Bijoe Kap

Ties between the U.S. and Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are clogged with distrust and tensions between them have been laid bare in recent years.

The immediate priority of the U.S.-led allies is to put in place a global security order centered around them, and let the climate change continue wreaking havoc from Brazil to the Philippines at will.

A landlocked Nepal may head towards its South Asian neighbor Sri Lanka's apocalyptic economic woes with its impending foreign exchange crisis.

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the street in Pakistan after Imran Khan was ousted in a parliamentary no-trust vote as prime minister of the nuclear-armed South Asia nation which is all set to install Khan's replacement.

Industrial metals lost sheen after the 1970s when successive oil shocks rocked the global economy. However, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 they are rapidly returning to the center stage and the global metal economy has started hogging the limelight.

New era of warfare has started with hypersonic missiles and Russia is standing tall with the early bird status by using them for the first time on a battlefield. The U.S., which missed the bus, is making up for the lost time.

By imposing and later revoking the islandwide emergency, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has converted what was essentially economic mismanagement into political unrest and a humanitarian crisis in the South Asia nation.

India has defied western diktats and chose to look for its own interests, despite the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and Europe on Russia for invading Ukraine, by seeking to set up a rupee-ruble payment system to trade with Russia.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan cleverly framed the political narrative of the Islamic republic which termed going against him as akin to going against the founding fathers and the constitution hence securing himself a graceful way out of a serious diplomatic and political mess.

Arguably facing the biggest challenge of his political career, Pakistan premier Imran Khan's future appears to be hanging by a thread. The trust vote, which the cricketer legend will face on April 3, will decide whether the Islamic nation falls for a communist China or opts for a free market war economy of the U.S.

Marine Le Pen’s softer image and new status as a working-class champion have fetched her laurels ahead of the French presidential polls in April.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine Feb. 24, NATO was forced to refrain from sanctioning Russian nickel-producing behemoth Norilsk Nickel and Vladimir Potanin, its oligarch chairman, fearing for the production of Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries.

The Ukraine crisis has become a perfect storm in Africa with impact visible on three fronts - oil, food, and fertilizer -- as Western sanctions and blockade of ports on the Black Sea have started to bite.

With the Ukraine crisis, the global wheat supply has been dried up and the global plan to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030, a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), has turned topsy-turvy.

The effects of the Ukraine crisis are now beginning to appear in food plates across the world as sunflower oil, which the East European nation accounts for 80 percent of global production together with Russia, has become the most sought-after commodity.

The newly elected President of South Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol, who is set to take the reign of Asia's fourth-largest economy soon, is set to face tough challenges due to economic slowdown because of the Ukraine crisis.

The Ukraine crisis has hurt an import-reliant Japan, forcing households and companies to shell out more for food and fuel at a time when the East Asian nation was looking to resuscitate its sluggish COVID-19-battered economy.

India's vast grocery business is caught in a protracted legal battle with global e-commerce giant Amazon, whose CEO is one of the richest persons on the planet, and Reliance Retail, India's largest retailer chain in terms of revenue, vying for the numero uno position in Asia's second-largest economy.

A nuclear Pakistan's sharp response to India accidentally firing a missile into its soil March 9 has brought to the light absence of robust risk reduction protocols between the nuclear-armed rivals in South Asia.

India's opposition Congress, known as the Grand Old Party and considered an inheritor of the legacy of the political movement that wrested freedom for India from colonial British rule, is withering away to irrelevance as it fails to feel the pulse of the new generation of voters proud of their Hindu heritage.

The shifting of sands in Pakistan politics seems to have taken an ominous turn which has made Prime Minister Imran Khan worried about the top job in the country with the perception that the military generals are distancing themselves from his government

With the Russian Ukraine invasion, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is eager to shed his bad-boy image in the West, where he is ranked among the authoritarian leaders in the world.

In order to fulfill its energy needs in the wake of the ban on Russian oil, the U.S. started to court Venezuela's Maduro, considered untouchable until now.

China is the biggest winner of the isolate Russia campaign by the West which has made the oil-rich Russian economy pariah.

Right from abstaining to vote against Russia in the UN, to sending relief material to Ukraine, India has so far managed to perform the impeccable balancing act on the Russia-Ukraine crisis which seems to have divided the world.

After its major banks were axed from the dollar-based SWIFT payment system in response to the Ukraine invasion, Russia is banking on China's Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) for its international trade

Russia's invasion of Ukraine last week has thrown open a lucrative arms market before weapons manufacturers worldwide and their share prices have skyrocketed.

India has dispatched a high-level ministerial team to oversee rescue operations following reports of mistreatment of Indian students in war-torn Ukraine.

Choosing sides in the Ukraine crisis comes naturally to the US allies like Saudi Arabia, India, and UAE, but the robust ties with Russia forced them to strike a balance.