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The United States has made a major shift in its policy of rejecting direct talks with groups Washington brands “terrorist.” This shift was publicly marked by President Donald Trump when he said he had spoken
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Chinese president Xi Jinping is set to embark on his first visit to North Korea in nearly seven years, a significant diplomatic engagement that offers leader Kim Jong Un a crucial platform to project an
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As a young job seeker one of the many occupations that wasn’t around then was tattoo removal. There was no need to remove football team logos, butterflies, messages in other languages that didn’t say what
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Nvidia’s entry into the AI PC market with its RTX Spark superchip last week is less a breakthrough for regular users than a high-stakes bet that a largely unproven concept can find wider appeal, analysts said. At the Computex trade show in Taiwan, the chipmaker pitched a future where laptops run large AI models locally and act as personal digital agents, no cloud needed. It’s a claim that PC makers HP and Dell have made for nearly three years now, only to be met with skepticism from Wall Street and consumers, with high prices outweighing tangible benefits. Nvidia, though, appears to be selling a different version of the AI PC than what exists today, one aimed more at developers and content creators who have long favoured Apple’s high-end MacBook Pros. Six companies -- Microsoft, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Dell, and MSI -- will make PCs using the chip. These stocks surged after Nvidia’s announcement on June 1. “RTX Spark doesn’t make traditional PCs obsolete. It creates a new category between the workstation and the AI server,” said Kevin Hein, analyst at Tirias Research. The chip combines a central processor, graphics engine and up to 128 gigabytes of unified memory, making it capable of running large AI models locally, something current AI PCs cannot do at scale. Nvidia says it could reshape how people interact with computers, with AI agents handling tasks such as generating videos or debugging code. Existing AI PCs, marketed heavily over the past two years, have centered on modest features like transcription or image editing and have failed to drive meaningful sales for the device manufacturers and their partners such as Arm and Qualcomm. A premium price and a memory chip crunch, which has already driven up device cost, are likely to limit RTX Spark devices to niche adoption, analysts said. The cost “won’t deter all the big computer makers from working with Nvidia on this, but the bulk of PC sales for the next several years will still be more traditional Windows-based PCs with chips from Intel, AMD and Qualcomm,” said Bob O’Donnell, president at TECHnalysis Research. HP and Dell stock had been climbing even before the launch of Nvidia’s superchip, up 18% and 223%, respectively, so far this year. But that rally has been driven less by AI PCs and more by a wave of corporate upgrades to Windows 11, as well as booming demand for AI infrastructure, particularly for Dell. In its latest quarter, HP warned of a sharp decline in the PC market in the latter half of the year. The company did note strong demand for AI PCs, especially from enterprise customers, although the overall PC business recorded shrinking sales. The outlook for PC sales looks dour this year, with IDC estimating global PC shipments to decline 11.3% in 2026. It is unclear if devices powered by the Nvidia chip will outperform Macs. Nvidia said details on battery life and other metrics would be shared closer to the launch of the products this fall. Still, the Nvidia-powered laptops could make Windows machines competitive with Macs for the first time on memory bandwidth, a key bottleneck for AI software that constantly shuttles data back and forth between a machine’s processor and memory, adding latency. That brings it closer to Apple’s in-house chips, which have bundled unified memory since 2020. “I expect some companies will take the leap to test out the long-term viability of on-device inferencing,” said Tom Mainelli, a group vice president at IDC.
