May 30,2026: Ukraine has launched coordinated drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure across multiple regions overnight.
The most significant strike hit Taganrog, Rostov Oblast, where a major port fire broke out after drones hit a tanker, fuel tank and administrative building, Russia’s RIA Novosti state media agency reported.
Early on Saturday, Rostov Governor Yury Slyusar confirmed the attack on Max, a Russian state-backed messaging app.
Slyusar added that Russian air defences destroyed multiple drones overnight across four districts. “During the repulse of an air attack on the Rostov region at night, UAVs were destroyed in the city of Taganrog, Chertkovsky, Matveyevo-Kurgansky, and Neklinovsky districts,” he said, per RIA Novosti.
May 29,2026: An uncrewed Blue Origin New Glenn rocket exploded on a Florida launchpad during a test on Thursday, in a major setback for Jeff Bezos’ space venture as it seeks to narrow the gap with Elon Musk’s IPO-bound SpaceX.
Video posted by NASASpaceflight, which livestreams launches from Florida, showed the towering New Glenn rocket igniting on the pad at about 2100 ET (0100 GMT on Friday) before erupting into a massive fireball that billowed skyward, sending a towering plume of flames and smoke into the air.
Blue Origin was preparing the rocket for its fourth launch, which was due to deliver 48 Amazon Leo satellites into low-Earth orbit, part of efforts to build a broadband constellation to rival Musk’s Starlink network. Amazon Leo satellites were not integrated on the rocket at the time of the incident.
The explosion marks the latest setback for the long-delayed New Glenn, which is supposed to play a central role in delivering lunar landers and cargo under NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration missions.
It comes just two days after NASA awarded Blue Origin a $188 million contract to land rovers on the moon’s surface, and less than a week after SpaceX – years ahead in development – carried out a largely successful test of its next-generation Starship rocket.
Blue Origin confirmed it had experienced an “anomaly” during a hot-fire test, where a rocket engine is fired up while anchored to the ground.
May 28,2026: Karnataka’s Chief Minister Sidaraya has announced his resignation. He is likely to formally submit his resignation to the governor later today. The resignation comes amid reports of elevation of his deputy DK Shivakumar as the new chief minister.
He was supposed to submit his resignation at Lok Bhavan but he announced it at the breakfast meeting since the governor is currently not in Bengaluru.
The developments follow a Congress high command meeting where reports say a decision on Shivakumar’s elevation was taken ending a prolonged power struggle in the state.
Kolkata, May 21,2026: A Bangladeshi delegation flew into the city Wednesday for a meeting of the Joint Rivers Commission and a visit to the Farakka barrage where the flow of the Ganges is measured as it bifurcates into the Bhagirathi-Hooghly to meander towards Kolkata.
The meeting, just months ahead of the expiry of the 30-year Ganges Water Sharing Treaty in December this year, assumes significance as the political discourse in Dhaka over water sharing with India has taken a stormy turn.
Earlier this week, the ruling BNP’s Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir warned that the future of India-Bangladesh relations would depend significantly on the outcome of Ganges negotiations, reflecting his party’s “expectations and needs”.
“India and Bangladesh usually jointly measure water flows at the outset of the dry season. Its an ongoing process. However, what is worrying is this tendency of Bangladeshi leaders to take strong pre-decided stands even before real talks begin on renewing the treaty. It defeats the purpose of negotiations if you start taking rigid postures,” Veena Sikri, former High Commissioner to Bangladesh, told UNI.
The Bangladeshi delegation is being led by Joint Rivers Commission member Md Anwar Kadir and includes senior representatives from Bangladesh’s Water Resources Ministry, Foreign Ministry and hydrological agencies, underlining the importance Dhaka attaches to the upcoming discussions.
While officially the meetings are routine technical consultations, they come at a strategically delicate moment. Officials on both sides have already begun preliminary discussions on renewal. However, analysts suggest that a comprehensive renegotiation may prove difficult under current political circumstances, making a temporary extension a more likely short-term outcome.
Sikri pointed out that the Ganges water treaty “could not be viewed in isolation” and a host of treaties and relations including connectivity and trade needed to be considered in tandem. Indian officials also believe that the Ganges treaty which shared the flow at Farakka headwaters on a 50:50 basis, needs an overhaul as the glacial melt which gives Ganges its waters has reduced even as downstream demand for water has shot up with population exploding on both sides of th border.
Complicating the talks over water are Bangladesh’s growing relationship with China and Pakistan. Even before Alamgir warned India on the Ganges water treaty, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing to formally seek China’s involvement in the Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project, oblivious of Indian sensitivities on handling over such a project just across the border from India’s Siliguri corridor, a narrow strip of Indian land which separates China from Bangladesh.
