Jalal al-Din Davani on friendship as the path to perfection, on the danger of scattering oneself across different crafts, and on the discipline of silence, with an account of the Persian philosopher who served three dynasties.
Rumi on grief as a garden of compassion, on finding God in one's own heart, and on the calling placed in every heart.
Rumi's counsel for hard times is not to tell the Almighty how great your trouble is, but to tell your trouble how great the Almighty is.
The Development Road international transport corridor (ITC) is intended to link the Persian Gulf with Europe through Iraq and Türkiye.
In response to the 10% tariffs the United States imposed on imports from China, Beijing introduced additional duties of 15% on US coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG), and 10% on American oil, agricultural machinery, large-engine cars and pickups.
Kazakhstan declined full membership of BRICS at the bloc's October summit in Kazan, choosing instead to watch how the group develops while diversifying its foreign-policy ties and keeping close engagement with the West, The Diplomat reports.
In September 2023, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi, India, the United States, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the EU announced plans for the India–Middle East–Europe Corridor (IMEC). It is meant to speed up trade and deepen economic integration between Asia, the Gulf and Europe — but war in the Middle East now threatens it.
The 16th BRICS summit ran in Kazan from 22 to 24 October this year under Russia's chairmanship. No new members were admitted, and the group ruled out a single currency.
An aircraft carrier is a floating airbase that projects a country's military and economic power at sea. Eleven countries operate carriers today, and NATO members together with Japan have 20 between them.
The Cold War divided the planet into three worlds; after the Soviet bloc collapsed, the concepts of the Global North and the Global South took shape.
The Wakhan Corridor is a narrow strip of land in the Wakhan region of Badakhshan Province in eastern Afghanistan.
On 12 September 2000, at the second Euro-Asian Transport Conference in St Petersburg, Russia, India and Iran signed an intergovernmental agreement to create the International North–South Transport Corridor.
On 27 May 2024 Russia and Uzbekistan signed a contract for a six-unit small nuclear power plant in the Jizzakh region. The first reactor is due to start up within five years, with full commissioning no earlier than 2033.
Defence spending rose at its fastest rate in a decade in 2023, reaching $2.443 trillion worldwide, with NATO accounting for 55% of the total.
Bloomberg and IMF forecasts put China first for contributions to global growth in 2024–2029, ahead of the G7 combined, with India second and Indonesia third.
Saudi Arabia has yet to pick a builder for its planned reactors, with Rosatom, Westinghouse, KEPCO and CNNC in contention — and it has let the 1974 petrodollar pact with Washington lapse.
Saudi Arabia plans up to 16 nuclear reactors worth more than $100 billion under Vision 2030, following the example of Türkiye, Egypt, Iran and the UAE.
