Tag Archives: China

News, Newspapers, Opinion, Politics

THE NEW YORK TIMES – SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2026

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The Surprising Reasons China Is Skeptical of A.I. Safety Calls

In China, A.I. doomsday warnings can feel distinctly Western or like a ploy to stop Chinese A.I. companies from trying to overtake their U.S. rivals.

Russian Foreign Minister Vows Russia Will See Ukraine War Through

Russia’s foreign minister met with his German counterpart during the U.N. General Assembly but spent part of his address defending his country’s war on Ukraine.

Small Flying Machines Become Weapons of War in Myanmar

Years after a coup, the military is increasingly using motorized paragliders and gyrocopters to bomb towns and villages in rebel-held territory.

As A.I. Accelerates, Governments Are Increasingly Being Left Behind

The gap between technology and policymaking has gotten wider with artificial intelligence, leaving a global policy vacuum as A.I. models advance.

White House Claim of Finding $250 Billion in Fraud Uses Questionable Numbers

The ledger used by a task force created by President Trump is difficult to verify and includes cases that went to trial during the Biden administration.

Climate Change, Health, Intellitakes, News, Opinion, Technology

IS CHINA WINNING ENERGY?

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The Intellitake
One argument · Two sides · One verdict · Daily
Saturday, September 26, 2026 · The Electrostate Debate
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What the West calls China’s overcapacity, the climate calls a solution: too much clean energy, too cheap, too fast.

The Thesis — Azhar Azam, Eurasia Review

THE ARGUMENT

In Eurasia Review, geopolitical analyst Azhar Azam argues that the clean-energy “overcapacity” Washington and Brussels treat as an industrial threat is in fact accelerating global decarbonization — driving down technology costs and opening access across the developing world. The numbers behind him, from Ember’s new China Energy Transition Review: nearly 1,700 gigawatts of wind and solar added in a decade; roughly 60 percent of the world’s new battery storage installed in China last year; electric trucks at about 26 percent of new sales; and — the milestone — clean power grew fast enough in 2025 to meet all of China’s demand growth, pushing thermal generation down 0.7 percent, with coal generation broadly flat since early 2024. His conclusion: harness the benefits of Beijing’s scale without deepening strategic dependencies — but harness them.

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THE ANSWER

The sympathetic skeptic’s case runs through Bloomberg Opinion’s energy columns: in “China’s Energy Future Still Runs on Old Technology”, the celebrated “electrostate” is falling behind its own solarpunk dream — beneath the record solar farms, the system that actually powers China remains built on the old foundation. A companion column’s title states the charge plainly: “Xi’s Timidity Is Coal’s Last and Best Hope”. On this view, China still burns roughly half the world’s coal and keeps approving new plants; flat is not falling, and a transition that protects its incumbent isn’t finished — it’s hedged. The electrostate is real, the skeptics grant. So is the smokestack behind it.

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THE INTELLITAKE

Both sides read the same grid and agree on the astonishing part: no nation has ever built clean energy at this speed, and in 2025 the buildout finally outran demand itself. The dispute is over which fact is the trend and which is the residue — whether flat coal is the plateau before the fall, or the floor the system still stands on. Notice, too, the strange geometry of the argument: the West’s trade-policy complaint and the climate’s deepest need turn out to be the same fact — a country manufacturing more cheap clean energy than the world ordered. Whether China is “winning” energy may matter less than the question Azam forces: if someone must flood the world with solar panels, batteries, and electric trucks, does it matter to the atmosphere whose flag is on the crate?

TODAY’S PROVOCATION

If the fastest road to a livable climate runs through Beijing’s factories, should the West take it — dependencies and all?

— THE EDITORS, INTELLICURIOUS —

Business, Finance, Financial, Investing, Magazines, Retirement

BARRON’S MAGAZINE – SEPTEMBER 28, 2026

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BARRON’S MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ’16 Picks In The Booming Biotech Sector’ – A wave of innovation has drawn investors back to the stocks. How to play it.

Innovation Is Driving a New Bull Market in Biotech. 16 Picks From Our Roundtable Pros.

