Author: viking

In the town of O’Smach, along Cambodia’s northern border with Thailand, stands a compound of abandoned buildings that were battered by shelling during recent weeks of armed clashes.
The site, now occupied by Thai troops, had served as one of Cambodia’s notorious scam centres, according to Thai officials. A six-storey building, shown to journalists and international observers on Monday during a trip organised by the Thai military, is scattered with documents, equipment and personal belongings,…

Ireland’s renewable energy schemes will have a clearer policy direction after it was confirmed that bidding companies will have to prove their green business and cybersecurity credentials in order to be eligible, according to experts.

Aviation leaders tackled barriers to growth and the impact of geopolitical tensions on the eve of the Singapore Airshow on Monday, while reaffirming pledges to reduce emissions.
Supply chain problems were hurting global airlines and would remain for some time to come, the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) warned industry leaders and regulators.
“This disruption continues to have a major ⁠impact,” IATA Director General Willie Walsh said at the Changi Aviation Summit,…

A woman in Indonesia’s Aceh province collapsed after being caned 140 times last week for extramarital sex and drinking alcohol in one of the harshest sharia punishments on record.
The woman and her partner were struck with a rattan cane in a public park in Aceh province on Thursday as dozens watched, Agence France-Presse reported. Each received 100 lashes for extramarital sex and another 40 for consuming alcohol, according to Banda Aceh sharia police chief Muhammad Rizal.
Three female officers…

As Southeast Asia accelerates into electric vehicle manufacturing, industry leaders in the Philippines say their country risks falling behind neighbours that have moved quickly to support the sector, with policy uncertainty raising doubts about Manila’s commitment to long-term growth.
Those concerns sharpened last month when President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr vetoed 92.5 billion pesos (US$1.56 billion) in unprogrammed appropriations from the 2026 national budget, a move that also swept up funding…

From the principled and the populist to the outright eccentric, Thailand goes to the polls on February 8 with its main prime ministerial candidates wielding lofty promises to turn the country’s flagging fortunes around.
Here are the main contenders and some of their policies. Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut – People’s Party
Better known as “Teng”, the former tech executive took over leadership of the People’s Party in 2024 aged just 37. He leads them into the election as the most popular candidate to…

At an Indian gourmet food store, Avanti Mehta is organising a blind tasting of drinks sourced from France, Italy and India. No, this is not wine, it is water.
Participants use tiny shot glasses to check the minerality, carbonation and salinity in samples of Evian from the French Alps, Perrier from southern France, San Pellegrino from Italy and India’s Aava from the foothills of the Aravalli mountains.
“They will all taste different … you should be choosing a water that can give you some sort of…

Muhammad Syafiq, a 25-year-old banker from Kuala Lumpur, has started noticing something recently that felt like “real politics” compared with the soft sell of an election campaign poster at train stations in the Malaysian capital.
“One government programme I think is pretty solid is the People’s Income Initiative, or IPR [Inisiatif Pendapatan Rakyat], where small vendors use vending machines to sell food and drinks,” he told This Week in Asia, pointing to what he described as affordable…

The Competition and Markets Authority’s interim report on the UK’s civil engineering sector signals potentially significant implications for the industry, as it sets out early findings and proposed remedies aimed at addressing weaknesses in funding stability, procurement capability and regulatory processes, according to experts at Pinsent Masons.

Legal experts have highlighted the challenges businesses face in allocating liability for harms that might arise from use of AI, but their paper also gives useful examples that could guide their – and judges’ – understanding of how existing English law might apply, according to technology law specialists.