China surpassed the US’s GDP in purchasing power parity terms in 2013, and has a considerable lead on its competitor in patent filings, research and development and key science metrics. Washington and its allies have responded with an expanded trade and technology war against Beijing, and efforts to hem the Asian nation in militarily.
America’s technology lead vis-à-vis China is rapidly “eroding” and in some places has disappeared completely, and the US and its AUKUS allies must pool their resources to compensate, Andrew Shearer, the director-general of Australia’s Office of National Intelligence, has recommended.
“We are seeing our longstanding technological edge start to erode, and in some cases that edge is totally gone,” Shearer said, speaking at the Sydney Dialogue, an Australia-based technology summit.
The chief spook also warned that the military balance of power in the Indo-Pacific was starting to “shift away from the United States and its allies,” thus “undermining deterrence.”
Also speaking at the forum, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned that China is “a new kind of competitor” for the West.....more below
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a leading civil rights organization, has accused Israel of carrying out “an organized and systematic practice of sexual torture” against Palestinian detainees from the besieged Gaza Strip.
PCHR said in a new report that its investigators have documented extensive sexual violence against both Palestinian women and men detained by Israeli forces across Gaza over the past two years.
According to PCHR, researchers and lawyers interviewed several Palestinians recently released from Israeli custody, who described repeated incidents of rape, forced stripping, filming of abuse, and sexual assault using objects and dogs, along with other forms of psychological humiliation.
One 42-year-old mother, detained while crossing an Israeli checkpoint in northern Gaza in November 2024, told investigators she endured repeated rape and physical abuse over several days.
“They put me on a metal table, pressed my chest and head against it, cuffed my ...
Accepting the Washington-based lender’s plan would be a “disgrace” for Dakar, the African state’s prime minister has said
Senegal has rejected a debt-restructuring proposal put forward by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The West African country’s prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, said following the plan would amount to a national “disgrace.”
Sonko made the remarks at a rally in the capital, Dakar, on Sunday, days after the Washington-based lender concluded a two-week mission to Senegal without a new financing deal.
Senegal’s public debt has risen to over $11 billion amid the discovery of $7 billion in undeclared loans. The IMF has since frozen a $1.8 billion lending facility to the former French colony, citing misreporting and hidden debt.
Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who came to power in April 2024, has blamed his predecessor, Macky Sall, for the debt crisis.....more here
https://www.rt.com/africa/627581-senegal-rejects-imf-debt-restructuring-proposal/
While Washington dreams of a Golden Dome, Beijing is quietly building one that actually works
When Donald Trump unveiled the Golden Dome in May 2025, he promised nothing less than a revolution in American security – a $175-billion missile defense shield designed to intercept any threat to the United States.
Modeled on Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the new project envisions an integrated network of satellites, next-generation interceptors, radars, and laser weapons extending from the Earth’s surface to outer space. The ambition is clear: complete, preemptive, and absolute protection by 2029.
Yet behind the spectacle of technological grandeur lies a troubling pattern. No concrete system architecture has been presented, and early projections suggest the true cost could triple the official figure. More importantly, the concept of “absolute security” signals an enduring American desire for unipolar dominance – one that undermines, rather than reinforces, global ...