NEW DELHI, May 16,2026: Tehran has “no trust” in the U.S. and is interested in negotiating with Washington only if it is serious, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Friday, as talks on ending the war remained on hold.
Araqchi told reporters in New Delhi that all vessels can pass through the Strait of Hormuz except those “at war” with Tehran, if they coordinate with Iran’s navy.
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But the situation around the waterway, vital to global energy and commodities markets, was “very complicated”, he added, during a visit to attend a BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in India.
In a post on X, Araqchi said he told India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar that “Iran will always carry out historical duty as protector of security in Hormuz,” according to his post on X.
Iran effectively shut the strait, which normally handles about one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and gas supply, to most shipping after the U.S. and Israel began their war on Iran in February.
PAKISTANI-MEDIATED U.S.-IRAN TALKS HAVE STALLED
Washington and Tehran announced a ceasefire last month but have been struggling to thrash out a lasting peace pact. Talks mediated by Pakistan have been suspended since Iran and the U.S. each rejected the other’s latest proposals last week.
Araqchi said “contradictory messages” had raised Iranian doubts about the Americans’ real intentions, adding that the Pakistani mediation process had not failed but was in “difficulty”.
The United States and Israel have cut short two previous rounds of talks with Tehran in the past 13 months by launching campaigns of air strikes on Iran.
Iran is trying to keep the latest ceasefire to give diplomacy a chance but is also prepared to go back to fighting, Araqchi said.
The issues holding up negotiations between the two sides include Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Hours before he spoke, U.S. President Donald Trump said his patience with Iran was running out and said he had agreed in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping that Tehran must reopen the strait.
Asked if Tehran was open to mediation by Beijing, Araqchi said Iran appreciated the efforts of any country that had the ability to help.
“We have very good relations with China,” he said. “We are strategic partners, and we know that the Chinese have good intentions. So, anything they can do to help diplomacy would be welcomed.”
Araqchi added: “We hope that, with the advancement of negotiations, we will reach a good conclusion so that the Strait of Hormuz can be completely secured and we can expedite the normalisation of traffic through the strait.”
New Delhi , May 15,2026: Union Minister Kiren Rijiju on Friday defended the hike in fuel prices, comparing the 3.2% and 3.4% price increase in petrol in India to other countries, claiming that they witnessed the hikes ranging from 20% to nearly 100% due to the West Asia conflict. Praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership for balancing economic stability with public welfare, he credited the government for governing with responsibility and putting people first while making decisions. “As the world battled rising fuel costs after the West Asia conflict, India stood apart. While several countries witnessed petrol & diesel hikes ranging from 20% to nearly 100%, India limited the increase to just +3.2% for petrol & +3.4% for diesel,” Rijiju said in a post on X. “Even as Brent crude crossed $100/barrel & global markets turned volatile, India’s public sector oil companies absorbed huge losses for weeks to protect citizens from inflation & economic pressure. This is governance with responsibility. This is leadership that puts people first. Under PM Narendra Modi, India continues to balance economic stability with public welfare,” he added.
Rijiju also attached a list of countries that hiked their fuel prices due to the West Asia Conflict. According to the list, Malaysia saw a growth of 89.7% in petrol prices and 112.7% in Diesel prices. The US reported a hike of 44.% in petrol prices and 48.1% in diesel prices. China saw a hike of 21.7% in petrol and 23.7% in diesel prices. This comes after the Centre on Friday increased petrol and diesel prices by Rs 3 per litre across the country. Following the revision, petrol prices in New Delhi rose from Rs 94.77 to Rs 97.77 per litre, while diesel prices increased from Rs 87.67 to Rs 90.67 per litre.The fuel price hike comes amid escalating global crude oil prices triggered by the ongoing conflict in West Asia. The geopolitical tensions, particularly the US-Israel and Iran conflict that began on February 28 this year, have disrupted global crude oil supplies and pushed Brent crude prices above USD 100 per barrel.
