A cluster of U.S. drone and military-AI companies used the Singapore Airshow to make a very specific pitch: their next phase of growth lies not in chasing incremental Pentagon programs, but in exporting “Ukraine-proven” unmanned systems to Asian militaries preparing for a more contested Western Pacific.

Several firms that have become emblematic of Silicon Valley’s defense-tech surge, most prominently Anduril and Shield AI, alongside smaller players such as Neros Technologies and established supplier AeroVironment, showcased everything from expendable quadcopters intended for one-way attacks to larger reconnaissance platforms and even conceptual “loyal wingman” jets meant to operate with crewed fighters.

The European Union is trying to defuse the most politically combustible part of its next climate policy step, putting a carbon price on household heating and road-transport fuels by effectively borrowing against future carbon revenues to fund help before the price signal arrives.

The European Commission said the European Investment Bank will “front load” €3 billion to member-state governments so they can start financing measures that reduce exposure for low-income households and small firms ahead of the new carbon market’s launch, with the money to be repaid later from the market’s proceeds once trading begins.

Reliance Industries’ partial discharge of a jet fuel cargo in Italy is being watched less for the barrels involved than for what it signals about how the post-January 21 EU sanctions regime is functioning in practice.

The shipment is India’s first recorded refined-fuel delivery into Europe since the European Union’s new prohibition on petroleum products made from Russian-origin crude took effect, and it tests whether large Indian refiners can keep European outlets open by demonstrating “Russia-free” feedstock provenance.

The Trump administration is trying to do something that policymakers have talked about for years but rarely attempted at scale: turn “critical minerals security” into an allied trade regime with explicit price management.

At a ministerial gathering in Washington attended by delegations from 55 countries, Vice President JD Vance sketched out a preferential “zone” for critical minerals in which members would coordinate “reference prices” at each stage of production and then defend those reference prices as a floor using adjustable tariffs.

TSMC’s decision to bring 3-nanometre production to Kumamoto marks a sharp escalation in Japan’s semiconductor strategy: it is no longer just trying to rebuild “useful” capacity for autos and industrial electronics, but to host a genuinely leading-edge node that sits at the heart of the AI compute boom.

CEO C.C. Wei said the company will mass-produce advanced 3nm chips in southern Japan, and Japanese media have pegged the investment at about $17 billion, an upgrade from earlier plans for the second Kyushu fab that had been oriented toward less advanced 6-12nm manufacturing. In effect, Japan is being added to the very short list of geographies where TSMC is willing to run a top-tier process, alongside Taiwan and (soon) the United States.

Qatar’s new long-term LNG supply agreement with Japan’s JERA is a vivid snapshot of how the LNG market is being re-ordered around two overlapping imperatives: producers’ need to lock in customers for the next expansion wave, and importers’ renewed preference for guaranteed molecules over optionality.

Under the deal, QatarEnergy will supply JERA with 3 million tonnes per year for 27 years starting in 2028, a duration and scale that immediately signals “strategic anchoring,” not opportunistic trading.

Argentina and the United States have formalized a new critical-minerals cooperation agreement aimed at tightening and securing supply chains, a step Buenos Aires is presenting as both an economic accelerator and a strategic upgrade in its relationship with Washington.

Argentina’s foreign ministry framed the deal as a “framework” initiative meant to strengthen value chains and support faster growth, underscoring the sector’s rising weight in the national export mix: mining exports totaled about $6.04 billion in 2025, according to the ministry.

A new scramble for offshore acreage is taking shape along Africa’s Atlantic margin, as the largest international oil companies move to rebuild their exploration pipelines and replace producing barrels that are aging out.

Chevron and TotalEnergies are among the majors taking fresh positions in West and Southern Africa, drawn by a combination of attractive geology, improving contract terms in key states, and a strategic imperative to secure the next wave of large, long-life projects at a time when their legacy inventory is being worked down.