Russia has been forced into a humbling retreat across northern Mali. It has exposed the limits of Africa Corps and is calling into question the future of Russian military adventurism in Africa. w/ Polina Ivanova

How Russia lost its way in the Sahara

Losses to Malian militants by Wagner Group’s successor call into question future of Moscow’s military adventurism in Africa

ft.com

There have been massive attacks across Mali by JNIM and the FLA. The FLA and JNIM working together is a major shift and fighting back will test not only Bamako, but also Moscow. "Russia will do everything to turn this around," @ulflaessing.bsky.social tells me. www.ft.com/content/fabb...

Co-ordinated attacks threaten Mali’s Russian-backed regime

Military government battles to contain assaults launched by jihadist and secessionist militants

ft.com

Iran has been studying lessons from the war in Ukraine. I combed through Iranian defence journals to find out what its commanders, officers, and military academics were researching and worrying about in the lead up to their war with America and Israel. Latest: www.ft.com/content/0862...

How Iran has been studying lessons from the war in Ukraine

Military journals provide tantalising glimpses into what Tehran’s military thinks and its priorities, including drones

ft.com

NEW: Russia close to completing phased shipment of drones, medicine and food to Iran, according to western intelligence. Talks between Russia and Iran began after U.S. and Israeli strikes. W/ @henryjfoy.ft.com, @maxseddon.bsky.social, and @nerizilber.bsky.social. www.ft.com/content/d5d7...

Russia sending drones to Iran, western intelligence says

Moscow close to completing phased deliveries of lethal weapons, food and medicine to Tehran

ft.com

Moments after Israel and the U.S. struck Iran, a mysterious voice began broadcasting numbers in Persian over shortwave radio. Senior former CIA officers tell me it is likely a last-resort method to send messages to crucial U.S. intelligence assets. www.ft.com/content/86c4...

The ‘number station’ sending mystery messages to Iran

Radio station is broadcasting what appears to be coded orders in Farsi, echoing the cold war

ft.com

I have been in Greenland speaking to people about Donald Trump wanting to create an American empire in the Arctic. Greenlanders are looking with trepidation to the Alaskan Inupiat, their Inuit cousins, for a sense of how the Americans rule in the Arctic. www.ft.com/content/20cb...

‘I don’t want to live in an American empire’: Greenlanders bristle at US threats

Inuit fear loss of language and traditions if Donald Trump succeeds in grabbing the vast Arctic island

ft.com

AI and Wikipedia are sending the most vulnerable languages into a harmful linguistic doom loop. Wikipedia is used to train AI to speak vulnerable languages. But users are now flooding Wikipedia with shoddy AI translations. Latest in @technologyreview.com: www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/25/1...

How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral

Machine translators have made it easier than ever to create error-plagued Wikipedia articles in obscure languages. What happens when AI models get trained on junk pages?

technologyreview.com

Alaska is only three miles from Russia. They are so close that you can see Russian soldiers from Little Diomede, where sixty- four Inuit keep watch over America's forgotten frontier. But Little Diomede is now on borrowed time. I went to this strange, and sad, place for The Economist:

The Alaskan island on the front lines of the Arctic scramble

The Inuit on Little Diomede are watched over by Russian soldiers. But that’s not their biggest problem in these icy badlands

economist.com

There will be many unexpected consequences of climate change. But one of them will be that it becomes harder to find submarines stalking beneath some parts of the oceans. That matters. I explain how here: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/c...

Submarines Are Hard to Detect. Climate Change Might Make It Even Harder.

nytimes.com

The Air India disaster is being felt particularly painfully in Leicester. But nowhere more so than the street where two brothers that were flying home from Ahmedabad were from. One, the sole survivor, called his father moments after the crash. He said: "I don't know how I am alive." Latest by me:

‘I Don’t Know How I Am Alive,’ Air India Crash Survivor Tells Family

nytimes.com

SCOOP: We got hold of a top secret Russian counterintelligence report on China. It reveals an intensifying intelligence battle. The FSB worry China is spying on the Arctic, recruiting pilots and scientists, learning from Ukraine, and could even covet land in the Far East. More reveals here:

Secret Russian Intelligence Document Shows Deep Suspicion of China

nytimes.com

I spent time with a group of men from Ivory Coast that thought they were finally going to be footballers in Europe. They ended up stranded, alone, and lost in Transnistria. www.economist.com/1843/2024/08...

🚨 Scoop: San Marino has appointed figures deeply connected to Putin's Russia to its diplomatic service. Sources in Rome tell me Russia and China use San Marino as a haven and 'logistics base' for espionage against Italy. Latest in The Economist, w/ John Hooper: www.economist.com/europe/2024/...

The tiny republic of San Marino is alarmingly friendly to Russia

Intelligence sources fear the country, surrounded by Italy, is a haven for spies

economist.com

Niue, a tiny Pacific island, is fighting a make-or-break legal battle in Sweden over its internet domain. It claims it is the first ever victim of 'digital colonialism' and that winning could propel it into the United Nations. Latest in @nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/w...

The Two-Decade Fight for Two Letters on the Internet

The South Pacific island of Niue says it was cheated out of .nu, a domain that turned out to be very lucrative on the other side of the world.

nytimes.com

Tokelau, a remote necklace of Pacific atolls, has only 1,400 people. It had, until recently, the largest internet domain on earth. How? Almost all its users were spammers, phishers, and even spies. Tokelauans were barely aware. They now want to clean up '.TK' ahead of a sovereignty bid. My latest:

How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrime

Despite having a population of just 1,400, until recently, Tokelau’s .tk domain had more users than any other country. Here’s why.

technologyreview.com