India’s faster-than-expected economic expansion of 7.8% in the June quarter is under scrutiny after a former government official alleged the reading was artificially boosted by compressing the prior year’s figures.

Many major economies such as the U.S., China and Japan are seeing their growth cool down due to adverse trade conditions, geopolitical uncertainties and high energy prices. Not so with India, the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

Subhash Chandra Garg, who served as finance secretary between 2017 and 2019, has claimed that India’s gross domestic product (in current prices) for the April-June quarter of 2025 was lowered by 6 trillion rupees ($63.5 billion) to 80 trillion in the recent data. That reduction, he said, means the latest quarter’s GDP of 88.27 trillion rupees comes out more favorably in a year-over-year comparison.

India’s chief economic advisor V Anantha Nageshwaran, in an interview with local media on Thursday, said such an approach is “cherry-picking” data. He said the latest GDP figures were compiled using the financial year ending in March 2023 as the new base, and a change in methodology led to revisions to last year’s quarterly data.

Some quarter numbers may get “bumped up” while some may be “bumped down” as part of the statistical revision, Nageshwaran said, adding that people should focus on consistency.

The finance ministry did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment. It shared a link to Nageshwaran’s comments in local media.

Garg on Thursday told CNBC that a change in methodology does not explain “what went out of the production to bring down the value of last year’s GDP by six trillion rupees.” He argued that so far, the government has not explained what has led to the “missing GDP.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political rivals on the same day backed Garg, with the Indian National Congress party claiming that the GDP over the last four years has been “revised down by 43 lakh crore ($455 billion).”

These are large “corrections” and imply that an excess of goods and services was added to the GDP and has now been removed, the political party said in a post on Thursday.

India Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, in response to skepticism over the GDP figures, has said that “India’s 7.8% growth is a reality.”

In a report last year, the International Monetary Fund had raised concerns over the accuracy of the Indian government’s economic data and assigned it a “C grade,” its second-lowest rank. To address some of the major concerns, such as an outdated base year and the use of wholesale price indices and single deflation for calculating inflation, the country adopted a new statistical framework in February.

“India’s GDP data still relies heavily on formal-sector corporate data, while a significant part of the informal economy has to be estimated,” Reema Bhattacharya, head of Asia research at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC.

This gap often fuels skepticism around the headline numbers, which don’t necessarily match up with what people are seeing on the ground, she added.

The IMF did not comment on the controversy around India’s latest GDP print.

Experts told CNBC that Garg’s argument is technically unsound as it compares figures from two different base years, but some, like Anil Sood, professor and co-founder of Mumbai-based Institute of Advanced Studies in Complex Choices, said “estimation errors” in past data are a concern.

After the new series was released in February, Sood said all the previous GDP and GVA (gross value added) numbers were revised down.

“What the new series shows is that the estimated size of the Indian economy was smaller than what was projected under the old series,” he said.

The GDP figures in the first quarter are “looking better,” primarily due to the better methodology, Anubhuti Sahay, head of India economic research at Standard Chartered Bank, told CNBC, but argued that base revisions did not have “much role” to play.

“It is not that the GDP number is only froth,” Sahay said, adding that the percentage of growth can be debated, but the number shouldn’t be dismissed outright.

India’s key high-frequency indicators are “holding up undoubtedly,” despite the global energy price shocks and supply chain disruptions, she said, while warning that the growth was not uniform and quality jobs, the impact of El Nino on the rural economy are some of the challenges.

Meanwhile, softening is still seen over the rest of the year. Global brokerages Morgan Stanley and Citi have forecast economic growth of 7.3% for the 12 months ending in March 2027.

The economic activity in the June quarter was unusually driven by a sharp rise in investments and stronger exports, while household consumption improved at a relatively mild pace, and this is “not sustainable” amid current geopolitical risks, said Jaydeep Mukherjee, professor of economics at Great Lakes Institute of Management Chennai.

Shein built its global fast-fashion business by selling low-priced, real-time trend-driven clothing and bringing new designs to market quickly, while cutting inventory wastage.

But the conditions that helped fuel its rapid growth are changing. 

Shares of the Singapore-headquartered retailer were trading lower for a fourth straight day, and have lost 17.5% since their Hong Kong market debut on Tuesday.

