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Gold and silver surged as investors skittishly rotated away from technology stocks amid heightened geopolitical rhetoric from Washington and mixed macro signals. In China, regulators tightened rules on platform‑linked consumer lending while the central bank reported continued credit growth, underscoring Beijing’s dual focus on innovation and financial stability.

Waymo has begun paying DoorDash couriers in Atlanta to close car doors when passengers leave them ajar, a pragmatic fix for an operational snag that prevents autonomous vehicles from resuming service. The pilot highlights the persistent need for human intervention in advanced automation and raises questions about liability, labor and the pace of engineering solutions.

Zhiyuan Robotics launched the full‑size YuanZheng A3 humanoid, showcasing continuous martial‑arts style moves and claiming up to eight hours of mixed‑use battery life. The machine pairs hardware upgrades with a multimodal interaction stack and a company‑backed data platform, signalling a push to convert spectacle into deployable service robots and to outflank rivals such as YushU.

Anthropic has closed a $30 billion Series G at a roughly $380 billion valuation to fund research and infrastructure, while OpenAI has released GPT‑5.3‑Codex‑Spark built to run on Cerebras chips, signalling a strategic push to diversify away from Nvidia. Simultaneous Chinese moves — open‑sourcing large models and new robotics funding — highlight global competition on models, hardware and deployment.

U.S. officials say military planning is underway for strikes on Iran that could last weeks and extend beyond nuclear targets to security and state institutions. Washington has bolstered forces in the Middle East while Tehran warns of retaliation, raising the risk of a protracted regional confrontation.

OpenClaw — an open‑source agent orchestration framework — has ignited a community frenzy, spawning new social and marketplace experiments and attracting attention from high‑profile Chinese tech figures. Its agent‑to‑agent model shifts productivity dynamics, creating structural opportunities in multi‑agent platforms, security tooling, elastic compute markets and edge hardware, while raising novel privacy and governance risks.

A Xinhua profile of a Northern Theater Command submarine unit highlights crew professionalism, endurance and technological progress, reflecting Beijing’s emphasis on undersea capabilities as part of broader naval modernization. The article serves both domestic narrative and international signaling purposes, underscoring how improved submarine operations complicate regional anti‑submarine efforts and shape strategic competition beneath the waves.

A knife-wielding man threatened a gendarme near the Arc de Triomphe on February 13 and was shot and hospitalized after being subdued by another gendarme. The national anti-terror prosecutor’s office has taken over the investigation, and authorities are probing motive while reassuring the public that no one else was injured.

President Trump confirmed the deployment of a second U.S. aircraft carrier to the Middle East, increasing American naval presence amid heightened regional tensions. The move is designed to deter Iran and reassure partners, but it raises risks of escalation, economic fallout for shipping and energy markets, and diplomatic complications for other global players including China.

Israel’s chief of staff visited Rafah and declared Hamas “militarily defeated,” while warning the IDF is ready to switch from defensive to offensive operations and announcing a new 38th Division. The visit underscores Israel’s preparedness for further ground action in Gaza and raises the risk of escalation around sensitive border crossings and displaced civilian populations.

A Japanese Board of Audit review found extensive delays and maintenance problems in U.S. defence equipment bought through the Foreign Military Sales program, even as Tokyo increases spending to bolster its forces. The findings raise questions about the cost‑effectiveness, timing and strategic rationale of Japan’s heavy purchases of American arms.

NATO has launched "Arctic Sentinel," a multi‑domain operation led by Joint Force Command Norfolk to centralize allied command and strengthen presence across the Arctic and High North. The initiative reflects growing strategic competition in the region and a desire to improve coordination among Nordic and NATO partners in a challenging operational environment.

Iran’s foreign minister said a deal with the United States over Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme is possible if it is “fair and balanced” and provides credible security guarantees. The comments, made on the Revolution anniversary, come after indirect talks in Oman and high-level consultations in Washington and underscore both diplomatic openings and domestic constraints on any agreement.

India’s Defence Acquisition Council has provisionally approved a major procurement package that reportedly includes 114 Dassault Rafale fighters and P‑8I maritime patrol aircraft, part of a broader plan cited at roughly 3.6 trillion rupees. The move would rapidly bolster India’s air and maritime capabilities while reigniting debate over cost, procurement transparency and the balance between imports and domestic defence industry development.

Iran has become a top‑20 military power not by fielding a modern air force or blue‑water navy but by investing heavily in long‑range missiles, drones and asymmetric tactics. These capabilities give Tehran a resilient, regionally disruptive deterrent, even as sanctions and aging conventional platforms limit its ability to wage high‑intensity conventional campaigns.

Deliveries of F‑35As to the U.S. Air Force have included airframes without the planned APG‑85 AESA radar because of development delays and cost overruns in the Block 4 upgrade. The absence of onboard radars forces operational compromises, underscores long‑standing concurrency problems in the programme, and complicates future upgrades and budgeting.

Hamas has publicly refused to surrender arms while Israel continues strikes, directly challenging US and Israeli plans to demilitarize Gaza under a second-phase settlement. With mediators yet to present a full weapons proposal and Israeli plans for a new offensive reportedly underway, the fragile ceasefire faces a high risk of collapse.

President Trump has given Iran an informal one‑month deadline to reach an agreement, warning of severe consequences if talks fail. The U.S. has bolstered naval forces in the region while indirect negotiations mediated by Oman continue, leaving a narrow and risky window for de‑escalation.

A Yunnan border policeman’s emotional reunion with his family after a surprise visit highlights the human cost of long‑term deployments on China’s drug interdiction front line. Yang Rui’s decade‑long service on the China–Myanmar border, punctuated by multiple drug seizures and official commendations, illustrates both operational successes and the strains placed on personnel and families.

A retired serviceman used an improvised rebreathing technique with a plastic bag to calm a hyperventilating young woman on a late‑night street. The intervention relieved her symptoms within minutes, underscoring both the value of basic first‑aid training and the need for public guidance on safe emergency practices.