While reporting on federal investigations of virus scientists, we learned of a meeting last year at the F.B.I. about allegations that U.S. researchers hid a Covid lab leak.
About 50 people were tested, an unparalleled inquiry that came after news reports about the war in Iran and the U.S. military’s diminished stocks of munitions.
Focus centers on the next paradigm of technology, such as advanced AI chips, robotics, and the economic infrastructure behind massive AI model rollouts.
Geopolitics & Social Unrest
Major themes include global security, currency volatility (across the Dollar, Euro, and Yen), public health resilience, and shifting spheres of influence—particularly between the U.S. and China.
Climate & Energy Dynamics
Predictive coverage features regional climate shifts, extreme weather management (like wildfires), and a massive transition toward renewable energy infrastructure, such as Europe’s expanding solar-battery hybrid grids.
Global Milestones
The year will also track major demographic shifts, including the second phase of India’s first national census since 2011.
The Alternative for Germany party has tried to soften its hard-line image but is still privately working with extremists. It could win a state election on Sunday.
Over the last week, the world has watched with horror the scenes from the Tibet-Nepal border where a devastating torrent of mud, water and ice tore along the Bhotekoshi River, destroying entire communities and leaving more than 1,000 people dead and several thousand more missing.
From the Nepali town of Devighat, our south Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen describes a nightmarish scene of overflowing mortuaries and unidentifiable bodies, as shellshocked survivors of the flood slowly return to the ruins of their homes.
The disaster happened after the collapse of a glacier – and while global heating has not been definitively attributed as the cause, it is undeniable that steep mountain slopes and valleys are especially vulnerable to flooding and landslides, while extreme weather events such as monsoons and melting glaciers have become more common because of warming due to human-caused climate breakdown, as our global environment writer Jonathan Watts explains.
Then columnist Nesrine Malik paints a wider picture and argues that while for many people these floods may feel as though they have happened a world away, the climate crisis is coming for us all, one way or another.
Spotlight | Mark Carney shows combative nature in face-off with Trump The Canadian PM is one of the few world leaders to stand up to the US president. Former colleagues say they are not surprised. Leyland Cecco, Heather StewartandKalyeena Makortoff report
Science | The robots are coming! …Or are they? As entrants at the World Humanoid Games lurched from triumph to farce, Robert Booth finds that a robotics revolution may not be as close as it first appears
Interview | Gordon Brown on Burnham, billionaires – and a better Britain The former UK prime minister is still shaping politics (even if he doesn’t want to interfere). He tells Charlotte Edwardes about keeping his temper, staying fit – and why he won’t splash out for a Scotland football shirt
Opinion | The tech titans must be stripped of their power, and soon Those who said Meta harms children struck a blow, but the ability of big tech to gouge profits and cause harm is barely diminished. That’s the battle to come, argues Jonathan Freedland
Culture | Dolly Parton’s peerless career turned country music cliches inside out Beneath the wig and rhinestones, the late US country singer was the genius behind strings of classic songs that continue to inspire new artists, says Alexis Petridis
The bomb was American, according to a weapons expert and a visual analysis by The Times. It killed five people and wounded 67 others, the Iranian authorities said.
Iranian attacks have upended the Navy’s supply chain, causing a strain on the aircraft carriers, ships and destroyers that are being kept in the Middle East indefinitely.
In recent years, India’s ruling classes claimed—and perhaps came to believe—that their time had come on the world stage. India was the fastest-growing major economy, due soon to be the third largest, constituting a new global power. India’s biggest tycoons figured among the world’s top twenty billionaires, part of the transnational elite. Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that India would be a “developed country” by 2047, the centenary of the end of colonial rule.
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