Biotechnology stocks are soaring this year as medical advances and merger activity rekindle investor interest. More gains lie ahead, our healthcare panel says.

Trump Calls Xi Meeting ‘Very Productive.’ What Investors Might Not Like.

The two leaders appear intent on preserving stability.

Meta Stock Soared 27% on Muse AI. The Hard Part Comes Next.

The meteoric rise of Meta’s fortunes over the past three weeks will be challenging to maintain.

The AI ‘Jobpocalypse’ Isn’t Happening. Here’s What the Data Actually Shows.

New research suggests the technology is creating new roles rather than wiping out all white-collar work.

The ‘Buffett of Bonds’ Hasn’t Retired Yet—and He Has Advice for These Tumultuous Times

The Buffett of Bonds isn’t retiring yet. Dan Fuss, on whom we bestowed that moniker decades ago, is still putting in a full week as vice chairman of Loomis Sayles. And he sounded as sharp as ever when we caught up with him this past week, just before he was to mark his 93rd birthday.

News, Newspapers, Opinion, Politics

THE NEW YORK TIMES – SATURDAY, SEPT. 26, 2026

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At Summit, Xi Sought to Tilt Trump’s Stance on America’s Place in Asia

In his talks with President Trump, the Chinese leader used praise, warnings and wartime history to challenge American support for Taiwan and Japan.

China’s Xi Snubs a Troubled U.N. for Trump, Overshadowing Its Big Week

The U.S.-China summit offered a sharp contrast with the action at the faltering United Nations in a gridlocked New York.

You Get an Eagle, and You Get an Eagle: Xi Takes Home Trump’s Go-To Gift

The president has often reached for statues of the national bird on diplomatic occasions in his second term. (Ronald Reagan favored them, too.)

Heroine or Public Enemy? The Israeli Blocking Much of Netanyahu’s Agenda.

Gali Baharav-Miara, Israel’s first female attorney general, has stopped many of the government’s efforts to remove constraints on its power.

A 7-Day Standoff That Said So Much About Trump and the Media

An abrupt decree, a network boycott, a legal intervention and an uneasy détente: This was no typical battle between a president and his press corps.

White House Blocks CNN From Air Force One

In the latest twist, the news outlet won’t be able to accompany President Trump on a trip to Tennessee today.

Intellitakes, News, Opinion

DOES A SHIELD MAKE PEACE?

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The Intellitake
One argument · Two sides · One verdict · Daily
Friday, September 25, 2026 · The Missile Defense Debate
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Geography no longer protects America. A shield over the homeland is not a provocation — it is a commitment to peace through strength.

The Thesis — Gen. Mike Guetlein, The Washington Post

THE ARGUMENT

In the Washington Post, Gen. Mike Guetlein — the U.S. Space Force general who directs Golden Dome for America — makes the program’s public case. For generations, he writes, Americans could believe that two vast oceans and friendly neighbors kept major conflict far from our shores; that era of quiet skies is over. His framing, consistent with his testimony to Congress: near-peer competitors, specifically China and Russia, are rapidly expanding and modernizing their strategic arsenals, while the old U.S. missile defense architecture was designed only for rogue-state threats. The shield — a network of sensors and interceptors against ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles — is, in his words, a commitment to peace through strength and deterrence: raising the cost of attacking America until no adversary tries.

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THE ANSWER

Veteran nuclear-policy analyst Joe Cirincione, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, states the stability school’s counter-case: any missile defense stimulates an offensive arms race, because the cheapest answer to a shield is more spears — an adversary cannot assume the system will fail, so it must build enough missiles to overwhelm it. That, he notes, is precisely why Nixon and Kissinger paired the first offensive arms treaty with the ABM Treaty in 1972: you cannot limit offense without limiting defense. China’s missile buildup, on this view, is already partly a response to U.S. defenses — and analysts like Laura Grego add the arithmetic: intercepting even a handful of ICBMs could require tens of thousands of space-based interceptors. The shield, the critics conclude, doesn’t end the missile age; it accelerates it.