New York, May 15,2026: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday (local time) settled a civil lawsuit against Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani, subject to court approval, reported Reuters citing court records. According to media reports, Court documents show that Gautam Adani agreed to pay civil penalties of $6 million, while his nephew Sagar Adani, agreed to pay $12 million. The proposed settlement doesn’t include an admission of guilt, said news reports. The US SEC had earlier alleged that Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and others orchestrated an alleged USD 250 million-plus bribery scheme between 2020 and 2024 to secure solar energy contracts in India.On April 8, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York had accepted a plea filed by the counsels for Gautam and Sagar Adani for a pre-motion conference to dismiss the case.The councils for Gautam and Sagar Adani informed that they intended to seek to dismiss the US SEC’s complaint and, as part of this process, have submitted a letter with the East District New York (EDNY) judge informing the Court that the Defendants are prepared to attend a pre-motion conference should the Court wish to schedule one.In the letter, the Defendants briefly set out their grounds for dismissal of SEC’s complaint, including that the court concerned lacks personal jurisdiction over the Defendants and the claims against them, the SEC’s claims are impermissibly extraterritorial, the alleged misstatements by the Defendants are too vague and general for any reasonable investor to rely upon as a guarantee of any concrete fact or outcome, making them in-actionable, and the Defendants’ lack of involvement in the transaction bars the SEC’s claims against them.According to the counsels, in September 2021, AGEL conducted a USD 750 million bond offering pursuant to SEC Rule 144A and SEC Regulation S, which are registration exemptions for private resales to qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) and non-US sales. AGEL sold these bonds outside the US through an agreement to non-US underwriters, who then resold the Notes to QIBs. A fraction of those resales is alleged to have been made to “investors in the United States”. AGEL was not a party to these transactions, the lawyers said in the letter to the court.The defendants said that the grounds for dismissal also include the SEC’s failure to state a claim on the basis that the defendants are neither based in the US nor conduct activities there that would grant the court jurisdiction and the alleged actions involve non-US entities outside the scope of US law.The defendants also said that even if the claims are accepted at face value, the complaint fails to establish any actionable legal violation or meet the threshold required to proceed.The defendants said that the Court lacks personal jurisdiction over defendants and the claims against them should be dismissed under Rule 12(b)(2).The claims according to the lawyers “involve Indian Defendants, an Indian issuer, securities not registered with the SEC and not traded on U.S. exchanges, and underlying conduct alleged to have occurred exclusively in India.”The councils said, the SEC has not alleged underwriters who purchased the bonds from AGEL were US institutions as they were not, or that the Subscription Agreement underlying the purchases was governed by US law as it wasn’t.Meanwhile, a New York Times Report on Thursday (local time) had claimed that the US Justice Department is contemplating dropping charges against Gautam Adani.The report said that this move has come after Adani hired a new legal team led by Robert J Giuffra Jr. who is part of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Giuffra Jr. is also one of US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers, says the NYT Report.The report further suggests that Giuffra had a meeting last month at the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington. Citing people familiar with that meeting NYT reports that the council outlined why prosecutors lacked evidence and even jurisdiction to bring the case. The report claims that the council also suggested that Adani could be willing to invest USD 10 billion in the American economy creating 15,000 jobs should the charges be dropped.NYT reported that prosecutors told the council that such an investment would not have a bearing on the case. However, the council’s offer did get a favourable response from one Justice Department official reported NYT citing people familiar with the meeting.
WASHINGTON/BEIJING, May 11,2026:U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to discuss Iran, Taiwan, artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons as they weigh extending a critical minerals deal, according to U.S. officials previewing Trump’s two-day visit to China this week.
Trump is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday, ahead of talks set to take place Thursday and Friday. It will be his first trip to China since 2017.
AGREEMENTS ON PLANES, AGRICULTURE AND TRADE
The U.S. and China are expected to agree to forums to facilitate mutual trade and investment, while China is expected to announce purchases related to Boeing airplanes, American agriculture and energy, the officials said.
Plans for a Board of Trade and Board of Investment may be formally announced at the meeting, but those mechanisms may need subsequent work before they can be implemented, one of the officials said.
The two countries will also discuss lengthening a truce in their trade war that allows rare earth minerals to flow from China to the U.S., though it is not yet clear if that agreement will be extended this week, that official said.
He nonetheless expressed confidence that the deal, which was struck last autumn and remains in effect, will eventually be extended.
“It doesn’t expire yet,” the official told reporters. “I’m confident we’ll announce any potential extension at the appropriate time.”
China’s embassy in Washington declined to comment.
THORNIER ISSUES INCLUDE TAIWAN, NUCLEAR ARMS, IRAN AND AI expected to veer into areas that have long been a source of U.S.-China tension, including Iran, Taiwan and nuclear arms.
China maintains ties with Iran and remains a major consumer of its oil exports. Trump has been leaning on China to use its influence to push Tehran to make a deal with Washington and end the conflict that began when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran in late February.
The Trump administration also has pressed China on its dealings with Russia.
“The president has spoken multiple times with General Secretary Xi Jinping about the topic of Iran and about the topic of Russia, to include the revenue that China provides to both those regimes, as well as dual-use goods, components and parts, not to mention the potential of weapons exports,” said one of the officials. “I expect that conversation to continue.”
