ALKEME Acquires Robert Bell Insurance Brokers

Briton Johnny Gibbs has been in Australia for six months, surfing and working part-time – like countless other young people drawn to the country’s pristine beaches and laid-back way of life. He is one of thousands that venture Down Under on so-called “working holiday visas” – a chance to work, and play, in Australia for as long as three years. But the future for some backpackers is now in doubt, following the government’s announcement of plans to cut the number of visas issued – and detain...

Japan’s wartime kamikaze pilots remain among the most recognisable symbols of the Pacific war: young men flying aircraft into Allied ships on missions from which they were not expected to return. Far less well-remembered are the fukuryu – suicide frogmen trained in the closing months of World War II to walk into the sea with mines on bamboo poles, then wait beneath the waves for an Allied invasion fleet. Kanade Hamamoto was one of many Japanese people who had never heard of them, despite...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is caught in an energy policy bind with no easy exit. Cutting Russian oil imports to avoid potential new US tariffs could increase fuel prices ahead of key regional elections, or stress government finances. Maintaining such purchases could cripple Indian exports to its largest market. India, the world’s third-largest oil importer and among the biggest buyers of Russian crude, reacted unusually strongly on Thursday to a US congressional bill that would allow...

Chinese researchers have made early strides in pushing semiconductor processing nodes below 3-nm using older lithography technology, as more advanced extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) tools from ASML remain blocked under US sanctions. The breakthrough marks the latest progress in China’s drive to chart an alternative path to advanced chipmaking amid US export restrictions. Under current export control rules, Dutch equipment giant ASML is barred from selling its state-of-the-art EUV machines...

In Silicon Valley and beyond, the architects of artificial intelligence are increasingly warning about the risks it poses to humanity. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wants the industry to slow down. A former engineer at his company, who also worked at its rival OpenAI, told reporters after quitting earlier this month that he was “genuinely frightened” unchecked AI development might mean “we could all die in the immediate future”. Even Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist known...

President Lee Jae Myung’s comments followed President Trump’s repeated demand for “a little hand” from South Korea, a decades-old American ally.

President Trump has gotten no love back yet from Kim Jong-un. He could turn to Xi Jinping, China’s leader, to help set up a summit when Mr. Xi visits Washington next week.

From church vandalism to grave desecration, assaults against Christian minorities are increasing in the large state of West Bengal since the BJP, an RSS offshoot, came to power in May.

The motivations of individual women who join militant organizations cannot be reduced to a single explanation. The organizational incentives are easier to identify.

The Chinese narrative attempts to erase the independent agency Tibet exercised before 1951, framing Shipki La as a historical link between China and India (not Tibet and India).

Even as investment tops 327 billion rupees, firms at Allama Iqbal Industrial City report inadequate wastewater infrastructure, unreliable utilities, and no public transport.

A combination of media misunderstandings, Chinese distortions, and Dutch mistakes raise the risk that Europeans draw the wrong conclusions about economic security.