The initial market reaction puts the focus on whether Shein can reaccelerate growth as the low-cost model that fueled its rise comes under increasing pressure.

Analysts say Shein will need to show it can compete on more than price, localize more of its operations and find new sources of growth outside its key U.S. and European markets. 

“I think it shows they’ve got a lot of work to do to prove to investors that this is a business that can continue to grow,” said Josh Gilbert, lead analyst for APAC at investment platform eToro.

$5 dress gets harder to sell

Shein reported revenue of $41.8 billion in 2025, compared with $38.7 billion a year earlier. In the first quarter of this year, the company posted a net loss of $99 million, compared with a profit a year earlier.

“The U.S. and Europe are still the key markets, but the easy part of the growth is over,” Gilbert said.

Both markets have tightened rules that had allowed low-value imports to enter duty-free. The U.S. ended de-minimis treatment for shipments from China and Hong Kong in May last year, while the EU also stopped its customs-duty exemption for low-value imports worth up to 150 euros in July.

The EU has introduced a temporary 3-euro duty per item. Nearly 5.9 billion low-value items entered the EU in 2025, according to European Commission data.

“The structural advantage that let Shein ship a $5 dress halfway around the world for next to nothing has disappeared,” Gilbert said.

The changes raise a bigger challenge for Shein as it lifts prices. Gilbert said that as duties push prices up, shoppers who came to Shein primarily for price could start comparing on quality, “a fight Shein hasn’t had to have before.” 

Bryan Gildenberg, managing director at Retail Cities, said Shein’s ability to tie technology to a network of manufacturers that can respond in real time remains an advantage, but competitors are narrowing the gap.

“That to me still looks like a competitive advantage, although the fast fashion industry digitally is catching up,” Gildenberg told CNBC.

Limits of Shein’s model

Marguerite LeRolland, senior global insight manager for fashion at market intelligence company Euromonitor International, said Shein will need to redefine its value proposition beyond “low prices and constant novelty,” including by curating its marketplace offerings and developing services.

LeRolland also said Shein needs to improve its brand image as regulators and public opinion become increasingly critical of the company.

“The business will have to pivot its model,” LeRolland said, pointing to greater localization as tariffs and regulatory requirements put pressure on Shein’s cost advantage in the U.S. and Europe. Shein will also need to gain scale across Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America to sustain global growth, she added.

But expanding into new markets brings its own challenges. While Gildenberg pointed to Southeast Asia as one potential area for growth, he said it was probably one of the most competitive e-commerce markets in the world.

American reliance on China for key components used to power data centers is coming under increasing scrutiny as Washington and Beijing battle for AI supremacy, raising the prospect of higher costs and worsening supply chain shortages for the AI buildout.

U.S. hyperscalers are racing to build multibillion-dollar data centers for AI, and Chinese firms supply large portions of the parts needed to develop these facilities. These include transformers, switchgear, batteries and optical tech, analysts told CNBC.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week declaring a national emergency around the “extraordinary foreign threat” to the U.S. involving bulk-power system equipment produced abroad. The order authorized the Energy Department to prohibit or impose conditions on certain transactions involving some components used in the grid and data centers.

Tensions between the U.S. and China over AI have ratcheted up as Chinese AI models become more advanced and their adoption grows across the globe. While American companies produce the most advanced chips and hardware used for AI, Chinese influence on the tech used to power data centers is considered a strategic vulnerability for the U.S.

“Scrutiny over China’s presence in the U.S. data centre power stack has only risen over the past eight months or so, this is a shift from the previous focus that centred solely on the compute stack,” Laveena Iyer, senior analyst at The Economist Group, told CNBC.

The power stack in a data center is critical to keeping the facility running with minimal downtime. It includes transformers, which change high-voltage electricity from the grid to lower levels needed for servers and cooling equipment. Switchgear are centralized systems that feature switches, fuses and circuit breakers and batteries are needed for backup power.

“There are a few key areas that the AI infrastructure buildout is increasingly dependent on Chinese imports,” Ben Boucher, senior analyst, supply chain for Wood Mackenzie, told CNBC. “The most notable ones include substation transformers, which hyperscalers typically have on site to step transmission voltage down.”

“The mid-term exposure is concentrated in grid connectors: transformers, switchgear, and batteries,” Yury Dvorkin, associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, told CNBC.