Xi, meanwhile, is frustrated with Washington over Taiwan. The U.S. remains the most important international backer and arms supplier for the democratically governed island, which Beijing claims as its own Chinese territory.
China has ramped up its military presence near Taiwan in recent years, but U.S. policy will not change, the official said.
The Trump aides expressed increasing concern about advanced artificial intelligence models being developed in China and believed the two sides need “a channel of communication” to avoid conflicts arising from their use.
“What that looks like is yet to be determined, but we want to take this opportunity with the leaders meeting to open up a conversation and to see if we should establish a channel of communication on AI matters,” said one of the officials.
Washington has also long hoped to open up talks with Beijing about nuclear weapons, though China remains reluctant to discuss its arsenal. The Chinese government has said privately to the U.S. that “they have no interest in sitting down and discussing any kind of nuclear arms control or anything along those lines at this point,” the official said.
Trump and Xi’s last meeting was in October in South Korea, where they agreed to pause a bruising trade war that had seen the U.S. impose triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods and Beijing threaten to restrict the global supply of rare earths.
In February, the Supreme Court said Trump did not have the authority to impose many of his tariffs on imports worldwide. He has vowed to re-impose some levies using other legal avenues.
SHENZHEN, May 01,2026: An American scientist convicted of lying to U.S. authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain.
Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as ALS and restoring movement in paralyzed patients. But it also has potential military applications: Scientists at China’s People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting mental agility and situational awareness, according to the U.S. Defense Department.
Lieber was found guilty by a jury and convicted in December 2021 of making false statements to federal investigators about his ties to a Chinese state program to recruit overseas talent, and tax offenses related to payments he received from a Chinese university. He served two days in prison and six months under house arrest, and was fined $50,000 and ordered to pay $33,600 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service. During the case, his defense said he was suffering from an incurable lymphoma, which was in remission, and he was fighting for his life.
Three years after he was sentenced, Reuters has learned that Lieber is now overseeing China’s state-funded i-BRAIN, or the Institute for Brain Research, Advanced Interfaces and Neurotechnologies, with access to dedicated nanofabrication equipment and primate research infrastructure unavailable to him at Harvard. The lab is an arm of the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation, or SMART.
“I arrived on April 28, 2025 with a dream and not much more, maybe a couple bags of clothes,” Lieber said of his move to China at a Shenzhen government conference in December. “Personally, my own goals are to make Shenzhen a world leader.”
SMART last year appointed Lieber as an investigator, according to a post on i-BRAIN’s website dated May 1, 2025. That news was covered by some media outlets. The same day, i-BRAIN said Lieber had also been appointed its founding director – an announcement that went unreported at the time.
This story is the most comprehensive account of Lieber’s activities since he moved to China. Reuters is reporting for the first time that his lab has access to dedicated primate research facilities and chip-making equipment; that it sits within a sprawling ecosystem of state-backed institutions bankrolled by billions of dollars in government funding; and that it is housed within an institution that is luring top scientific talent back from the United States.
Some analysts say Lieber’s ability to reconstitute his laboratory after a federal criminal conviction for lying about his ties to China shows how U.S. safeguards on technology with potential military uses haven’t kept pace with Chinese government efforts to acquire it. That concern is amplified because of Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy, whereby civilian scientific resources and research are shared with the military.
“China has weaponized against us our own openness and our own efforts for innovation,” said Glenn Gerstell, a nonresident senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former general counsel of the U.S. National Security Agency from 2015 to 2020. “They’ve flipped that and turned it around against us, and they’re taking advantage of it.”
The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and the defense ministry didn’t respond to questions about China’s development of brain-computer interfaces. SMART and i-BRAIN also didn’t reply to requests for comment about their research and the recruitment of Lieber.
PRIMATE RESEARCH
Lieber’s new perch appears to give him richer resources than he had in the United States.
In Shenzhen, i-BRAIN in February installed a deep ultraviolet lithography system made by semiconductor-equipment giant ASML, according to the lab’s website. The Dutch company’s machines print the tiny circuits essential to cutting-edge chips. At Harvard, Lieber used shared lithography equipment at the university’s Center for Nanoscale Systems. The center serves more than 1,600 users annually, according to its website.
i-BRAIN’s model is two generations behind restricted machines, but still likely to cost around $2 million, according to Jeff Koch of semiconductor-research firm SemiAnalysis.
ASML told Reuters it wouldn’t comment publicly about its customers.