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THE INTELLITAKE

Both sides claim the same goal — deterrence — and prescribe opposites, because they disagree about what an adversary sees when it looks at a shield. Guetlein sees a wall that makes attack futile; Cirincione sees a promise that America means to strike first and block the reply, which makes an adversary build until the wall is irrelevant. This is not a new argument: it is the SDI debate of 1983 and the ABM debate of 1972, rerun with hypersonics and orbital interceptors. What is new is the author — not a columnist but the program’s own director, making his case to the public in a newspaper, which is itself a datum: shields need believers to deter. The unresolved question is the one the 1972 negotiators answered one way and this administration answers the other: is defense the end of the arms race, or its engine?

TODAY’S PROVOCATION

If a perfect shield existed, would you trust your own government more — knowing it could strike without fear of reply?

— THE EDITORS, INTELLICURIOUS —

Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – SEPTEMBER 25, 2026

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THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘A NEW LEAF’ – What does the Canada-EU alliance mean?

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, last week extended an unprecedented offer to Canada, inviting it to become the EU’s first “associate member”.

For our big story this week, Brussels correspondent Jennifer Rankin explores what the proposed alliance might mean. While there is a lot of common ground for the two parties, she writes, their agreement raises many questions and is clouded in uncertainty.

Meanwhile, senior correspondent Lisa O’Carroll examines the possible implications for the UK – asking whether it offers a blueprint for Britain, or a reminder it is out in the cold.

Then, former White House speechwriter Ted Widmer says Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s remarks before the European parliament set out what a new west might look like, without its most powerful member – the US.

Spotlight | Yemeni families’ flight
Fierce fighting has forced people to abandon their homes, leaving everything behind to seek shelter in refugee camps. Nasser Al-Sakkaf reports from Taiz

Science | ‘A map is never neutral’
The cartographers who took on centuries of western bias with the new Equal Earth projection speak to Oliver Holmes, Ana Lucía González Paz and Pablo Gutiérrez about their alternative to the 16th-century Mercator display

Feature | How to fight end times fascism
An unholy alliance is working toward an apocalyptic future from which only a chosen few will emerge unscathed. It’s becoming clear how we stop them, say Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor

Opinion | This Israeli election could be the country’s last
Spend time on the ground and you see how high the stakes are for next month’s contest – for Israelis and Palestinians alike, writes Jonathan Freedland

Culture | Present and correct
Author Jonathan Franzen talks to Sophie McBain about a new TV adaptation of his bestseller The Corrections, the future of reading and why creating new work is “horrible”

Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – SEPTEMBER 18, 2026

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THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘Germany’s Nightmare’ – Can Merz Save His Country Or Himself?

Friedrich Merz is a man with few choices and little popular support as he faces the end of Germany’s postwar settlement and the collapse of all the checks and balances to maintain democratic norms after the second world war and reunification. While Alternative für Deutschland’s success in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt saw the party win 44% of the vote, they are three seats short of a governing majority and, so far, no other party has said they are prepared to work with them, which means that for the moment, at least, the threat of Germany’s first rightwing extremist state government since the Nazi period has not yet come to pass.

As Berlin correspondent Deborah Cole explains, Merz is seen as the wrong man to present and sell a political counterpoint to the AfD’s populist policies. Seen as lacking in empathy and political dexterity, his demeanour is in sharp contrast to Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt. But as Deborah’s Berlin colleague, Kate Connolly, reports, some of Siegmund’s prospective new MPs have questionable backgrounds, including criminal records, Stasi pasts and connections to far-right networks.

Spotlight | Stop, slow down and swerve the apocalypse
Can the world heave a collective sigh of relief after fellow tech bosses heeded a proposal by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s to put the brakes on AI’s headlong rush to over take human intelligence? Nick Robins-Early weighs up our chances

Science | Can I borrow your coyote?
Guardian US reporter Lois Beckett visits a one-of-a-kind California lending library where you can check out taxidermied animals and fossilised dinosaur bones.

