Latest Updates

Drug mule blitz exposes Malaysia’s sinister new smuggling pipeline

Recent arrests across Southeast Asia, starting in Indonesia, have now reached Singapore and have exposed a troubling shift in regional narcotics smuggling originating in Malaysia.

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Oil transit fees owed to Turkey by Iraqi Kurdistan have vanished in Jersey, says MP

“This is called international robbery,” remarks opposition lawmaker, claiming documents show $229mn has evaporated on island.

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Zelenskyy says Ukraine has secured monthly Patriot missile deliveries from US

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kyiv has reached an agreement with the United States to receive monthly deliveries of Patriot interceptor missiles, just as Kyiv runs out of air defence ammo.

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Mongolia’s next president? Race to succeed Khurelsukh reshapes political landscape

Politicians jockeying for position. Observers see ruling party MPP as in factional turmoil.

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Iranian official warns Saudis “paper pact” on defence with Turkey, Pakistan is a dud

Agreement based on Nato-style provision that an attack on one country will be seen as an attack on all three.

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IntelliNews Lambda: EU gas storage refill lags badly, on track to miss 90% November target

EU gas storage is refilling at one of its slowest paces in 15 years, and the numbers say the bloc has almost no chance of reaching its 90% target by November.

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Russia launches major strike on Naftogaz production assets, knocking out seven Ukrnafta facilities

Russia has carried out one of its largest attacks on Ukraine's state-owned energy sector in recent months, striking seven oil and gas production facilities operated by Ukrnafta, part of the Naftogaz Group.

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COMMENT: Iran and the UAE are working together to outlast Trump

Iran and the UAE are quietly rebuilding trade ties that are helping both sides outlast the war, argues analyst Esfandyar Batmanghelidj.

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Korean football accused of providing sex services for referees

Armenian PM says ties with EU and Eurasian Economic Union "not a zero-sum game"

Hungary unveils rescue package for farmers hit by drought and heatwave

Korean football accused of providing sex services for referees

Of four Japanese match officials at a 2012 World Cup Asian third-round qualifier between South Korea and Kuwait, two received the massages. South Korea won the game 2-0.

Armenian PM says ties with EU and Eurasian Economic Union "not a zero-sum game"

Nikol Pashinyan's ambitions to bring Armenia into the EU have strained ties with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union.

Hungary unveils rescue package for farmers hit by drought and heatwave

Government says €291mn rescue package intended to provide immediate financial relief and strengthen the resilience of the agricultural sector long-term.

News

North Korea's sanctions-busting economy books a $22bn windfall since the Ukraine war began

North Korea has earned up to $22bn in foreign currency since 2022, new estimates show, driven by cyber theft, arms sales to Russia and easing isolation.

Colombia inaugurates hardline lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella as president

Colombia inaugurates president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella, a hardline criminal defence lawyer nicknamed “the Tiger,” on August 7, ending four years of leftist government and swinging Bogota firmly toward Washington.

Ukraine loses more than half its Kyiv-region warehouse space to Russian strikes

Russia has destroyed more than half of the Kyiv region's pre-war warehouse capacity since its full-scale invasion began, after strikes overnight on August 5 hit 10 warehouse facilities totalling about 100,000 square metres, according to Ukrainian...

Europe demands Turkey certify its gas exports are not Russian in origin

European buyers are demanding that Turkey provide documentation proving natural gas transported through Turkish territory is not of Russian origin, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in an interview.

ADNOC Logistics & Services acquires 11 gas and crude tankers

ADNOC Logistics & Services announced that it has acquired 11 gas and crude oil tankers for $1.3bn, in a move meant to support ADNOC's growing production, trading and export operations.

North Korea's sanctions-busting economy books a $22bn windfall since the Ukraine war began

Latest Updates

News

North Korea has earned up to $22bn in foreign currency since 2022, new estimates show, driven by cyber theft, arms sales to Russia and easing isolation.

Colombia inaugurates president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella, a hardline criminal defence lawyer nicknamed “the Tiger,” on August 7, ending four years of leftist government and swinging Bogota firmly toward Washington.

Russia has destroyed more than half of the Kyiv region's pre-war warehouse capacity since its full-scale invasion began, after strikes overnight on August 5 hit 10 warehouse facilities totalling about 100,000 square metres, according to Ukrainian...

European buyers are demanding that Turkey provide documentation proving natural gas transported through Turkish territory is not of Russian origin, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in an interview.

ADNOC Logistics & Services announced that it has acquired 11 gas and crude oil tankers for $1.3bn, in a move meant to support ADNOC's growing production, trading and export operations.

Tech

Russia's Sber is launching crypto trading infrastructure against the backdrop of tightening Western sanctions.

