unable to wage its war of aggression. The alacrity and scale of the Western response—which has included freezing Russia’s foreign-currency …

Regime cronies are seizing the oil and selling it in the black market for profit, according to al-Iqtissad. A media source revealed that the agreement achieved by Bashar al-Assad during his recent visit to Iran is to supply Syria with all its actual needs of oil, amounting to three million …

The strike came shortly before midnight on Monday, according to al-Araby al-Jadeed. A drone strike by the U.S.-led coalition in northwestern Syria killed a senior member of an Al-Qaeda-linked group, Syrian opposition activists and the U.S. military said on Tuesday. The attack on the suspected militant, who was riding a …

The attack is the deadliest since the start of a series of assassinations in the area, according to al-Modon. An unidentified armed group attacked the house of the former secretary-general of the Baath Socialist Party branch in the Daraa governorate, Kamal al-Atma, in the northern city of al-Sanamayn. They killed …

Iran-backed militias continue to arrest Syrian fighters who refuse to fight with them, according to Asharq al-Awsat. Iran-backed militias continue to arrest local fighters who refuse to participate in combing operations in the Deir-ez-Zor countryside desert. The militias arrested at least 28 Syrian members amid reports of apprehending others who …