An office building housing the Institute for Brain Research Advanced Interfaces and Neurotechnologies (i-BRAIN), part of the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (SMART), at Weiguang Life Science Park in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, March 26, 2026. Picture taken with a mobile phone. REUTERS/David Kirton Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
On the same campus, Lieber also has access to Brain Science Infrastructure (BSI) Shenzhen, a research lab with 2,000 primate cages and dedicated space for i-BRAIN’s work, according to the latter’s website. Many researchers in the field consider primate trials a prerequisite for human trials for invasive brain-computer interfaces. The BSI facility is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and is funded by the Shenzhen government.
Domestic and international researchers are being recruited by i-BRAIN for electrophysiology studies on rhesus monkeys as models for human brain-computer interfaces, according to a September 2025 post on its website, which invites prospective applicants to contact Lieber.
There is no indication that Lieber conducted primate research at Harvard. The elite Massachusetts university closed its New England Primate Research Center in 2015 under sustained pressure over animal welfare and funding challenges.
Jung Min Lee, a researcher who co-authored nanofabrication papers with Lieber at Harvard, has joined him at i-BRAIN as research associate professor, according to its website. Lee is an expert in stitching flexible electronics into brain tissue.
John Donoghue, a Brown University professor and neuroscientist who pioneered a brain-computer interface system known as BrainGate, said primate work is “absolutely critical” in translating neural interface technology to humans, but faces regulatory and funding hurdles in the United States.
“With so many hassles with non-human primate research here, to have somebody give you all this support, access to technology, a concentrated center, a national initiative – those are things that are very attractive,” he told Reuters.
SMART’s 2026 budget, funded entirely by Shenzhen’s government, rose nearly 18% to about $153 million. The academy’s budget papers don’t indicate the proportion of that funding dedicated to i-BRAIN.
SMART was established in 2023 under founding president Nieng Yan, a structural biologist. Her return to China a year earlier after five years at Princeton University was hailed in domestic media as the homecoming of a “goddess scientist.
Alongside SMART sits the legally separate but functionally twinned Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, which launched in 2019 with a five-year budget from Shenzhen’s government of around $2 billion. Both are based in Guangming Science City, a national science hub of manicured parks and waterways. The two institutions share the same leadership and offices, and will also occupy a dedicated 750,000-square-meter site that is under construction at a planned cost of $1.25 billion. Shenzhen Bay Laboratory didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Lieber joins at least six others who have moved to SMART from U.S. institutions, though all of them are Chinese-born researchers returning home.
China named brain-computer interface technology a national growth priority in its new five-year plan in March 2026. Zheng Shanjie, head of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, said in October that the rise of brain-computer interfaces and related technologies “will be equivalent to creating another Chinese high-tech sector in the next 10 years.”
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is also investing in brain-computer interfaces for drone and cyber defense applications, according to the agency’s program description. Research projects led by Lieber at Harvard received over $8 million in funding from the Defense Department since 2009, court documents show. The Pentagon didn’t respond to questions about the technology’s military uses and Lieber’s role at Shenzhen.
VYING FOR A NOBEL PRIZE
Lieber’s 2021 conviction was one of few wins for the U.S. Justice Department’s China Initiative, launched during the first Trump administration to counter Chinese economic espionage and intellectual-property theft. The initiative was wound down under President Joe Biden after a record of failures and criticism for racial profiling.
While still on supervised release, Lieber obtained court approval for at least three trips to China in 2024, including one that U.S. District Judge Denise Casper granted for “employment networking,” court documents show.
Lieber’s defense team said in a pre-sentencing memorandum in 2023 that the scientist had been suffering from lymphoma and was largely confined to his home, leaving only for medical appointments, brief walks, and occasional visits to a local farm. During a 30-year career at Harvard he spent over 80 hours a week in the lab, and when not working, Lieber spent time “coaching wrestling, and growing giant pumpkins in the back yard,” according to his defense.
Lieber acknowledged being “young and stupid” in getting involved with China’s Thousand Talents Program, the state-backed initiative to recruit overseas experts, his lawyer told the court in 2021. When he was arrested in 2020, Lieber told FBI agents he “wanted to win a Nobel Prize” and be recognized for his work, according to prosecutors.
The Lieber case illustrates a broader failure of U.S. policy, some analysts say.
“If you think of him as a vector for tech acquisition that runs contrary to U.S. interests, we identified that, punished him, and that did nothing to stop the big-picture trend,” said Emily de La Bruyère, co-founder of China-focused consultancy Horizon Advisory and a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit research institute considered hawkish on foreign policy.
Gerstell, the former U.S. official, described Lieber as “Exhibit A” in how U.S. legal tools are inadequate.
“This is a guy who was convicted of precisely the thing that we want him to be convicted of in this context, and yet the minute he’s released from house arrest, he’s off in China,” he said.
[Courtesy: Reuters]