“China’s share of certain transformer and switchgear categories runs near 30%, and it accounts for over 40% of U.S. battery imports,” he added. “Our analysis shows that there is also a deeper exposure upstream: copper, electrical steel, and battery cathode materials.”

Optical technology, which uses light through fiber-optic cables instead of electrical signals through copper wires to transmit huge quantities of data, is also an area where China dominates.

Companies including Zhongji Innolight and Eoptolink lead global data center optical transceiver revenue, with Chinese firms collectively accounting for roughly two-thirds of global unit supply, according to research firm Counterpoint.

Trump said that “transformers, transmission lines and conductors, substations, high-voltage circuit breakers, power control electronics” were “essential to the national defense” in April as part of a Presidential Determination.

Washington is scrambling to reduce reliance on Chinese suppliers as it rapidly develops the infrastructure needed to power AI.

“Since my first term, the threat to the United States regarding foreign supply of bulk-power system electric equipment has become even more acute,” said Trump in a statement connected to the executive order published last week.

“The rapid growth of advanced manufacturing, data centers, artificial intelligence, and defense production has increased the Nation’s dependence on abundant, reliable electricity and magnified the consequences of a successful attack or supply disruption on the bulk-power system,” he added.

“We oppose overstretching the concept of national security to go after foreign enterprises,” a spokesperson for the U.K. embassy of the People’s Republic of China told CNBC. “We hope relevant countries will provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies.”

U.S. data center capacity is forecast to grow from 62 GW in March 2026 to 152 GW by 2030 due to high-density AI workloads, S&P Global said in June.

“Reshoring manufacturing that’s critical to our national and economic security has been a top priority for President Trump, and the Administration continues to deliver with a robust and nimble agenda of tax cuts, tariffs, and deregulation,” a White House spokesperson told CNBC. “Trillions in investments across key sectors – from steel to semiconductors to autos – prove that the Administration’s strategy is paying off.”

Hitachi Energy announced in September 2025 it would invest $1 billion to expand production of critical grid infrastructure in the U.S., including $457 million for a new large power transformer facility to meet demand from the AI buildout. Siemens Energy also said in February it would invest $1 billion in U.S. production for grid and gas turbine equipment for AI infrastructure and data center expansion.

Power inverters produced in foreign countries, which help connect energy sources for AI facilities, were added to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Covered List in July, which features equipment and services the U.S. government has determined pose an unacceptable risk to national security.

The Trump administration is also reportedly drafting a ban on U.S. imports of new Chinese optical transceivers, which allow data to travel at high speed over fiber optic cables between data centers. The FCC, which oversees the telecoms industry, did not respond to a request for comment and the White House did not address the report.

While any restrictions on Chinese optical tech companies could boost U.S. firms like Lumentum and Coherent — both of which received $2 billion in investment each from Nvidia in March — analysts cautioned that scaling manufacturing to meet new demand could come with challenges.

“Western competitors like Coherent and Lumentum possess advanced photonic designs, but currently lack the cleanroom capacity, automated packaging infrastructure, and yield scale required to absorb Innolight and Eoptolink’s volume within a 12-to-24-month horizon,” Neil Shah, VP research at Counterpoint said in an August report.

An optical transceiver ban would mean that U.S. hyperscalers will have to look for alternatives locally, potentially pushing up costs, said The Economist Group’s Iyer.

Power transformers and substations are already in an estimated market shortage of 15% and 8%, respectively, in 2026, and restrictions on the use of units made in China are set to further exacerbate the supply chain challenges, according to Wood Mackenzie research.

“A bulk of the impacts will be centered around data centers who have been using Chinese units to minimize lead times,” Wood Mackenzie’s Boucher said in a blog from August.

“The 100 MVA+ segment is where the shortage is already most acute, and it is precisely where data centers have been turning to Chinese manufacturers to manage lead times,” he added.

But political will in Washington to reduce dependencies on China in the power stack is rising, Iyer added. “The U.S. administration appears keen to de-risk its AI infrastructure before Chinese tech is fully embedded in it, quite like the 5G rollout where removing Chinese telecoms gear later on led to network rollout delays and rising costs for telecoms companies.”

Anthropic’s head of threat intelligence, Jacob Klein, says his company welcomes competition. But what’s coming out of the Chinese market, he says, is something much closer to theft.

