Pakistan cricket has reached one of those moments when the scorecard almost becomes the least interesting part of the story.
The team is 2–0 down in the Test series against England. But the defeats themselves do not explain the extraordinary upheaval that has followed.
Seven players were sent home after the Lord’s Test. Head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed and bowling coach Umar Gul were released. Mike Hesson and Ashley Noffke were brought in for the final Test. Misbah-ul-Haq decided to resign from the selection committee. And the Pakistan Cricket Board subsequently announced an internal disciplinary inquiry concerning “discipline and conduct.”
Then came reports that the mobile phones of Imam-ul-Haq and Mohammad Rizwan had been taken and that data had been obtained from them. On September 10, Times of India, citing Geo News, reported that the two players had been summoned by Pakistan's National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency over information obtained from their phones. That is an extraordinary sequence of events. But extraordinary does not automatically mean corrupt. And that distinction matters. Read More
The diplomatic relationship between Israel and Britain has entered a distinctly more confrontational phase.
Israel has told the United Kingdom that its consulate in East Jerusalem must close within 30 days, with diplomats assigned there set to lose their accreditation. British personnel involved in the US-led Gaza coordination mission and diplomats based in Ramallah have also been ordered to leave within seven days. The decision came immediately after Britain, France, Canada and other European countries announced restrictions targeting goods originating from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The British government has also imposed sanctions on individuals and entities connected to settlement activity. What began as a disagreement over settlement policy is therefore becoming something considerably larger: a test of how far Israel is prepared to push back against Western governments that have historically been among its closest diplomatic partners. Read More
For years, Western governments have condemned Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank while continuing to maintain diplomatic, military and economic relationships with Israel. That balance is becoming harder to sustain.
On September 8, Britain, France, Canada and nine other countries announced coordinated steps to restrict trade in goods produced in Israeli settlements, while demanding an immediate halt to settlement expansion and warning that current Israeli policies are undermining the possibility of a two-state solution. The announcement is not an embargo on Israel. Nor does it represent a unified Western break with the Israeli government. But it does mark something important: some of Israel's closest Western partners are beginning to attach economic consequences to a policy they have previously condemned mainly through diplomatic language. And that could make the West Bank an increasingly difficult fault line in Israel's relationship with its traditional allies. Read More
The Russia-Ukraine war has entered another diplomatic phase, not because the battlefield has suddenly gone quiet, but because Washington is trying once again to determine whether a political exit is possible.
On Saturday, US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for more than three hours. The following day, they travelled to Kyiv for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the first official visit to Ukraine by Trump's envoys in their current peace effort.
The meetings were described by the participants as substantive and encouraging. But no breakthrough emerged.
That distinction matters. Because the central question is no longer whether Washington can bring the parties into a room. It is whether Washington can persuade Moscow and Kyiv to accept a compromise that neither has previously been willing to make. Read More
Qatar is a small country with an unusually large geopolitical footprint. In recent years, Doha has positioned itself as a mediator between actors that often refuse to speak to one another. It hosts American forces, maintains relations with Iran, provides a political home to Hamas's leadership and has repeatedly played a role in negotiations over Gaza. That balancing act has given Qatar influence far beyond its size. It has also made Qatar increasingly exposed.
Iran has targeted American military infrastructure on Qatari territory during its confrontation with Washington. In July 2026, Iran said it had attacked Al Udeid Air Base, the major American military installation in Qatar.
The attack was presented by Tehran as retaliation against U.S. military operations. Israel, meanwhile, has gone further by striking Doha itself. Now, nearly a year after that operation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is openly boasting about the strike and describing Qatar as a “hostile” state. The paradox is difficult to miss. Qatar has not simply become caught between competing powers. It has become a place where the interests of those powers physically collide. Read More
From Sergio Gor's increasingly warm messaging to India's refusal to rush the trade agreement, the signals suggest Washington may be trying to protect a strategic relationship that has become too important to risk over a tariff dispute.
For much of the recent India–US relationship, the tone has been unusually uncomfortable. Trade negotiations have dragged on. Washington has used tariffs as leverage. President Donald Trump has made several unusually sharp public remarks about India, while New Delhi has resisted pressure to simply conclude an agreement for the sake of ending the dispute.
But something appears to be changing in the messaging from Washington. It may not yet amount to a policy reversal. But the signals are worth examining. Read More
It is not an easy moment for the Government of India. At home, the political atmosphere is increasingly charged. Protests and public mobilisation around different issues continue to create pressure, while the opposition is attempting to convert individual grievances into broader political momentum.
Abroad, the environment has become equally complicated. Donald Trump's trade policies and the uncertainty surrounding Washington's approach to India have forced New Delhi to reconsider how much economic and strategic dependence on any single partner is wise. And yet, amid all this pressure, two developments over the past few days have offered a strikingly different picture.
