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Just two weeks before the scheduled summit of U.S President Donald Trump with the Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on May 14-15, the report of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) on the status of AI related applications, has unnerved the U.S. administration as the latest Chinese supremacy in robot related patent applications, will have impact on President Trump’s bargaining power in his talks with the Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The war between the United States, Israel and Iran has entered a phase where strategy is no longer defined by battlefield advances but by economic endurance, political psychology and global spillover. What began with the February 28 strikes has evolved into a multi-layered confrontation in which neither side has secured decisive advantage—and yet both continue to escalate.

NEW YORK: Ninety years ago, fresh from their May Day marches, the people of France went to the polls and made history. The election of May 3, 1936—the decisive second round of legislative voting—delivered a sweeping victory to the Front Populaire, the Popular Front coalition of Communists, Socialists, and Radicals who had united against the growing threat of fascism at home and abroad.

Abu Dhabi’s decision to walk away from OPEC marks more than a dispute over barrels. It signals a recalibration of Gulf power, energy strategy and security alignments at a moment when the Iran war has exposed the limits of regional consensus. For decades, the UAE operated inside a cartel system dominated by Saudi Arabia’s ability to balance supply, defend prices and impose discipline on producers with divergent fiscal needs. Its exit now suggests that the cost of that discipline has begun to outweigh the benefits for a state that sees itself as a global energy, finance and security actor rather than a subordinate member of an oil bloc.

NEW YORK: As the world prepares to mark the 140th anniversary of the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Affair, including massive demonstrations and actions planned in the U.S. under the “Workers Over Billionaires” banner, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) is calling on the international working class to mobilize its forces this May Day in the struggle for workers’ rights, democracy, peace, and equality.

The next wave of competitive advantage will come not from individual breakthrough technologies but from the ability to combine and scale multiple technologies across entire operating systems, according to a World Economic Forum report released to on April 28. As artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced materials, spatial computing and next-generation energy systems mature simultaneously, the organizations and countries moving fastest to apply these technologies together in intelligent systems are already pulling ahead.

From Amrish Puri's terrifying villain in Temple of Doom to Irrfan Khan's Oscar-adjacent brilliance, Indian actors have long graced Hollywood sets. Now, with 1.4 billion potential ticket buyers and a homegrown film industry that routinely out-muscles foreign competition, Hollywood's courtship of India has become less a creative choice and more an existential calculation.

Only six months in power, Japan’s first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has emerged as the world’s most powerful woman reshaping the country’s domestic social and economic policies and international relations, taking a hard line on China. Takaichi has taken a firm stance on China suggesting that a "Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency" and advocating for deeper security ties with Taiwan. Soon after assuming the power, she brought the good news for India expressing Japan’s strong interest and commitment to work with India as a strategic, long-time partner. The Japanese interest is driven by a desire to diversify supply chains, manufacture locally, tap into India's growing consumer market, and leverage its skilled, young workforce. A key aspect of Japan’s interest in manufacturing in India is its target to invest 10 trillion yen (approximately US$68 billion) in India over the next decade, with a strong focus on manufacturing and technology.

The old framework of rigid alliances in West Asia is giving way to overlapping security partnerships, strategic hedging, internal military modernization, and new calculations shaped as much by technology and economics as by traditional geopolitics.

LONDON: As the Westminster vultures circle its twitching corpse, one could be forgiven that the May 7 elections in Scotland, Wales and the 136 English councils and for six Metro mayors were no more than a referendum on the Starmer premiership.