The wind industry smells opportunity in Europe. At an expo in Madrid this week, the convention floor was abuzz as hundreds of European, American, Japanese and Korean exhibitors vied to pitch their products, knowing the continent urgently needs to shore up its energy security amid the US-Israel war on Iran. But there was one glaring absence: not a single company operating a booth was Chinese, with China’s participants only networking from the sidelines. At a time when many in Europe seek a rapid...

Former Philippine vice-president Leni Robredo’s refusal to seek national office in 2028 has intensified the search for someone to unite the country’s fractured opposition against an early presidential bid by Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio. Robredo, President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr’s strongest rival in the 2022 election and long seen as the opposition’s most recognisable figure, said she would not run for any state position when Marcos’ six-year term ends. Her decision shifts attention to a...

China’s military mouthpiece has urged the People’s Liberation Army to speed up integration of artificial intelligence and said AI-driven warfare was at a “turning point” – as seen in the US-Israeli campaign against Iran. In a commentary on Thursday, PLA Daily pointed to the use of AI in the Middle East war and said it was the first time the technology had been integrated into the entire cycle of operations – from analysis of intelligence to target identification, planning and assessment. “This...

A young girl in southwest China firmly refused to leave the tombs of her grandparents, who had died within six months of each other, and would sometimes sleep there. A touching video that melted millions of hearts on social media shows the girl, whose age was not disclosed in the report, lying in front of a tomb in Liupanshui, Guizhou province, in mid-April, as reported by Dafeng News. In the viral video, she occasionally sat up and casually ate from a box of cake. When her parents urged her to...

Life insurance sales in Hong Kong rose 50.6 per cent to another record last year as affluent customers continued to buy policies in the city for wealth transfer, protection and medical needs. The industry wrote HK$330.9 billion (US$42.2 billion) in new life policies in 2025, compared with HK$219 billion a year earlier, which was also a record, according to data from the Insurance Authority released on Friday. The continuous growth of the business in recent years was due to more wealthy people...

Indonesia’s blasphemy law has once again come under scrutiny after former vice-president Jusuf Kalla was reported to police over remarks linking past Muslim-Christian conflicts to beliefs about martyrdom. The case is unusual because it involves Christian complainants against one of the most senior Muslim figures in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation and reflects what critics have long called the law’s central flaw: its susceptibility to politicised use. Kalla, a career politician...

The US government has imposed sanctions on a Cambodian senator alleging he is at the heart of a sprawling scam network, as the Southeast Asian nation comes under intense pressure – including from China – to eliminate a cybercrime industry worth nearly US$20 billion a year. The US Treasury tagged Senator Kok An, a tycoon with close ties to former leader Hun Sen whose son is now prime minister, and 28 other associates as “specially designated nationals” suspected of controlling “scam compounds...