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  • How should a US-Saudi defence pact look?

    My chief interest here is to explore what is required to make a US-Saudi defence pact most effective and credible for both parties in the eyes of friends and foes. In other words, I am starting off with the assumption that political leaders in Washington and Riyadh have agreed to move forward on this issue. The question I now wish to address is how they can build a mutually beneficial defence structure to support the pact.

  • Why is Sudan still at war a year on?

    The army and RSF had been in a fragile partnership after toppling a civilian government in an October 2021 coup, a move that derailed a transition from the rule of Islamist autocrat Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted amid a popular uprising in 2019.
    The rivalry between the two sides burst into the open over an internationally backed plan that would have launched a new transition with civilian parties and was due to be sealed just before the war broke out.

  • Is the EU the North Star for Circular Economy Push in Saudi Arabia?

    The European Union's (EU) circular economy (CE) framework is an exemplar of comprehensive and strategic environmental governance. This framework is meticulously designed to encompass robust legislation, set ambitious sustainability targets, and deploy diverse initiatives across sectors, which can serve as a powerful model for nations like Saudi Arabia aiming to enhance their own circular economy policies.

  • What Does Neom’s Downsize Means for Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030?

    When launching The Line in 2021, the Saudi government had announced that 1.5 million people would be living in the city by 2030. Officials now expect there to be fewer that 300,000 residents by that time, according to a source cited by Bloomberg.The source said that officials expected only 2.4km of the 170km city to be completed by 2030. As a result of the scaling back, one contractor dismissed some of the workers it employs on site, according to a document seen by Bloomberg.

  • Grid Bottlenecks on the Way in Europe?

    A new analysis by the energy think tank Ember has found that several countries in Europe could soon face bottlenecks in their national transmission energy grids, as more solar and wind power will be generated than these networks have capacity for. As the following chart shows, Spain, France and Poland are just some of the countries that will have energy grids which undershoot their country’s respective 2030 policy targets for wind and solar capacity. Out of the 26 countries studied by Ember in this comparison, 11 will not have enough capacity for the expected wind and solar build out if the present grid plans are realized.

  • Explainer: Could the Palestinians become a full United Nations member?

    The Palestinian Authority on Tuesday formally asked for renewed consideration by the United Nations Security Council of its 2011 application to become a full member of the world body.
    Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour told Reuters on Monday that the aim was for the council to take a decision at an April 18 ministerial meeting on the Middle East, but that a vote had yet to be scheduled.
    Here are details on U.N. membership:

  • Palestinian Mandela? Marwan Barghouti, imprisoned preacher of unity.

    Serving five life sentences after being convicted by an Israeli court for involvement in militant killings in the second intifada, Mr. Barghouti remains the rare – perhaps the only – figure trusted by all Palestinian factions. With his release from Israeli prison demanded by Fatah’s rival, Hamas, and even advocated by a former Israeli spy chief, the mere possibility of Mr. Barghouti’s return to the scene is stirring up Palestinian politics, and hope, at a historic crossroads

  • Israel Unleashed? A Brazen Campaign Against Iranian Targets Could Backfire

    On April 1, Israel launched its latest attack on Iran in the two countries’ ongoing shadow war, with an airstrike that flattened a section of Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus and reportedly killed at least 12 people. Among the dead was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who headed Iran’s military operations in Syria and Lebanon, where he worked for decades and became a close interlocutor with Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The strike also killed Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, Zahedi’s deputy, and at least five other officers in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

  • Israel-Gaza war updates: What is happening now, six months on?

    Six months since Hamas gunmen stormed into southern Israel on a killing spree, Israel's ground campaign to annihilate the Islamist movement has turned much of the Gaza Strip into a wasteland with an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. Mediators have been trying to organise the first extended truce of the war to rush in aid to feed the Palestinian territory's 2.3 million people and secure the release of some of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas.

  • Saudi to Dubai in an hour? Hyperloop chief sees GCC transport link as ‘possible’

    Andres de Leon, chief executive of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (Hyper-loopTT), revealed that “conversations have been had” with countries in the GCC – including the UAE and Saudi Arabia – to bring the mass transport system to the region. Plans to bring a hyperloop prototype to Northern Italy - between Venice and Padua – through a joint venture between the Italian government and private investors reignited interest in the project. That system – which aims to be the world’s first working passenger system and will propel people between cities in pods more than twice as fast as high-speed rail net-works and far more sustainably – aims to be up and running between 2028 and 2030, de Leon said