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Has the Third World War started – in Asia?

As history has demonstrated many times to date, the ‘start’ of a world war is less a moment than a process, and Asia today is beginning to look uncomfortably similar to Europe of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Renewables met 100% of global electricity demand growth in 2025 that will speed America's decline

For the first time in history, renewables covered all new global electricity demand in 2025, and the oil shock of the Iran war will only accelerate the move away from the reliance on fossil fuels, according to a report by Ember.

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UAE strikes back at Turkey in fight to become global investor haven

The United Arab Emirates is hitting back at emerging competitors such as Turkey in the fight to emerge as the prime Middle Eastern destination for international investors.

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TCHAKAROV: Inside the seductive complexity of Armenia's election maths

At first glance, Armenia's upcoming elections may seem easy to dissect. They are anything but.

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BALKAN BLOG: Wave of Trump-linked Balkan investments sparks transparency concerns

Mega deals announced by Trump-linked companies brings up concerns over corruption and environmental impact similar to those raised over Chinese and Middle Eastern investments in the past.

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Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent

“We’ve seen record heatwaves from the Mediterranean to the Arctic, while glaciers have been shrinking and snow cover melting. The evidence is unequivocal: climate change is not a future threat. It is our present reality,” the EC said

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Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite venture seeks Kenyan licence to take on Starlink

SpaceX’s Starlink has already established a foothold in Kenya and dominates the country’s high-speed connectivity segment.

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Asian trade jitters spark fresh Malacca Strait monetisation push

The collapse of maritime stability in the Middle East has cast a long, overdue shadow over the busiest maritime chokepoint in Asia: the Strait of Malacca.

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Central Asia green finance grows, led by Kazakhstani private sector

Iran-linked shock’s impact on Emerging Europe seen milder than 2022 crisis, says wiiw economist

Kosovo sets June 7 snap election date, third vote since February 2025

Central Asia green finance grows, led by Kazakhstani private sector

Kazakhstan is Central Asia’s leading market for green and sustainable bonds, and there is strong potential in other countries, according to Manas Gizhduaniyev, chief executive of the AIFC Green Finance Centre.

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News

Azerbaijan has summoned the EU ambassador to Baku and handed her a note of protest over a European Parliament resolution adopted on April 30, in the sharpest deterioration in EU-Azerbaijan relations since Baku regained control of Karabakh in 2023.

US President Donald Trump congratulated Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Ali al-Zaidi on April 30, ending a four-month standoff in which Washington derailed Nouri al-Maliki's bid under threat of sanctions on Iraq's central bank, oil and political figur

Iran's UN envoy has demanded that Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Jordan pay full compensation for war damage, accusing them of complicity in aggression, in a claim that reverses the position taken by the six states themselves.

Tungsten deal was a highlight of last November’s White House summit with Central Asia’s leaders.

Newly published materials linked to an investigation by Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities have triggered a wave of allegations and political controversy.

Tech

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, at first the world scoffed as Russia remained dependent on western technology for 95% of the electronics needed to make its vaunted missiles.

Internet and tech major VK received $433mn to develop a national video platform and over $44mn for a “multi-functional information exchange service” in 2025.

10mn+ players attracted by big hit reportedly developed on modest budget.

The world's largest battery maker has just placed a very large bet on a technology that, until recently, most of the industry considered was science fiction.

Katerina Tikhonova reportedly oversees a broad institutional network at MGU including a research centre, an AI Institute, the MGU-270 supercomputer and the newly launched faculty.

Opinion

Demographers warned for decades that ageing, declining states grow more dangerous, not less. The wars now spreading from Eastern Europe to the Gulf to East Asia look increasingly like the opening engagements of a long contest over who outlasts whom.

Gaffe or not, remarks from European Commision president played into hands of Turkish politicians who want Ankara to pursue closer ties with Moscow and Beijing.

Many highly indebted advanced economies face a grim fiscal outlook. Under current policies, the public debt ratios of countries including Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States are set to deteriorate over the next two decades.

Russia’s deepening entanglement in the crisis around Iran is delivering short-term geopolitical dividends, but at a potentially high strategic cost.

Granted candidate status in 2005, North Macedonia was once considered a frontrunner among Western Balkan aspirants. However, a series of bilateral disputes has repeatedly derailed its progress.

Data

One way to measure income inequality is to look at the share of all income that goes to the top income earners. The chart plots this for all seven South American countries with comparable 2022 pre-tax income estimates.

Russia’s labour market is not just tight — it has entered what central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina has repeatedly described as an unprecedented structural shortage, driven directly by the war economy.

Increase extends a multi-year trend.

Broad-based expansion increasingly driven by services and construction.

Taiwan's role as the global hub for AI chips is now directly inflating domestic private capital. While the equity boom is creating massive paper wealth, the concurrent spike in mortgage debt suggests a growing divide between rich and poor.

Features

Beijing now trades nearly $400bn a year with the Middle East, runs the region's largest infrastructure programmes, and brokers its diplomacy. America still sells the weapons. It is not enough

When US and Israeli forces launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28, striking Iran's nuclear sites, missile factories and military infrastructure, the Trump administration was expecting a walk in the park. It wasn't.

The US blockade of tankers serving Iran’s oil exports is intended to cut Iranian oil exports to near-zero and force its production to stop as storage tanks fill, forcing Tehran to return to the negotiation table. The plan hasn't worked.

Despite threatening to end Russian LNG imports completely next year, prompting the Kremlin to threaten to cut off gas exports to Europe before then, the EU just imported the most LNG in history as it slides into an expanding gas crisis.

Despite threatening to end Russian LNG imports completely next year, prompting the Kremlin to threaten to cut off gas exports to Europe before then, the EU just imported the most LNG in history as it slides into an expanding gas crisis.

Blogs

Phew. That was an effort. EU leaders met in Brussels yesterday and signed off on releasing the €90bn loan for Ukraine that will keep it in the fight with Russia for another two years. They also passed the twentieth sanctions package on Russia,

Rumours have swirled for months that Kazakhstan’s president wants to succeed Antonio Guterres. An appearance at an event in Turkey did his chances no harm at all.

Party leader Ozgur Ozel has so far proven so ineffective that president Erdogan finds him entirely tolerable outside of a prison cell.

As Taiwan’s opposition leader, Cheng Li-wun leads a delegation across China the fine line between opposition outreach and quasi-diplomacy is being blurred. It is an issue that should concern anyone with a stake in Taiwan’s democratic integrity.

Iranians remain split in the early hours of the two-week ceasefire between their government and US and Israel on the otherside, but as things stand any return to normality is better than nothing.

bneGREEN

War and climate crisis collide in Colombia, where over 50 nations are mapping a path away from oil, gas and coal — outside the UN process that has repeatedly failed to act.

India has recently told the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme to reduce, remove, or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in the Indian economy by pricing such emissions through the trading of Carbon Credit Certificates.

With investments into renewables accelerating, the region faces a widening gap between labour market needs and available skills.

The numbers released last week by an international consortium of climate scientists are remarkable in their uniformity. Every single key indicator of the state of the Earth's climate system set a new record in 2025. And not in a good way.

47 civil society organisations call on Western Balkan governments to abandon plans for new gas infrastructure, warning the region risks becoming locked into costly fossil fuel dependence.

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Nato General Secretary Mark Rutte warned that the West needs to prepare of the possibility that Chinese President Xi Jinping will ....

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