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The UAE is fast-tracking a major west-east oil pipeline expansion aimed at bypassing the Strait of Hormuz amid escalating regional tension and disruption to global energy supplies.

UAE fast-tracks oil pipeline to bypass Strait of Hormuz

Iran’s advantage lies in its ability to produce content that aligns with platform operations at both speed and scale. Meanwhile, the conflict continues on the ground, where a ceasefire holds unevenly and negotiations remain uncertain.

Iran is winning the social media war

Humour, provocation and localisation: Iran’s new digital diplomacy

Conditional: Iran has accepted the ceasefire but on certain terms.

Immediate ceasefire declared as US and Iran head to Islamabad talks

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced that the ceasefire would apply “everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere”, positioning Islamabad as the central diplomatic…

Exports: South Africa is a leading supplier of citrus to the United Arab Emirates. Photo: Citrus Growers Association of
Southern Africa

SA strengthens agricultural trade amid Middle East tension

Analysts say that while trade diversification remains important, the Middle East provides key corridors to agricultural exports

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says more than 11,000 pregnant women in the earthquake-affected areas are in urgent need of assistance. – Credit UNFPA

Global wars and fuel shocks are putting pregnant women at greater risk of dying in childbirth

As wars disrupt fuel supplies and health systems, more women are being forced to give birth without timely access to skilled care

The devastation at the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran after a US-Israel missile strike this weekend: Images: Fars News Agency

Khamenei killing puts limits of self-defence under UN Charter to the test

The United Nations Charter prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state, the only recognised exception being…

US President Donald Trump. Photo: Supplied

UPDATED: Iran hits US Gulf base in retaliation against attacks on Tehran

US President Donald Trump warned members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard to lay down their arms or face ‘certain death’.

Graphic: John McCann/M&G

UPDATED – US Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s tariffs, offering hope to countries such as South Africa

The Trump administration slapped South Africa with a 30% import tariff, effective last August

Prominent United States civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, an outspoken critic of apartheid in South Africa, has died aged 84

US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson dies aged 84, family says

The founder of the Rainbow/PUSH coalition — a US civil rights and social justice organisation — was an outspoken critic of apartheid in South Africa

US President Donald Trump. (File photo)

US strikes on Venezuela, capture of Maduro will make world less secure: analysts

South Africa’s government said the US actions were a ‘a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations, which mandates that all member states refrain from the threat or…

Former international relations minister Naledi Pandor said without confronting material complicity, the initiative risked becoming “pleasant, but ineffectual”. Photo: Hasina Kathrada

At Hague Group meeting, frustration over failure of global institutions to constrain Israel’s conduct

Speakers described a system in which legal norms are applied selectively, allowing powerful states and their allies to evade accountability

National sovereignty has been a key undercurrent from delegates representing the Global South.

G20 youth confront challenges of multilateral cooperation, national sovereignty

The Y20 summit revealed disparities in youth-driven calls for climate justice, inclusive growth and sovereignty between the Global South and North

China has remodelled its African investment strategy, focusing on selective projects, co-financed deals, and debt restructuring, as Gulf states ramp up investments through sovereign-led funding, infrastructure expansion, and diversified acquisitions.

Gulf states channel billions into Africa as China revamps financial model

Gulf sovereign wealth funds are rapidly expanding in Africa, filling a financing gap left by China’s strategic pullback and reshaping the continent’s development landscape

Pope Francis delivers his annual ‘State of the World’ address to members of the Vatican diplomatic corps in January. (Photo: The Vatican)

Pope Francis: The end of a radical papacy born in the south

Francis refused the version of Catholicism that ingratiates itself with the powerful while abandoning the poor

US President Donald Trump said this week that the tariff is meant to address the trade imbalance between South Africa and the US. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP/picture alliance)

These are some of the executive orders Donald Trump signed on inauguration day

The withdrawal from the World Health Organisation will take one year to come into effect

(File photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images/AFP)

Trump 2.0 sparks optimism in Africa and Asia, doubt in Europe and the rest of the West

The majority of poll respondents in South Africa, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and other countries believe China will outpace the US in global influence over the next 20 years

Flames from the Palisades Fire burn a building on Sunset Boulevard amid a powerful windstorm on January 8, 2025 in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images)

Los Angeles Palisades Fire threatens Getty Museum, death toll rises to 24

Teams from the sheriff’s department continue sifting through rubble, using dogs to search for human remains

The views about the wealthy contributing to inequality are held mainly by people on the ideological left, although many on the right agree, according to the findings.

Survey finds that wealthy influence, racial inequality and education drive economic divide

60% of respondents across 36 countries believe the political influence of the wealthy significantly contributes to economic inequality

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Meta ends fact-checking to ‘reduce censorship’

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s fact checkers had been ‘too politically biased’

Elon Musk speaks before former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Trump says Musk, Ramaswamy will lead ‘Department of Government Efficiency’

The move is part of what the president-elect has said is a ‘Save America’ initiative