admin
Is there anything more exciting than sitting down to watch a brand new television series? This week we are taking a look at some of the best shows coming out soon, including new series and
admin
The Mideast war has highlighted the newfound alliance between the tech sector and the US military after decades of strained relations, displaying a synergy that investors see as a potential gold mine. For the first time, the usual military-industrial pillars like Lockheed Martin and Boeing are being joined by rising tech giants Palantir, Anthropic and Anduril in helping to keep the US war machine ticking. Tech firms are increasingly involved in helping the military with everything from cloud computing to AI-powered drones. Maven, Palantir’s data analytics platform, has been used extensively in the offensive against Iran, as has Anthropic’s artificial intelligence. Anduril’s president, Matthew Steckman, said Monday that it was providing “one of the main defense systems” against Iran’s low-cost, long-range Shahed drones. The company recently announced a 10-year, $20bn contract with the US military. Palantir’s chief Alex Karp called the developments “a huge shift in Silicon Valley.” “When we started Palantir,” he said this month, “we couldn’t get funding” because the company was still too focused on civilian applications for its technology. Employee revolts at Microsoft, Amazon and Google in the late 2010s helped kept those giants out of the military market. Google ended up relinquishing the Maven contract in 2018, with Palantir getting onboard in 2024. But times have changed. Investors and tech companies have now “moved from being hostile to skeptical to neutral, from neutral to positive on the idea that Silicon Valley, like every other part of industry has to support the war fighter,” Karp said. In 2025, private equity invested a record $49bn in defence technology companies, nearly double the previous year’s $27bn, according to the specialized website PitchBook. That shift relates to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and worries about China’s ambition to take over Taiwan, said Merritt Ogle, chief operating officer at the Silicon Valley Defense Group, which promotes closer ties between the two sectors. “When you start to think about protecting democracy and protecting freedom and protecting things that I think a lot of the countries that are allied with the US appreciate,” she said, the concept that “all defense is bad becomes a harder argument to make.” Generative AI technology has revived some concerns, however. Anthropic has refused to allow its systems to be used by the Pentagon for mass surveillance, prompting the Trump administration to brand the trailblazing company a “supply chain risk” -- even as Anthropic’s AI systems continue to be used for fighting in the Mideast. Behind the shift has been a wider recognition among military and political leaders that the United States “needs to tap into a broader innovation base for national security,” said Mark Valentine, head of defense strategy at Skydio, a maker of autonomous drones. Funding has never been an issue for the US military, which has the world’s largest defence budget by far, amounting to $962bn for the 2026 fiscal year. Almost all of that funding has historically gone to the usual major suppliers. For about a decade, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the Pentagon has launched numerous initiatives to foster the development and adoption of new technologies. “There’s a broader understanding that maintaining a technological edge depends on integrating the best capabilities and doing it faster than we have in the past,” Valentine said. Several programs have been initiated to strengthen ties with the private sector, and “the government has seemingly shown a lot more appetite to support earlier stage companies,” said Drew Wandzilak, principal of the strategic tech fund at the private equity firm Alumni Ventures. The widespread use of drones and missiles in the Ukrainian conflict and the Mideast war has shown that having “the most expensive, most exquisite system was no longer a differentiator,” Wandzilak said. “It’s a volume game, and so there’s competition on volume, there’s competition on capacity. And I think ultimately it’s a mix of the two.”
admin
As the government and people of the UAE continue to stand resolute and live well through the ongoing war, the nation finds itself facing a different kind of assault. It is not new, yet under
admin
When Peter Magyar was a child, he taped a photo of Viktor Orban, then an anti-Communist firebrand, on his bedroom wall, thrilled by Hungary's first democratic elections in 1990. Decades later, he hopes to finally
admin
Dan Peleschuk, ReutersKYIV: Ukraine will aim to repel Russia's new springtime offensive along the front line during a breakdown in US-backed peace talks by building on recent tactical successes and battlefield innovations like mid-range strikes.
admin
The first boat of a flotilla carrying medical supplies, food and solar panels reached Cuba on Tuesday to aid the island as a US fuel blockade deepens its energy crisis. The Maguro shrimp fishing boat
admin
Wellness influencer Dr. Casey Means' nomination to be US surgeon general is stalled a month after senators of both major political parties grilled her on vaccines and other health topics during a tense confirmation hearing,
admin
Come March 28, the 19th edition of Indian Premier League (IPL) will begin. It has become a festival for cricket-lovers across the globe. Everybody who loves, plays or watches cricket waits for this moment anywhere
admin
Nearing one month, the US-Israeli war with Iran has cut off important sources of energy and fertilisers that are key inputs in the production of grains, vegetables and meat. The conflict is sending shockwaves through the global food industry — from growers to packaging firms and distributors — with major implications for food security and living standards. Farmers whose crop yields were already squeezed by bouts of extreme weather now face having to pay more for those crucial inputs and are likely to pass on the cost to consumers through higher prices. The Gulf region has become a significant producer of nitrogen fertilisers in recent decades, and the Strait of Hormuz was handling about a third of the global trade before the war broke out. The conflict has severely disrupted exports from the region, sending prices soaring and farmers scrambling to secure enough of the products while they can. The war is also disrupting production of nitrogen fertilisers in other parts of the world as the conflict has affected supplies of their key ingredient: natural gas. This has led fertiliser manufacturers in countries such as India and Bangladesh to reduce output. There are signs that soaring gas prices are also putting European production under strain. Nitrogen fertilisers underpin roughly half of global food production by supplying plants with nutrients that support their growth. The sudden loss of supply of both chemicals and fuel compounds the problem. India, for example, is heavily reliant on urea and LNG imported via the Strait. Australia, meanwhile, has plenty of LNG but gets more than a third of its fertiliser from the Middle East as well as much of the diesel needed to deliver and apply it. Disruption of the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea shipping routes has raised freight costs and lengthened transit times for grains, oilseeds and fertilisers. Even short journeys face an impact as higher fuel prices make land transportation costlier. Before the war broke out, food inflation around the world was generally expected to ease this year. Food commodity costs are still well below their peak of March 2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the impact of the war is starting to feed through official price gauges. In Turkiye, consumers were reportedly paying about a third more for their vegetables, before the conflict started. The full impact is likely to take some time to materialise. Food prices tend to respond to prolonged energy shocks, not short spikes, and the effect on grocery prices is typically indirect and delayed, according to David Ortega, a professor of food economics at Michigan State University. Modern agriculture is an energy-intensive industry, relying on large amounts of fuel to power machinery used for sowing, harvesting and tending to livestock in sprawling pastures. Without this supply, farming calendars honed over generations could easily be disrupted. If farmers can’t get enough diesel, sowing could be delayed or reduced. Mature crops left in the ground would deteriorate, while the cost of processing and transporting produce after harvest would also increase. Import-dependent countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are particularly exposed to fertiliser shortages and rising input costs, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said on March 15. While farmers in rich nations can count on support from their governments, concerns are mounting over some of the poorest economies. Higher food prices will complicate efforts by central banks to get a post-pandemic wave of inflation back under control. The situation also presents a challenge for politicians, especially in emerging-market economies where food eats up a greater proportion of household incomes than it does in more industrialised nations. As many as 45mn more people could face acute hunger if the conflict in Iran doesn’t ease by the middle of the year, taking the total number to a record high, the UN World Food Programme has warned.