Foreign adversaries, Klein says, are accessing Anthropic’s Claude models — a process known as distillation — to train competing technology and sell copycat versions at a lower price. While distillation can be done legally, Klein says that’s not what’s happening here.

“There’s an entire illicit ecosystem to try to gain access to Claude and other models,” Klein told CNBC. “This ecosystem goes through any means necessary to evade our controls, so they can spin up accounts at extreme scale.”

Distillation has become a controversial topic across the artificial intelligence landscape. Depending on how it’s conducted, the practice can allow a model developer to use the output from another company’s technology to create a competitive offering at a tiny fraction of the cost. In the U.S., some factions in the tech sector have urged policymakers to steer clear of regulations so that the best and most cost-effective AI can win, while others are lobbying for a crackdown on what they see as theft of intellectual property.

In an April memo, the Trump administration wrote distillation that undermines American research and proprietary information  is “unacceptable,” and said it would explore “a range of measures to hold foreign actors accountable.”

The threat is intensifying at a pivotal moment for Anthropic. The 5-year-old company has soared to a private market valuation of close to $1 trillion and is expected to go public as soon as October, CNBC has reported.

Anthropic is singling out Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI as one of the companies it says is ripping off its technology. Moonshot’s Kimi K3 model took the tech world by storm in July with its cheaper, frontier-level AI offering. It’s been widely adopted in Silicon Valley, thanks in part to its lower price point and ability for companies to tailor it more easily.

Klein said Kimi K3 was illegally trained off the newest version of Claude.

“We’ve seen a fair amount of this from China,” Klein said. “This is something that the industry writ large is dealing with.”

Earlier this year, Anthropic alleged Moonshot and two other Chinese AI labs – DeepSeek and MiniMax – distilled its frontier AI models. Anthropic has also accused Alibaba, which makes the Qwen family of models, of conducting a massive “distillation attack” to illegally capture capabilities from Claude. OpenAI and Google have both published reports on distillation and claim they’re fighting the same issue.

Alibaba, DeepSeek, Moonshot and MiniMax didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Cybersecurity experts told CNBC that, in addition to China, the threat is also coming from countries like Iran, Russia and North Korea, where use of Claude, Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT are restricted by the companies due to sanctions.

Klein said many labs in those regions “go through illicit means and fraudulent means to try to gain access to a model.”

One way people are getting around those restrictions is by turning to the dark web, where they can find marketplaces of stolen credit card information and compromised AI accounts. Klein said companies like Moonshot are “spinning up tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of fraudulent accounts.”

Once they’ve accessed Anthropic’s systems, they’re able to ask the models questions and collect responses, which they can use to train their own model, often called the student, Klein said.

A clear sign that distillation is taking place is that a user could be asking thousands of questions, rather than dozens and potentially even creating thousands of accounts to do the same, producing a whack-a-mole scenario for the AI labs, Klein said.

“It’s very hard to fully stop this as a problem, but I think slowing it down is good and worthwhile,” Klein said, adding that foreign companies are able to use the technology with few guardrails.

He pointed to fears like surveillance and possible use in a biological weapons program, and noted what he described as a specific campaign from a China-based entity that was conducting espionage at scale using Anthropic’s technology.

“There is a national security concern at play if malicious actors, bad actors who we don’t trust are gaining access to a more capable models than they could have otherwise through the act of distillation.”

Travis Lanham, technology chief at cybersecurity firm Armadin and a former Google engineer, said bad actors often go undetected because AI companies are under pressure to make their platforms as accessible as possible as they race against the competition.

“These companies are serving billions of requests,” Lanham said, about the big AI labs. “The millions are relatively small compared to everything and it’s just sneaking in and trying to look like the rest of the crowd.”

Klein acknowledges that, for Anthropic, widespread competition is to be expected and that there are legal methods of distillation. That generally means gaining permissions and following the law on matters like IP and export controls.

“I think competition is great,” Klein said. “The concern here is if you are taking our model, distilling it through fraudulent means, creating millions of fake accounts using stolen credit cards and stolen infrastructure, to then produce a model that doesn’t have safeguards in place.”

WATCH: Anthropic pushes into physical world

New Zealand’s exporters are diverting shipments originally bound for China into other markets as demand from the country’s biggest trading partner cools, an official from the antipodean country’s central bank said Thursday.