Feature | Slime is not as simple as it seems
Scientists are battling to determine whether supposedly simple organisms demonstrate a form of intelligence. If they do, what does it mean for our understanding of brain power, asks Samanth Subramanian

Opinion | Ethics make a return to UK foreign policy
The evidence is Ed Miliband’s bold decision to label settler violence in the West Bank as “ethnic cleansing” and institute a boycott, argues Steve Bloomfield

Culture | Shear fun
Catherine Shoard is rounded up for a trip down to Mossy Bottom farm to get a behind-the-scenes preview of the latest Shaun the Sheep film

Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – SEPTEMBER 11, 2026

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THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘A Season In Hell’ – Tourism on a heating planet.


California’s Big Sur coastline is often called a slice of heaven. But this year – beset by wildfires, road closures and disruptions to tourist amenities – it has endured a long summer of hell. Now questions are being asked about how many visitors it can sustain in the face of the climate crisis.

For our big story this week, Andrew Gumbel visits Big Sur, where the tourist industry accounts for about 90% of the local economy, to hear why the community fears its ethos is under threat.

The UN has warned that the El Niño climate phenomenon is “supersizing before our eyes”. Environment editor Damien Carrington reports on the latest forecasts, which predict the event is near certain to shatter temperature records.

Then, the mayors of Paris, Milan and Phoenix write about how their cities are learning from each other on responding to the heat crisis. “How do you protect millions of people,” they ask, “when extreme heat is no longer an exceptional event, but an increasingly familiar part of summer?”

Spotlight | ‘It breaks my heart’
Kate Connolly reports from Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, where voters are digesting the far-right Alternative für Deutschland’s state election triumph

Science | Forbidden planet
Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting the decision – and they’re only getting more passionate, writes Tim Dowling

Feature | Your lying AIs
LLMs have an alarming tendency to deceive and manipulate their users. As they become ever more embedded in society, the race is on to find out why – and stop them doing it. Snigdha Poonam explains

Opinion | The route to a brighter future
The world is being driven to the brink by thugs and dictators, says Simon Tisdall, but ordinary people have more power than we think

Culture | A stitch up
As the Bayeux tapestry goes on show in London, cartoonist Edith Pritchett offers an alternative 21st century take, capturing today’s battles, while art critic Jonathan Jones reviews the British Museum’s blockbuster exhibition of the original masterpiece

Foreign Affairs, History, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE – FALL 2026 PREVIEW

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FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘How to Survive in a World Without Rules’ – Essays from: Hal Brands, Charles A. Kupchan, Mariana Mazzucato, and Michael Beckley….

How to Survive in a World Without Rules

Self-help is becoming more vital in a vicious world.

The World’s Only Real Hope of Maintaining Order This article has an audio recording

A proposal for a new international system that is at once centralized and regionalized. 

How to Write Better Rules for Global Finance

The importance of a “common good” compass.

A New Engine of Development

The era of easy growth is over, but rich and poor countries can still join forces.

Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

THE SPECTATOR WORLD MAGAZINE – SEPT. 14, 2026

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THE SPECTATOR WORLD: The latest issue features ‘Welcome to Kushner Island’ – Inside Jared and Ivanka’s Balkan Boondoggle…

Inside Jared Kushner’s Albanian adventure

For much of its history, Albania remained as shadowy and remote as the fictional Syldavia of the Tintin comics. Letters to Albania were sometimes returned from Albany, New York, with the postal direction “Try Europe.” The country came into existence only after 1912, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Its first ruler, King Zog, was hounded out by Mussolini when he invaded in 1939. Five years later, the Italians and…

Trump has serious beef with American farmers

In August, Donald Trump sided with consumers by increasing the tariff-free quota on imported beef for 90 days beginning September 1. The concession will last three months. It would be a minor story with any other president in the White House. But under Trump, even dull-sounding trade news can take on a sudden importance, especially when mixed up with foreign affairs. Trump’s justification for favoring Argentina, whose 2026 quota he increased by 80,000 metric tons, is partly geopolitical: he wants to give support to Javier Milei’s free-market regime, seeing it as a foil to left-leaning governments elsewhere in Latin America.

Is Pete Hegseth running for president? Or getting fired?

Pete Hegseth has a face for television and a machismo of sorts. It appears, even to parts of MAGA, that Donald Trump put him in charge of the armed forces because the President likes attractive people on TV. “Right out of central casting,” Trump once told Secretary Hegseth, patting him on the bicep. “Pete loves war!”