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News

Poland says it stopped a Russian-directed plot to murder a US citizen in Warsaw - the first time, its prime minister says, that Moscow has tried to kill an American inside another Nato country.

Armenian banks must now identify and freeze payments designed to slip past Western sanctions on Russia, under central bank rules that took effect on August 12.

Russian firm KS Logistika has asked President Vladimir Putin to place five of Nestlé's Russian units under "temporary management."

Iran's foreign ministry says there is no 60-day deadline in its Islamabad understanding with the US and that it will not set policy under time pressure, distancing Tehran from the Western reading of a mid-June memorandum due to lapse on August 17.

The MARCOS are Indian Navy’s elite operators and as such the equivalents of the US Navy Seals and the UK Special Boat Service.

Tech

A ruble-backed stablecoin built by a sanctioned Russian defence bank has handled nearly $140bn of turnover since it was created 18 months ago.

Albania's plans to use an artificial intelligence avatar to help combat corruption are facing fresh scrutiny after prosecutors opened an investigation into the government agency that developed the system.

Ukraine has spent a month setting fire to Wildberries warehouses. Last week it went after the checkout instead.

Anthropic is in acquisition talks for Israeli artificial intelligence startup Decart AI at a valuation of approximately $6bn, joining a heated race against SpaceX, Nvidia, and Amazon.

Sony Group will invest JPY465bn in the venture, while Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest contract semiconductor maker, will invest JPY282bn.

Opinion

The PR surge which heralded that the “tide is turning” in the Ukrainian conflict is ending up in a debacle. Ukraine can inflict tangible damage on the Russian economy but Russia can take it and give it back in spades.

Attempt to steer economy toward sustainable growth running into increasingly difficult terrain with economic policy facing sharp trade-off between fighting stubborn inflation and fixing external imbalances.

America's retreat from research funding and openness to skilled immigration has handed Europe an unexpected strategic advantage. If Brussels can remove visa barriers and back scientists, it has a rare chance to narrow the innovation gap.

Capital Economics says Thailand's Anutin Charnvirakul government is squandering a rare post-election reform mandate, leaning instead on a poorly targeted 175bn baht subsidy scheme, centralised power and rising industrial protectionism.

West knows of these concerns, says Hakan Fidan.

Data

Anxiety in Russia has climbed back to the level it reached when Vladimir Putin ordered mobilisation four years ago.

Iran's Saman Bank has been authorised to provide gold and silver treasury services to online precious-metals trading platforms, channelling their transactions through a police-approved vault.

The plastic that fuelled a decade of Filipino spending is starting to bite, just as the cost of money turns against the country's borrowers.

Russia's foreign trade surplus grew 14% to $73.4bn in the first half of 2026, with Asia now taking three quarters of everything the country buys and sells abroad.

Hungary’s commercial real estate market recorded its strongest first-half performance since 2021, according to international property adviser Colliers.

Features

Russia's main state development bank has sacked its chief economist over a speech he gave three months ago, in which he said the Russian economy would survive.

Serbia's banks booked record profit of €1.4bn in 2025 and their fastest credit growth in a decade, even as home-grown AIK Banka buys up rivals across the Balkans.

Any attempt to reject the 97.7% vote risks dismantling twenty-five years of delicate peacebuilding, making the August 27 session one of the most consequential moments in modern Pacific history.

Ukraine's banks made almost a third less profit in the first half of 2026 than a year earlier, as the wartime windfall that fattened their margins begins to fade.

Russia's meat and feed exporters face a choice between two very different markets: Iran, slow and bureaucratic but predictable, and the Philippines, fast-growing but brutal on price.

Blogs

At the ancient Egyptian obelisk outside the Blue Mosque, looking along what was once the Hippodrome of Constantinople, I found myself thinking about a tent.

Ukraine's power generation capacity has fallen from 60GW before the war to 12GW today, and a renewed Russian bombing campaign this winter could push the shortfall toward 10GW, even as European gas storage sits near a 15-year low.

Dubious rise to the top is questioned. Watchdog says remarks “incompatible with foreign policy vision”.

Tourist visas denied based on highly subjective assessments of financial means and intentions to use “return” section of plane ticket.

The stochastic war continues to escalate into a brutal tit-for-tat missile war with both sides continuously rolling out new and improved weapons that could eventually lead to a direct clash between Nato and Russia.

bneGREEN

A widely shared analysis says the planet is now warming at 0.48C a decade - almost three times the rate measured from 1970 to 2010.

The war in the Gulf was supposed to give the West leverage over China. It has mostly accelerated China's escape from the oil market altogether.

For years, the Leshnica Valley in North Macedonia’s Sar Mountain National Park has been caught between plans to harness its mountain rivers for electricity and efforts to preserve one of the country’s most valuable natural areas.

Green financing now accounts for nearly 8% of total corporate and municipal lending.

Croatian firefighters continued battling wildfires on the Adriatic coast at the weekend, with authorities saying conditions had improved somewhat on the Pelješac peninsula while assessing damage from a separate blaze near Omiš.

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