“We’ve certainly seen many of our exporters looking at, and actively diverting, product that they would have been looking to put into China, into other markets as well,” said Karen Silk, assistant governor at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. “It is not the only export market.”

Silk’s remarks reflect how the slowdown in China’s economy has rippled through to businesses elsewhere. Growth in the world’s second-largest economy slowed to multi-year lows in the second quarter, weighed down by tepid domestic demand and a prolonged real estate slump. She spoke to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday, a day after the central bank delivered its second consecutive interest rate hike to curb inflation.

China has been New Zealand’s largest trading partner and top market, buying roughly a quarter of New Zealand’s total exports over the 12 months ending in July. New Zealand’s China-bound goods in 2025 were close to double that of the next two biggest export markets — the U.S. and Australia — combined, according to the New Zealand China Council.

New Zealand supplies more than half of China’s dairy imports, a dominance built under a bilateral trade agreement since 2008, that later granted duty-free access for all its dairy products in 2024. Any sustained pullback in Chinese demand tests how quickly that trade can be diversified.

The Middle East war and the resulting shipping disruption through the Strait of Hormuz drove up global commodity costs, further squeezing Beijing’s own appetite for commodity imports.

Elevated global commodity prices, including for wheat, have handed New Zealand’s pasture-based farmers a relative cost advantage even as China-bound volumes soften, Silk said.

“In some ways, New Zealand actually benefits from a price perspective when we have those supply factors going on globally,” she said.

The RBNZ raised its key interest rate by a quarter percentage point to 2.75% on Wednesday to combat inflation, and signaled another increase could follow by year’s end.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged airlines to avoid Russian airspace as Kyiv expands its drone operations.

“We want to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer, and everyone who still uses Russia’s key airports: Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday in his evening address.

His warning follows Ukraine stepping up its long-range drone strikes on Russian oil refineries and logistics hubs, as it seeks to raise the cost of the war for Moscow.

Ukraine’s president said it is important that airlines currently flying into airports in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other key destinations in Russia take note of the elevated airspace risk.

Zelenskyy insisted that civilian aviation would not be in danger, before adding: “There will simply be drones in Russia’s skies on a scale that has to be taken into account.”

Most Western commercial airlines do not fly into Russian airspace due to Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Some Chinese and Gulf state carriers, including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, continue to use Russian airspace, however.

In response to Zelenskyy’s comments, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the threat amounted to a declaration of “state terrorism.” He added that the Kremlin would continue intensifying its own attacks on Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday, Putin also dismissed the idea of resuming negotiations, saying: “You don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

Ukraine closed its airspace to civilian aircraft after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and our other institutions will provide international organizations with full information about the dangers in Russian airspace. Drone-infested skies are no place for civilian aviation,” Zelenskyy said.

Earlier in the week, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it is planning “massive strikes” on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, amplifying fears of another winter assault.

Russian forces have ramped up missile strikes on Ukrainian cities as Kyiv faces a shortage of air defense equipment.

Nepal’s renowned adventure tourism industry faces a sobering reality check, according to local mountain tourist associations and hostel owners, following devastating flooding on Nepal’s border with China.

The death toll from last week’s disaster, which tore through villages along the Nepal-Tibet border, stood at 987, authorities said Tuesday. Nearly 4,250 people were missing, they added.

The catastrophe began on Aug. 26 in the Himalayas, a mountain range that contains some of the world’s highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest.

A massive glacial collapse in northern Nepal triggered a landslide of ice and rock and meltwater into the valleys below, with powerful floods sweeping away or cutting off entire communities and damaging roads, bridges and hydropower facilities.

The tragedy, which prompted Nepali Prime Minister Balendra Shah to push for international climate action, underscores the growing impact of climate change on adventure tourism.

Rajendra Bahadur Lama, general secretary of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, described the floods as a “serious warning” for Nepal’s tourism industry.

“This disaster should not be seen as the end of Nepal’s adventure tourism; it should be a wake-up call,” Lama told CNBC in an email. “Climate change is changing the Himalayas, and Nepal must now build a tourism industry that is not only adventurous, but safer, smarter and climate-resilient.”

Tourism infrastructure, routes and destinations will need to be assessed and redesigned with better protection for floods, landslides and other extreme events, Lama said, noting that international tourists are “increasingly conscious” of climate change and safety.