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The sea does not forget. Sixty-four years ago, Soviet missiles pointed at the heart of an American empire from a sliver of a Caribbean island, and the world held its breath at the edge of annihilation.The crisis passed. The missiles were removed.However, the punishment never ended. What Washington called an embargo, what Havana has always called by its true name, a blockade, began on February 3, 1962, and has never stopped.It is the longest sustained campaign of economic strangulation in modern history, outlasting the Cold War, outlasting the Soviet Union, outlasting every justification ever offered for it, and now, in the spring of 2026, it has metastasized into something that should terrify anyone still capable of being terrified.In what appears to be a carefully calibrated show of force, the United States has deployed the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its strike group into Caribbean waters, a move that coincided with the unsealing of murder charges against former Cuban leader Raúl Castro for a 1996 incident in which Cuban forces shot down planes operated by the Miami exile group Brothers to the Rescue.US Southern Command framed the move as a demonstration of operational readiness, citing the carrier’s prior combat operations from the Taiwan Strait to the Persian Gulf to underscore its capabilities and reach.“Welcome to the Caribbean, Nimitz Carrier Strike Group!” the command posted on social media, with the casual menace of a man pressing a boot to a throat.This is the Imperial Theatre. It is the language of domination dressed in legal costume.The empire always needs a pretext.In 1962, it was Soviet missiles. In 1996, it was a civilian aircraft.Today, for the Trump administration, which has declared Cuba “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security, the pretext is a 94-year-old man.Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío described the indictment as “fraudulent”, lacking any legal, political, or moral foundation, and warned that the US has a “well-known, dark practice” of using accusations like this to take military action against sovereign states.He is not wrong. The playbook is familiar. First the dossier, then the carrier group, then the rubble.Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel accused Washington of using the island’s economic weakness as an “outrageous pretext” to seize it, promising that “any external aggressor will clash with an impregnable resistance”.These are not empty words from a government that has survived sixty years of siege, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination plots, the sabotage campaigns, the tourist boycotts, and now a fuel blockade that has plunged 10mn people into recurring darkness.The Trump administration’s attempts, in the words of Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, to “tighten the sanctions noose around Cuba, combined with a decades-long trade, economic, financial, humanitarian and now energy blockade, directly reflect Washington’s intolerance for dissent”.“It is,” she said, “a cynical embodiment of a revived Monroe Doctrine.”The Monroe Doctrine. That 19th-century declaration of hemispheric ownership, that proclamation that Latin America belongs to Washington as a private estate.It never died. It merely slept. And now it walks again.Enter Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, son of Cuban exiles, the man who has waited his whole political life for this moment.Rubio has been unsparing: Cuba needs “new people in charge”, he said.“Their economy doesn’t work... they’re in a lot of trouble, and the people in charge don’t know how to fix it, so they have to get new people in charge.”It is the logic of the conqueror, packaged as the counsel of a friend.And Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez did not hesitate to label Rubio a “spokesperson for corrupt and vengeful interests”.However, here is what distinguishes 2026 from every previous chapter of this long war: Cuba is no longer alone in ways that matter.Russia has pledged the “most active support” to Cuba, with foreign ministry spokesperson Zakharova declaring full solidarity and vowing to “strongly condemn any attempts at gross interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, intimidation and the use of unilateral restrictive measures, threats and blackmail”.In March, Russia sent an oil tanker to the island, which Moscow called “humanitarian assistance”, a direct and deliberate defiance of the American blockade.China added its voice separately, demanding that the US stop wielding the “big sticks” of judicial proceedings and sanctions and cease its threats of force against Cuba.This is the architecture of the new world.The United States is simultaneously running pressure campaigns against Iran, backed by China, and Cuba, backed by Russia.The targets are no longer isolated. They are networked. They are backed.And as the empire extends itself across three simultaneous confrontations, from the Taiwan Strait to the Persian Gulf to the Caribbean, the question is no longer whether American power is formidable. It is whether it is wise.Cuba’s deputy foreign minister reminded the world that those charged in the 1996 incident “were fulfilling a duty, the duty to protect the airspace, the homeland, and the peace of the Cuban people”, and concluded with a warning that must be heard: “Any attempt to use this excuse for action against these comrades within Cuba will be met with fierce resistance from the Cuban people.”The USS Nimitz, the oldest carrier in the American fleet, commissioned in 1975, is now prowling waters it has not patrolled with such intent since the height of the Cold War.History does not repeat. But it returns. It rises from the water.And the ghost that haunts the Caribbean in May 2026 is the same ghost that haunted it in October 1962: the arrogance of a superpower that cannot conceive of a world in which it does not own every shore it surveys.The Cuban people know what that ghost wants. They have always known.And for 64 years, they have answered it with the only word that the empire never learns to accept.No.• The writer is a prominent news anchor, programme presenter and media instructor.
