Douglas Van Brunt, Recognized by BestAgents.us as a 2023 Top Agent.

An investment surge into artificial intelligence may be helping prop up a global economy battered by energy supply shocks, but the technology’s potential to cull jobs requires swift mitigation if Asia’s youth are to secure a place in the future workforce, delegates were warned at the IMF–World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok on Monday. Soaring energy prices, persistent inflation and mounting debt framed the opening of the week-long summit, which was last hosted in the Thai capital in...

China accounts for about 5 per cent of the equipment and materials directly supplied to the US chip industry when measured by country of manufacture, but its grip on certain rare earths needed for chipmaking is over 90 per cent, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). While 95 per cent of the nearly US$27 billion annual spending by American chipmakers on manufacturing equipment and materials was sourced from companies headquartered in the US, Europe, and Japan, that figure...

Indian factories, smelters and households are being hit by blackouts and rising energy costs as the impact of plunging coal stockpiles at the country’s power stations ripples through the economy. The weakest monsoon since 2015 has curbed hydropower output, while hotter-than-normal weather has buoyed demand for air conditioning and farm irrigation. That has seen coal-fired power stations, which supply about two-thirds of India’s electricity, rapidly burn through their inventories. Smaller...

A former top executive at HSBC has launched an artificial intelligence-driven wealth management start-up, setting her sights on a billion-dollar valuation and betting that AI can transform how individuals manage their investments and finances. Trista Sun, formerly a managing director in the international wealth and premier banking division at HSBC, said in an interview last week that her venture Equora aimed to help investors manage their finances “proactively” with AI agents, addressing...

Malaysians have reacted with sarcasm and disbelief to an Indonesian official’s claim that his country provides the region’s oxygen, as toxic smoke from forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan chokes neighbouring nations. Syahganda Nainggolan, head of Indonesia’s government communications agency, prompted the backlash after invoking his country’s forests when questioned on Saturday about the severe smog that has forced school closures and triggered health warnings across Malaysia and...

With his reformist credentials battered by coalition compromises and a looming general election, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has used his 2027 budget to launch a fresh wave of anti-corruption measures. But as his government nears its four-year mark, analysts warn that restoring public confidence will require more than additional funding and tighter legislative oversight. The measures, announced when Anwar presented Malaysia’s 2027 budget on Friday, include 1.1 billion ringgit (US$269...

Emirati investigators said the co-pilot accused of attacking a captain on a flight to Israel drifted toward extremism during his time as a student in Australia.

Singapore again ranked as the world’s most polluted city on Monday, according to Swiss-based air quality monitor IQAir, as the fires on Borneo and Sumatra islands – intensified by a turbocharged El Nino weather phenomenon – keep emitting toxic haze. The city state has rolled out subsidies for haze-related medical treatment and schools were closed in parts of neighbouring Malaysia, as both countries grapple with persistently unhealthy air quality due to fires in nearby Indonesia. The fires have...

New research has exposed a potential flaw in the memory-saving technology underpinning DeepSeek’s models, marking a rare challenge to a breakthrough that has helped the Chinese artificial intelligence lab close the gap with US rivals OpenAI and Anthropic with its low-cost approach. The findings were published late last month in a paper led by researchers from ByteDance and co-authors affiliated with Princeton University, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. The study,...

A Melbourne man whose Islamic community centre has been linked by prosecutors in the United Arab Emirates to the co-pilot who allegedly attacked the captain of a Flydubai jet has hit out at “false accusations”. The Omani co-pilot, now in custody in the UAE, had drawn inspiration from al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 suicide attacks, and carried out his attempt “with the aim of causing the greatest possible loss of life”, according to the Emirati prosecutor’s findings published by state media last...

European nations that condemn the Taliban government for its human rights record are seeking its help to deport refugees back to Afghanistan.

For his next act, Kim Jones, formerly of Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Dior, is starting a namesake collection. It’s a trend.