To rebuild from the catastrophe, Nepal, one of the least developed countries in South Asia, has reportedly estimated a cost of between $4 billion and $5 billion, equivalent to nearly one-tenth of its economy.

The tourism industry is a core tenet of the Nepalese economy and serves as a major source of foreign exchange and revenue. The country of nearly 30 million is world-renowned as a hotspot for trekking and mountaineering, as well as a premier global destination for spiritual travel.

Tourists have cancelled bookings in the last several days, however, just as Nepal heads into its most popular travel season from Sept. 15 to Nov. 15, said Saroj Bhandari, owner of the Wander Thirst hostel in the capital city of Kathmandu, more than five hours’ drive from the flood site.

Bhandari expects that, at best, his 122-bed hostel will reach 60% occupancy during that peak tourist season this year, down from 100% last year. Most of the cancellations have come from European tourists, he said.

“This time only the one part of Nepal is little damaged by the flood and a lot of the tourists think it’s not safe to go to Nepal because of that,” he said, noting the country does not only consist of mountains but also flatland.

Bhandari said Nepal is nearing the end of its rainy monsoon season. He emphasized the government’s system for landslide alerts and road closures, noting the state typically shares warnings about floods and landslides with the hostel every day, which the hostel then passes on to guests.

While he was not aware whether China had sent an alert, Bhandari said people who first saw the flood had warned those living downstream of it, but that those downstream had underestimated its size.

A spokesperson for Nepal’s government was not immediately available to respond when contacted by CNBC. China’s Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, has said it is preparing a third batch of emergency aid for Nepal and will continue to “stand firmly together” with its neighboring country.

Tibet Vista, a regional tour organizer with offices in Nepal and China, meanwhile, said in a statement to CNBC that all its travelers and team members were safe.

“None of our guests were at Gyirong Port when the flooding occurred, and no travelers with Tibet Vista were affected by the disaster,” Tibet Vista said Monday. “We are deeply saddened by what happened, and our thoughts are with the victims, their families, and everyone affected by this tragedy.”

The U.S. embassy in China on Aug. 30 noted the risk of further landslides and flooding due to additional rainfall through Sept. 1. Beijing had sent Premier Li Qiang to visit the flood site on Aug. 27 and focused a regular month-end meeting of top leaders on response to the catastrophe, with a readout noting the disaster occurred in a cold plateau region surrounded by glaciers and potential hazards.

An assistant secretary-general at the United Nations on Tuesday warned that millions of people in the Himalayan region were at risk from glacial floods, with fears that entire riverbanks might become effectively uninhabitable.

“Technology cannot move fast enough to prevent loss along these massive river systems that catch the overflow of the glacier lakes,” Kanni Wignaraja, an assistant secretary-general at the U.N., told Reuters in an interview.

Researchers have previously identified 47 dangerous glacial lakes in Nepal, China and India, although the real number has since been estimated to be far higher.

“The devastating impacts of the Nepal floods cannot be understated,” Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (CS3), told CNBC by email.

“While the precise chain of events that led to this disaster will take time to reconstruct, the wider picture is already clear: the world’s frozen regions are losing mass, and as they do, they are becoming less stable.”

Indeed, as the climate warms, Buontempo said the loss of glacial ice around the world would have important consequences for mountainous landscapes.

“Glaciers buttress the slopes around them; frozen ground holds fractured rock in place; meltwater collects in lakes behind fragile natural dams. As the ice thins and the permafrost thaws, mountains that were held together for millennia begin to loosen their grip,” he added.

This process typically happens slowly, but sometimes it can happen suddenly — such as when a massive ice and rock collapse onto Switzerland’s Birch Glacier buried the Alpine village of Blatten in May last year.

“The Nepal floods underscore the importance of continued satellite monitoring for early-warning signs, to inform future risk planning and be able to save villages, as in the case of Blatten where residents were evacuated before the landslide. It is evident that the climate of the past has shifted – we must redouble our efforts in preparing for the future,” Buontempo said.

Shares of Japanese beverage maker Ito En surged more than 8% Wednesday, following its fiscal first-quarter results, bucking a broader drop in the country’s stocks.

The maker of Oi Ocha green tea on Tuesday reported operating profit of 10.2 billion yen ($63.7 million) for the three months from May through July, up 22% from a year earlier. Revenue rose 3.3% to 135.18 billion yen over the same period.

