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LONDON: France holds emergency meetings on the evacuation of Bordeaux, a city of a million, as wildfires sweep ever closer. In Spain families are fleeing the capital, Madrid.

In recent times America's trade policy has become a rolling emergency. Though struck down by the Supreme Court, Trump's tariffs have returned through new legal loopholes, hitting 60 nations under a "forced labour" pretext. The revenue keeps flowing, the chaos keeps compounding - and the world, including India, is left recalculating.

LONDON: Two major stories regarding the United States and Israel in recent days represent profound watershed moments in the history of the relationship between both countries. The first incident occurred on July 8 when US Congressman Ro Khanna (Democrat-California) and his delegation were detained by armed, illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.

LONDON: One headline sums up the contradiction at the heart of Andy Burnham’s new premiership. It appeared in The Guardian and read: “Streeting says Burnham government will prioritise military over other spending.”

Washington and Riyadh have signed a civilian nuclear cooperation pact that could let Saudi Arabia enrich uranium on its own soil. Announced this week and now headed to Congress, the deal marks a historic shift in US nonproliferation policy, alarms Israel and threatens to reshape the regional balance of power just as the US and Iran remain locked in confrontation.

World trade in general was in tumult last year, thanks principally to the US introducing a series of highly punishing tariffs targeting one country after another which naturally invited retribution by affected countries. Thankfully, the tariff war didn’t cause any major changes to “seaborne cement and clinker trading routes or supply sourcing in 2025.” Whatever changes happened in trade flows were more due to geopolitical disturbances and “domestic supply and demand dynamics.” Global import and export trade flows of clinker and cement totalled around 230m tonnes last year in which the share of seaborne trade was in the range of 150m tonnes to 170m tonnes.

NEW YORK: The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) recently adopted a new platform entitled “Workers Deserve More.” Normally, the only people who notice the platforms adopted by socialist organizations are their own members and members of rival socialist organizations. But not this time.

Global cement demand for the current year once again presents a kaleidoscopic picture of healthy rates of growth in uses of the binding agent in the Middle East, Africa and India but a fairly long unbroken period of demand compression in China. Europe, though not in its best economic health, is to see moderate demand recovery for cement, propelled by new house starts and infrastructure renovation. The World Cement Association (WCA) has forecast cement demand stability in the US, which incidentally has conceded the rank of the world’s third largest producer of the material to Vietnam.

CHICAGO: For decades, the NAACP has gone to court and combed the halls of Congress, defending and expanding voting rights for African-Americans. In its 117 years of existence, it has never been one to leave lobbying and pressure on elected officials to the racist corporate powers that have seen that as their exclusive domain.

LONDON: Media attacks on Andy Burnham as a ticket back to the 1970s followed hot on his Labour leadership acceptance speech on Friday.