Category: Semafor

The US threatened to halt arms sales to Europe for use in Ukraine unless Kyiv stopped striking Russian refineries, the Financial Times reported, accelerating a stunning deterioration in ties between the allies. US President Donald Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine on Sunday, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr ...

The News Several people were wounded in another likely Houthi attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport on Saturday, the third strike this week on the gateway to Saudi Arabia’s capital. Earlier attacks killed four people. Flights were canceled or diverted, and airport operations were suspended. Hours of silence and ...

Rwanda looks set to host the continent’s first F1 Grand Prix race in more than 30 years, beating rival South Africa to the honor, according to sources quoted by AFP. President Paul Kagame launched a bid to host two years ago as part of efforts to raise Rwanda’s international status ...

Yinka’s view This month, Togo invited citizens to contribute texts, recordings, and translations to help AI models understand the West African country’s 50 local languages. The absence of African languages from large language models has become a major concern for the continent’s policymakers and tech leaders. But initiatives like Togo’s ...

, by Anne Carson. Through “47 compulsively readable long-lined poems of intense cinematic detail,” the Canadian writer — and winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize for Literature — retells the ancient Greek myth of Hercules and Geryon as a modern day queer love story, the British poet Ruth Padel wrote ...

The war caught up with the Gulf’s construction sector last quarter. Project awards across the region fell 37.2% from a year earlier to $47.4 billion, according to Kuwaiti investment firm Kamco Invest. Every country was down by double digits; Oman all but stopped signing contracts, with awards falling 96.6%. Gas ...

QatarEnergy won stakes in seven exploration blocks off Brazil’s northeastern coast, the latest in a series of Gulf investments in Latin America’s energy sector. The state-owned company will hold 30% of each block in the Ceará Basin, with operator Petrobras holding the rest. Concession contracts, which let the companies keep ...

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, raised its growth forecast, a rare bright spot as regional economic worries abound. Berlin anticipates GDP will expand by 1.3% this year and a similar rate in 2027 — lackluster by global standards, but nonetheless significantly up from previous estimates, with the Iran war taking less ...

Navi Pillay, a South African jurist who was the UN’s longest-serving human rights chief, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Pillay was a pioneer long before taking on major international roles: She was the first non-white woman to serve as a judge in South Africa’s High Court. But it has ...

Russia ramped up its military outlays, putting it on track to spend a record $200 billion on defense in 2026 with little sign of the Ukraine war coming to an end. The huge increase — roughly 40% higher than its original plan for the year, with a similar amount expected ...