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President Volodymyr Zelensky’s open letter offering face-to-face peace talks to end the war in Ukraine was addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin but meant to echo through the corridors of this week’s St Petersburg investment forum, and beyond.Zelensky published the letter on Thursday evening as Putin briefed foreign news editors at Russia’s premier business event.The previous day, Ukrainian drones had hit an oil terminal in St Petersburg, sending clouds of smoke billowing into the sky near the venue.Ukraine believes sections of Russia’s elite – “officials, businessmen, and Russia’s partners” – want to see an end to a conflict that has left its $3tn economy stagnant, according to one Ukrainian official.The glitzy gathering has highlighted rival visions within Russia.While some participants have said Russia should fight on and gird for long-term confrontation with the West, others have emphasised the economic advantages of ending a war coming closer by the week.Zelensky has for months been repeating his call for a ceasefire and offer to meet Putin, only for Putin to dismiss them, as he did again on Friday.The Ukrainian official insisted that Zelensky was serious about reviving negotiations.However, Dmytro Iarovyi, associate professor at the Kyiv School of Economics specialising in political psychology, said the drone strike and “performative” letter had been a concerted attempt to shape the conference’s narrative.He said the letter was intended to tell Russian society and Western governments – particularly US President Donald Trump – that recent territorial gains and painful long-range strikes on Russia had put Kyiv in a stronger position in any negotiations.“Trump always says ‘Ukraine doesn’t have any cards’,” said Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to the Nato, and Ukraine envoy during Trump’s first administration. “Well, Ukraine is now showing that it’s in a stronger position.” – Reuters
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OPEC+ ministers met this weekend to weigh higher production quotas in a bid to cap oil prices that have surged since the Iran war effectively choked off Gulf crude shipments.However, even if the group members vow to ramp up output by thousands of barrels per day, analysts say that geopolitical realities mean they probably won’t move the needle on prices. With the crucial Strait of Hormuz shut since US and Israeli attacks on Iran in late February, oil prices have nearly doubled, igniting inflation pressures worldwide.Ministers from the 21 member states of OPEC+, the main oil producing nations and their allies, are holding their quarterly meeting online. The group is likely to beef up its production quotas by “188,000 barrels a day”, said Jorge Leon, analyst at Rystad Energy, similar to recent increases.However, in reality, only seven members – Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman – have the capacity to do so. Tehran’s threats of retaliatory attacks to US and Israeli strikes have virtually blocked the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of global oil and gas supplies normally pass.That is equivalent to about 20mn barrels a day. With key Gulf producers shut out of the global market, pledges to raise output in a bid to ease spiralling prices are unlikely to sway traders.“Any announced production increases or changes to output targets will have limited practical value,” said Ole Hansen, a commodities analyst at Saxo Bank. “There is very little OPEC can do.”OPEC+ itself says daily production has plummeted to just 33mn barrels a day as tankers remain stuck, compared to nearly 43mn before the conflict. A US blockade on Iranian ports means “it will be even less than that” in reality, said Homayoun Falakshahi, head of crude oil analysis at data firm Kpler.The United Arab Emirates’s recent decision to quit OPEC further saps away at the cartel’s influence, given its huge excess production capacity.And Abu Dhabi has made clear it wants to boost output. “They don’t want to be dictated to, they want to maximise their revenues,” said Lawrence Haar, a lecturer in finance at the University of Brighton in England.And the group risks seeing other countries follow the UAE’s example.“If Iraq were to leave, it could mark the end of OPEC+,” Falakshahi said. Saudi Arabia, by far the cartel’s most influential member, “is going to do what it takes to stop anyone else from leaving”, Falakshahi predicted.That could translate into more flexible output quotas or decreased penalties for any excess production. However, “for now, the compensation framework has effectively become irrelevant due to widespread production shut-ins”, Hansen said.As a result, the Iran war has largely neutralised the group’s stated mission “to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, and a steady income to producers”.For Falakshahi, the only factor limiting further oil price spikes at the moment is China, “which is buying less oil than normal” by tapping into its vast strategic reserves.
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Just as Volodymyr Zelensky has so often outmanoeuvred the enemy on the battlefield and in the skies above, so he is doing now in the diplomatic sphere. In a surprise “open letter” to his Russian
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Sofia Baltodano, Tribune News ServiceInside the University of Miami’s newly opened 3D-bioprinting lab, the future of medicine looks a lot like science fiction. Think miniscule robotic devices that repair the body. Molecules designed to hunt
