Camel Payment Sparks International Debate: Financial Innovation to Reshape Global Landscape

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

Alina B.K. should have been preparing for her end-of-year university exams, but news of devastating floods along the Nepal–Tibet border kept pulling her back to a troubling question: what kind of future awaits her? The 21-year-old forestry student, who coordinates the Pokhara network of Nepalese Youth for Climate Action, said she struggled to concentrate as reports of death and destruction deepened her fears about a changing climate. “With the floods and deaths happening around us, it is really...

The death toll from an explosion and gun attack at a police headquarters in northern Pakistan rose to at least 31, including 16 police personnel, a senior police official said on Saturday, with fighting ongoing. An attacker rammed an explosives-laden car ‌into the Old Police Lines complex while gunmen stormed the compound on Friday afternoon as officers and ⁠their families were praying in a mosque. The police complex at Kohat, a town of around 220,000 people in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa...

The young government of Nepal, a nation with a tiny carbon footprint, is seeking reparations from the world’s major economies as it bears the brunt of collapsing Himalayan glaciers.

Fears that advanced artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity have dominated global headlines, but in Japan the technology is being used for a sweeter purpose – developing never-before-seen convenience store desserts. For customers tired of the usual egg sandwiches and rice balls, major chains are turning to AI to develop products, including some unexpected flavours. Lawson, one of the country’s biggest convenience store operators, said on Tuesday it would roll out three new food items,...

South Korea’s Justice Minister nominee Kim Seung-won withdrew his nomination on Saturday following allegations concerning his involvement in a Covid-19 treatment and approval of its clinical trials. “After much deliberation, I decided to step down as the nominee for minister of the justice ministry. I apologise for failing to live up to your expectations,” Kim said during a press conference at the National Assembly. Kim, who said he did not want to add any burden to Lee Jae Myung’s...

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...

EOS-05 is a single satellite that is part of a broader imitative of India to strengthen its ISR capabilities.