Operating profit came in well above Citi’s forecast of 7.7 billion yen. The bank had expected profit to decline on the back of higher raw material and tea leaf costs, as well as expenses related to the company’s vending machine business.

More than half of the 2.5 billion yen profit beat was powered by the company’s vending machine business, which posted a 4% operating profit margin compared to the bank’s expectations for a loss. The company said it integrated its vending machine-related businesses in May to improve profitability and business efficiency. 

Citi called the first-quarter results “positive” for the shares, adding that the May-to-July period is the peak demand season for soft drinks. The bank said that the vending machine business’ profitability was “impressive,” given it had been loss-making until last year. 

The company reported that tea leaves and beverages segment’s operating profit rose 23.5% to 8.99 billion yen, while sales rose 2.7%. It attributed the improved profitability to lower promotional expenses and reduced depreciation, which helped offset rising costs. 

Ito En, whose Oi Ocha brand is marketed globally with baseball star Shohei Ohtani, said it aims to expand its overseas business to more than 60 countries and regions by the fiscal year ending April 2029, from 52 currently. It said sales volumes of beverages and tea bags were increasing in markets where it already operates. 

Ito En held the leading share of Japan’s green tea beverage market in 2025 and accounts for about 25% of crude tea transaction volumes in the country, according to the company. 

Oil prices extended gains Tuesday as tensions in the Middle East escalated, with the U.S. carrying out new strikes against Iran.

Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, were up 4.5% to $94.52 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures added about 5% to $90.03 per barrel, hitting levels not seen since July 24.

U.S. Central Command confirmed earlier reports on Tuesday that the U.S. “forces began striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets in Iran. The strikes follow recent attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members deployed to the region.”

A tanker was struck by three unknown projectiles while transiting Hormuz on Monday, according to an incident report from the the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations Centre. The tanker was sailing in the southern shipping lane close to the Omani coast, the UKMTO said, adding that no casualties were reported.

Iran launched an attack on two American bases in Jordan on Monday in retaliation for the U.S. strike on its Larak Island. American forces targeted two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island on Sunday, reportedly killing three, saying that Tehran intended to launch rockets carrying sea mines into the Hormuz Strait.

The small island, located in the strait, has been a critical military and shipping control point for Iranian forces, helping them keep a firm grip on vessel traffic through one of the world’s most critical maritime routes.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit on Tuesday that Tehran would immediately reciprocate if Washington agreed to return to its commitments under the interim deal signed in June, according to the Iranian Student News Agency.

The back-and-forth hostilities marked the first time that the U.S. and Iran traded strikes in over a month.

While neither side appeared to be seeking a return to full-scale war, both signaled they were prepared to respond to further attacks. “We are going to hit them hard,” President Donald Trump told Fox News on Monday, saying that “there will be a response” to Iran’s attacks on U.S. military bases in the region.

Analysts largely view the U.S. strike on Larak Island as an attempt to break a deadlock rather than a shift in strategy. “By hitting the launchers rather than broader Iranian military infrastructure, the U.S. appears to be punishing a specific behaviour rather than, at least for now, broadening its war aims,” said Ali Vaez, deputy program director at International Crisis Group.

“It is enforcing the blockade,” said Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran, adding that the Trump administration’s goal was to further degrade Tehran’s capabilities to mine the Strait of Hormuz, while focusing on economic coercive measures as the midterm elections approach.

Washington has ramped up pressure to squeeze Iran’s already-torn economy with “secondary sanctions” that punish nations and businesses buying Iranian crude oil. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 finance ministers gathering, that Iran was “lashing out kinetically” because the new sanctions were taking a toll on its economy.

Speaking from the Oval Office on Monday, Trump reportedly said Iran’s financial systems, armed forces, and governing body have been largely degraded. “It doesn’t mean we won’t smack them to see what happens,” the president said.

The war, now stretching into its seventh month, has disrupted global energy supplies and sent shock waves through global financial markets.

“This is fundamentally an endurance contest,” said Brodsky, as Trump has demonstrated an “unpredictability” that should concern the Iranians, and Tehran may lash out more aggressively militarily as the economic pressure mounts.

Correction: WTI hit a high not seen since July 24. A previous version misstated the futures contract.