First came India's latest economic numbers. Then came recognition from a place few in the Indian government would normally expect it: The New York Times. The two developments are unrelated in the narrow sense. But together, they reveal something important about India's current moment. Pressure has not produced paralysis. Read More
Poland is building what its government describes as Europe’s largest land army. It has surpassed 220,000 military personnel. It is expected to spend around €53 billion on core defence in 2026, about 4.7% of GDP. And alongside major purchases of American and South Korean military equipment, Warsaw is now sharply increasing investment in domestic and Central European defence production. Polish procurement from domestic companies and regional joint ventures reached 30.4 billion zlotys in 2025, nearly four times the level of 2022.
The obvious explanation is Russia. Poland sits on NATO’s eastern flank, borders Ukraine and sees Moscow as a long-term strategic threat. But that explanation is incomplete. Poland is already protected by the most powerful military alliance in history. At least on paper.
So the more interesting question is not why Poland is building a bigger army. It is why a NATO member is working so urgently to ensure that more of the weapons it needs can be produced closer to home. The answer may lie in a distinction Europe is increasingly being forced to confront: An alliance can exist legally. Its credibility can still become politically uncertain. Read More
The wall of water did not stop at a border. When a glacier and rock mass collapsed high in the Himalayas on August 26, the resulting torrent of ice, mud, rock and water tore through valleys connected to both Nepal and China's Tibet. The disaster has killed hundreds, left thousands missing and devastated settlements and hydropower infrastructure.
But beneath the tragedy lies another question. Can countries facing shared environmental threats afford to treat critical information as something that stops at the border? Three months before the disaster, Nepal had already sought greater cooperation with China on Himalayan hazards.
Nepali officials wanted more detailed information on glacier movement, water levels and other threats emerging in the mountains. China says it shared relevant precipitation and flood information in a timely manner. Yet the catastrophe has exposed a deeper gap: a weather forecast is not the same thing as a comprehensive, real-time cross-border warning system. And in the Himalayas, that difference can be measured in lives. Read More
Ajit Doval's visit to Beijing is officially about the India-China boundary.
But it would be a mistake to look at it only through the border.
On August 25, India's National Security Adviser met Chinese Vice President Han Zheng in Beijing before holding the 25th round of Special Representatives' talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The discussions are focused on maintaining peace and tranquillity along the border, while also covering wider bilateral, regional and international issues.
The timing is what makes the visit particularly important.
India is preparing to host the BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12–13, with Chinese President Xi Jinping expected to attend, although Beijing has not yet formally confirmed his visit. Russian President Vladimir Putin is also expected to be a major presence at the summit.
Doval's Beijing visit therefore looks less like an isolated border exercise and more like part of India's preparation for a much larger strategic conversation. Read More
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham arrived in Kyiv on August 24 for his first overseas visit as prime minister, using Ukraine’s Independence Day to reaffirm London’s support for Kyiv. The most significant announcement, however, was not simply another weapons package.
The UK government has agreed that defence company MBDA can release classified information concerning British components used in the SCALP long-range cruise missile.
Britain says the move will allow Ukraine and France to establish local assembly lines for the missile in Ukraine. SCALP is the French-produced version of the British Storm Shadow and uses shared British and French technology. That distinction matters. Britain is not merely supplying another batch of finished missiles. It is helping create the conditions for Ukraine to develop a greater degree of domestic production capability. And that could have consequences well beyond the immediate battlefield. Read More
Smriti Irani’s return, Ram Madhav’s comeback, Saudan Singh’s reinstatement and a change at the BJP’s digital helm reveal a national organisation trying to combine political firepower, organisational experience and a new generation of leadership.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's new national team is not merely a reshuffle of office-bearers. It is the first substantial organisational imprint of party president Nitin Nabin, who has now assembled a team that combines experienced political figures, veteran organisational hands and a large number of new faces. Of the 65 office-bearers announced, 51 are new, according to reporting on the BJP's announcement. But the more revealing feature is not simply the number of newcomers. It is the number of experienced leaders whom Nabin has chosen to bring back into important positions. The message appears to be less about replacing the old BJP than about rebalancing it. Read More
Every Independence Day since 2014, Narendra Modi has stood at the Red Fort and addressed the nation. His 2026 speech, his 13th consecutive Independence Day address, will again be examined for its political, economic and strategic messages. This year, however, the political context around the speech is somewhat different.
Over the past few months, India has witnessed one of the most unusual youth-led protest movements in recent years. The movement that began around the satirical Cockroach Janta Party grew into a much larger campaign around examination irregularities, unemployment and government accountability. It eventually forced the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and created an unusual political challenge for the government.
It would, however, be a mistake to interpret this as proof that Narendra Modi's political dominance has suddenly disappeared. The protests matter. The anger matters. The government has clearly had to respond. But Indian politics is much larger than one protest movement.
And perhaps the more important question that these developments indirectly bring back is one that political India will eventually have to confront anyway: Who after Modi?
This is not a prediction that Narendra Modi is leaving office tomorrow. Nor is it an argument that the BJP is on the verge of collapse.
It is simply an acknowledgement of a political reality: no leader remains Prime Minister forever.
At some point, India will have a Prime Minister who is not Narendra Modi.
The interesting question is what happens then. Read More
