Yemen's Houthi movement has captured a strategic Red Sea island and the country's entire Red Sea coastline after a week-long offensive, consolidating control over territory flanking the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — one of the world's most critical shipping chokepoints.

• After a week-long offensive that left hundreds dead, the Houthis have taken Perim Island and the last stretches of coastline still held by the Saudi-backed government, giving them control of Yemen's entire Red Sea coast.
• A wreckage of a Saudi-supplied Karayel unmanned combat aerial vehicle, shot down over Hajjah governorate, points to continued external military involvement in the conflict.
• Since late 2023, the Houthis have repeatedly used their coastal position to attack commercial shipping transiting the Red Sea, in what they describe as solidarity action linked to the Gaza conflict — sharply reducing vessel traffic through the Suez route.

• Chokepoint risk stacks up: Bab el-Mandeb sits alongside the Strait of Hormuz as one of two chokepoints capable of disrupting global energy trade; simultaneous stress on both would affect a large share of world shipping and oil flows.
• No land bypass exists for Bab el-Mandeb-transiting cargo, unlike Hormuz (which has a partial Saudi pipeline alternative) — so disruption forces the longer, costlier route around the Cape of Good Hope.
• India's stake: a large share of India's westbound trade with Europe and the Mediterranean routes through the Red Sea–Suez corridor; sustained disruption raises freight costs and insurance premiums for Indian exporters and shipping lines.
• The development also reflects the wider proxy contest in Yemen's civil war, with the Saudi-backed government and Iran-aligned Houthis backed by rival regional and external patrons.

Figure 1 — Bab el-Mandeb: Gateway to the Red Sea

Mokha sits just north of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the chokepoint now under Houthi control. Image courtesy BBC; reproduced with credit for educational use.

The European Commission has forwarded its proposal for concluding the India-EU Free Trade Agreement to the European Council, the last political hurdle before signature of what would be the largest trade agreement either side has ever concluded.

• The European Commission (EU's executive) proposes the FTA legislation.
• The European Council — heads of state/government of all 27 member-states, plus its President and the Commission President — must authorise signature.
• After signature, the European Parliament's consent is required before the agreement can enter into force.
• India, in parallel, must complete its own internal ratification procedures.

• Asymmetric gains debated: European companies gain deeper access to India's large consumer market and a more level playing field, while India's gains are concentrated in services trade and professional mobility — a structural asymmetry common to India's FTAs with developed economies.
• CBAM friction unresolved: the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which BRICS nations have criticised as a disguised trade barrier, sits outside the FTA and could still constrain Indian exports even after tariffs fall.
• Ratification risk: the deal still needs European Parliament consent and India's internal ratification — a stage where past EU trade deals (e.g., with Canada) have faced delay or partial national-parliament vetoes.

Canada's High Commissioner to India says bilateral ties, which collapsed three years ago over the killing of Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, have moved beyond a mere "reset," citing a bilateral security dialogue, trade talks and a possible visit by Prime Minister Modi to Canada.

• Education: India sends more students to Canada than any other country (about 4,27,000), though tightened visa/financial-guarantee rules and rising costs have strained the flow.
• Energy: Canada's 2024 Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline can move 9–10 lakh barrels/day to its west coast, positioning it as a potential new hydrocarbon supplier to India, alongside cooperation on CANDU nuclear reactors — 18 of India's 24 reactors are CANDU-based.
• Investment: Canadian pension funds and institutional investors have invested about $80 billion in India, among the largest sources of foreign investment.
• Unresolved: the Nijjar murder trial remains pending in Canadian courts; India has not received an apology, and neither Bishnoi's extradition nor that of his Canada-based aide has reportedly been sought.

As India hosts the BRICS Summit, a data-driven analysis shows how sharply the West's use of economic sanctions has grown since the 1990s, and argues that India's tilt toward BRICS-linked financial architecture is a rational hedge against this "weaponisation," even as the West remains India's largest trade and investment partner.

• India's dual exposure: India faced US tariffs amid trade-deal friction and scrutiny over its Russian oil purchases, showing sanctions/tariff risk applies even to non-adversary states.
• Chabahar Port example: India's Chabahar project (started 2003) was frozen by US Iran-sanctions, revived in 2015–17 after sanctions eased, and faced fresh US warnings even after a 2024 ten-year India-Iran operating agreement — showing how third-country sanctions can repeatedly disrupt Indian strategic infrastructure.
• Limits of the BRICS hedge: BRICS's own financial institutions (NDB, CRA) remain dollar- and IMF-linked (see the companion editorial analysis), so the "hedge" argument is more aspirational than a proven present-day alternative.
• The West still dominates: the US and EU remain India's largest export markets and investment sources, and are central to India's services-sector growth — meaning India's approach is described as diversification, not a decisive pivot away from the West.

Two decades after BRIC was conceived to counter G7 dominance, data show China's economy has grown so large that it now exceeds the combined GDP of Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa — raising the question of whether BRICS can remain a genuinely collective platform.

• By 2009 — the year of BRICS's first summit — China's GDP already exceeded the combined GDP of Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa; the gap has widened every year since.
• On GDP per capita, China has flipped from being poorer than Brazil, Russia and South Africa in 2006 to richer than Brazil and twice as rich as South Africa by 2026, while the gap with an average Indian has grown from roughly 3x to about 5x.
• This raises a structural question for BRICS: a grouping conceived to counter one dominant bloc (the G7) now contains one member whose economic weight increasingly resembles the dominance it was meant to counter.

The Democratic Republic of Congo — the world's largest cobalt producer and second-largest copper supplier — is building a state-controlled national geological databank, extending Kinshasa's leverage over where global exploration capital flows next.

• Precedent: Congo's February 2025 cobalt export ban and subsequent quota system swung the market from surplus to deficit and lifted prices from about $10/lb to roughly $26/lb — showing the state's ability to move global markets through supply control; geological-data control is described by analysts as a potentially even more powerful lever, since it shapes future discoveries, not just current supply.
• US-China competition: both countries have separate cooperation agreements with Kinshasa; Congo says the databank applies equal access rules regardless of investor origin, positioning itself to extract value from both sides of the rivalry.
• Not unique to Congo: Canada and Saudi Arabia are also moving to consolidate geological data as national strategic infrastructure — a trend relevant to India's own push to map and secure critical-mineral resources (e.g., under the National Critical Mineral Mission).
• Congo's cobalt reserves grew over 76% between 2000 and 2025 to an estimated 6 million tonnes — more than half of known global reserves (USGS).