Diplomacy & Crisis News

Public executions showcase that the death penalty in North Korea continues to function as a political tool.

Don’t sleep on the 27th Amendment’s strategic reorientation of Pakistan’s defense architecture.

For New Zealand, the six Gulf countries have also become increasingly essential – especially in trade, but also in wider strategic terms.

Le 1er décembre 2024, la nouvelle haute représentante de l'Union européenne pour les affaires étrangères et la politique de sécurité entrait en fonction. Trois cents jours plus tard, Mme Kaja Kallas affiche un bilan mirobolant. / Diplomatie, Conflit russo-ukrainien 2022- - 2025/11 / Diplomatie, Conflit russo-ukrainien 2022-

The efforts the Australian government has made to build a cooperative and friendly relationship with Indonesia have been significant and important. But there’s more to be done.

Two new bills have been submitted to the U.S. Congress to deal with the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik amendment. 

With violence against women and girls escalating to its most brutal expression – sexual assaults and murders of minors – people in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are reconsidering the abolition of the death penalty.

Hasina and her home minister have been found guilty of crimes against humanity during the mass uprising last year, resulting in the death of 1,400 people.

While army influence was previously exercised informally over its sister institutions, it has now been enshrined in law.

American force won’t dislodge Maduro, but American diplomacy might.

A global customs union could solve the problem of imbalances.

A new pre-election film follows the junta’s long tradition of attempting to sow distrust and division among its opponents.

The simmering public anger over corruption linked to flood control projects threatens to engulf the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

If Washington can leverage the newfound momentum in its ties with Islamabad to prevent destabilizing behavior, it can play a productive role.

The BJP-led NDA secured 202 of the 243 seats in the Bihar assembly. Opposition parties have pointed to collusion between the BJP and the national election panel.

The outcome exposes the limits of using economic pressure to bring about a resolution of the border dispute between the two nations.

Le roman picaresque est un genre rare dans la littérature contemporaine, et il est encore plus rare que l'héroïne en soit une femme, en l'occurrence, une sorcière « à la jambe d'os » — caractéristique fréquente des sorcières slaves, comme la fameuse Baba Yaga. Gila aux cheveux blancs, éternelle (…) / Balkans, Femmes, Littérature

Pendant cinquante ans, Edmond Thomas, qui vient de disparaître, s'est consacré avec sa maison Plein Chant à la publication d'une littérature oubliée, ou minorée, ou marginalisée. Il a édité des auteurs prolétariens, des œuvres marquantes de l'histoire sociale, des écrits excentriques glanés dans (…) / Livre, Littérature

Source: UN

President Donald J. Trump on Sept. 23rd pledged that the United States would lead a global effort to strengthen safeguards against biological weapons, telling the United Nations General Assembly that his administration would spearhead the creation of an artificial intelligence–based verification system to enforce the Biological Weapons Convention.

“My administration will lead an international effort to enforce the biological weapons convention,” Mr. Trump said. “We will do so by pioneering an AI verification system that everyone can trust.” His remarks reflected Washington’s ambition to harness cutting-edge technologies to confront the rising risk of engineered pathogens.

An American Tradition of Leadership

The United States has long sought to place itself at the forefront of biological arms control. In 1969, it formally renounced any offensive biological weapons program; in 1975, it helped bring the Biological Weapons Convention into force. Today, nearly 190 nations are parties to the treaty, and the U.S. has consistently pressed to adapt it to new scientific and technological challenges.

In August, this year, during the Sixth Session of the Working Group on Strengthening the Convention in Geneva, the U.S. again assumed a prominent role. American negotiators pushed for stronger verification, greater transparency, and deeper cooperation to confront emerging biotechnological threats. They backed legally binding compliance provisions, capacity-building initiatives, and expanded confidence-building measures (CBMs), all aimed at updating the treaty for contemporary biological risks. That leadership not only generated momentum toward consensus but also produced tangible steps to reinforce global security and public health amid rapid advances in synthetic biology and AI. Looking ahead, Mr. Trump’s AI initiative is expected to be a centerpiece of debate at the 2026 BWC Review Conference, where states parties will weigh its potential role in shaping the future of biological arms control.

AI Verification as a Safeguard

The risk landscape at the intersection of AI and synthetic biology is changing rapidly. Tools originally developed for protein engineering or drug discovery are increasingly able to model novel toxins or design pathogens, lowering barriers to misuse. With the aid of large language models, even individuals with little biological training could, in theory, create harmful agents or evade conventional biosecurity measures. Such possibilities highlight the vulnerabilities that legitimate research faces in monitoring immune evasion, gene editing, and transmissibility.

Against this backdrop, the system outlined by Mr. Trump represents a shift from traditional state-centered inspections toward a networked, data-driven model. By leveraging artificial intelligence to analyze research data, genetic sequences, and biotechnology transactions, the platform is designed to detect suspicious activity that might indicate the development or stockpiling of biological weapons. In practice, it would operate as a cloud-based network, integrating existing biosurveillance databases and research registries, and using machine learning to flag anomalies in real time.

The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Biosurveillance Ecosystem (BSVE) offers a preview of how such a system could function globally. For example, when an unusual spike in respiratory illness appears in a metropolitan area, BSVE enables analysts to quickly identify outbreak patterns, assess severity, and coordinate responses with local health authorities. It does so by ingesting diverse data streams—from social media posts and news reports to diagnostic results and historical outbreak records—and applying machine learning and natural language processing to detect anomalies. Those insights are then visualized on an analyst dashboard, providing an opportunity for early intervention before localized outbreaks spiral into full epidemics.

The death of Queen Sirikit has removed the final protective layer from the current monarch, King Maha Vajiralongkorn.