Chances Ukraine would attack logistics of ecommerce giant moved to Russia's neighbour seen as "zero", but dual-use items in stock would be a worry.

Russia's mobile internet 'whitelist' mode - restricting access to a government-approved list of services - has shifted from an emergency drone-defence measure into a permanent feature of daily life, with only 30.5% of mobile sessions in central...

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on August 4 that for the first time comprehensively regulates the circulation of digital currencies and digital rights in Russia, TASS reported, establishing comprehensive digital currency rules.

Visa has agreed to acquire Israeli digital fraud prevention company BioCatch for $2.4bn in cash in the latest tech deal between Israeli and US tech and finance firms.

Opinion

Ukraine's drone campaign against Russian refineries has rocked not only Russia's own fuel market but those of Central Asia too, Carnegie Politika's Galiya Ibragimova writes, warning the region has little time to avert a full-scale shortage.

Repeated claim a reset with Washington is close at hand has become a domestic political tool rather than a genuine diplomatic goal.

Economic activity data for June confirmed what we saw in the second quarter GDP data: as summer arrived, the Hungarian economy went on holiday.

One of our quirkier rituals is to write every year about why Russians view August as some sort of cursed month and to highlight what could happen this year. What are this year's "unknown unknows?"

The ongoing conflict in the Middle East, along with deficient rainfall, has raised concerns in India’s edible oil market, according to a recent report published in OpenMarkets, a global market insight platform of the CME Group.

Data

A new poll finds corruption now outranks missile strikes as Ukrainians' top concern, while most still oppose Mykhailo Fedorov's dismissal as defence minister.

Trade in goods between Russia and China rose 26.3% year-on-year to $159.2bn in January-July 2026, the Russian Trade Mission in China said on August 7, citing Chinese customs data, Vedomosti reported.

Some 56% of Russians have already decided which party they will vote for in September's State Duma election, according to July survey data from state pollster VTsIOM, Vedomosti reported on August 7.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has slipped to sixth place in a new public trust ranking of the country's political and military leaders, behind four military figures and his own former defence minister, according to a new poll

Stronger new business gains. Cost inflation weakest in months. Confidence, however, retreats to six-month low.

Features

Recent verdicts handed down by the Bandung District Court in Indonesia mark the formal conclusion of the first trial phase of one of the most elaborate cross-border human trafficking networks uncovered in Southeast Asia in recent years.

Iran and Oman have reached an understanding on the geographic coordinates for a shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, with a joint announcement being finalised, Iran's foreign ministry said on August 5. But the emerging deal would hand...

Russia's Aerospace Forces launched 8,385 glide bombs at Ukraine in July, up 1.4% from June, an average of 270 a day - a crude, wildly inaccurate weapon that Russia can afford to fire indiscriminately because it carries up to 1,500 kg of explosive...

Ukraine's stockpile of air-defence interceptor missiles is running down to zero this week, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's mounting desperation as the hunt for replacement ammunition fails is becoming impossible to hide, with the...

The US Department of Defense is drafting a new nuclear strategy weighing tactical nuclear weapons against Russia and China, NBC News reported on August 5, landing against a backdrop of Russia's 2024 doctrine loosening and 2026 nuclear signalling,...

Blogs

Dubious rise to the top is questioned. Watchdog says remarks “incompatible with foreign policy vision”.

Tourist visas denied based on highly subjective assessments of financial means and intentions to use “return” section of plane ticket.

The stochastic war continues to escalate into a brutal tit-for-tat missile war with both sides continuously rolling out new and improved weapons that could eventually lead to a direct clash between Nato and Russia.

The tit-for-tat missile war escalated at the weekend after Ukraine hit the largest distribution centre belonging to Wildberries, the “Amazon of Russia.” The Kremlin hit back the next day with a massive drone and missile barrage.

What is in store for Ukraine? There are two starkly different possibilities. It can become Finland — a country that lost a war, lost a tenth of its territory, swallowed neutrality, and then got rich. Or it can become Afghanistan.

bneGREEN

Peter Magyar says the former government was aware for years that Hungary's electricity system was under strain but failed to address the risks.

Electric vehicles displaced about 1.7mn barrels a day (b/d) of oil consumption worldwide in 2025, up from 0.4mn b/d in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency's Global EV Outlook 2026, published in June.

Renewables were the single largest source of global energy-supply growth in 2025, outpacing coal, oil and gas for the first time this century outside a recession year, according to the Energy Institute's Statistical Review of World Energy

China's installed power generation capacity has passed 4 terawatts (TW), the National Energy Administration (NEA) said on June 25 - making it the first country to reach the milestone.

Fires are spreading through difficult and inaccessible terrain, making firefighting operations more challenging.

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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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