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This marks the first time an Asia-wide environmental hackathon exclusively for undergraduate and master’s students is held in Vietnam. The competition aims to identify and develop technology-driven solutions to pressing environmental challenges, while fostering innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration among the younger generation.

Participants will advance through three main stages: Registration & Preliminary (April 6 – May 17, 2026); Online Training Phase (June 2 – June 28, 2026); and Final Round & Hackathon at VinUniversity (July 2 – July 5, 2026, tentative).

During the Registration & Preliminary Round, participants register online in teams of up to four members. Eligible applicants must be current undergraduate or master’s students at universities across Asia.

Application materials include an idea proposal and an introductory video. Based on evaluation by the Technical Board, the Top 30 teams will be selected to advance to the next stage.

The competition encourages interdisciplinary ideas that integrate multiple fields—including technology, environmental sciences, economics, and social sciences—with the aim of creating solutions that are innovative, feasible, and socially impactful.

Proposed ideas should address one of three key challenge areas: Renewable Energy and Low-Carbon Mobility; Urban Air Quality and Climate Resilience; Water Resources and Climate-Resilient Agriculture.

During the Online Training Round, the Top 30 teams will participate in a series of intensive training sessions and expert consultations with multidisciplinary specialists. These sessions are designed to equip teams with deeper domain knowledge and up-to-date insights on sustainability trends and relevant technologies, enabling them to further refine and expand their proposed solutions.

During the Final Round and Award Ceremony, all travel and accommodation expenses for the Top 30 teams will be fully covered. The teams will take part in a 24-hour hackathon at VinUniversity (Hanoi), where they will further develop and refine their technology-driven solutions before presenting them to the Judging Panel. Based on this evaluation, the Top 9 teams will be selected to advance to the final assessment round, from which the winning team will be determined.

The Chair of the Judging Panel is Prof. Duong Nguyen Vu, Vice Provost of Graduate Education at VinUniversity and Chief Scientific Officer at the Center for AI Research. He had been a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore until July 2025, where he served as Scientific Director at the Air Traffic Management Research Institute (ATMRI). Under his leadership—as Executive Director until 2025—the institute has emerged as a global leader in air traffic management research, thanks in large part to the scientific foundation he helped establish. Before joining NTU, Prof. Vu was the founding Director of the John von Neumann Institute at Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, spearheading university-industry collaborations and championing innovation and entrepreneurship in education.

Prior to returning to Vietnam in 2010, he was Head of Innovative Research and Senior Scientific Advisor at the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (EUROCONTROL). He also advised Vietnam’s Minister of Planning and Investment on innovation strategy, contributing to the establishment of the National Innovation Center.

The competition offers a total prize pool of USD 24,000, comprising one First Prize of USD 8,000, one Second Prize of USD 5,000, two Third Prizes of USD 3,000 each, and five Consolation Prizes of USD 1,000 each. Beyond the awards, participating teams will gain valuable opportunities to engage with leading experts from across the region, expand their professional networks, and strengthen their access to the broader innovation ecosystem.

Dr. Le Thai Ha, Managing Director of the “For Green Future” Foundation and Head of the Organizing Committee, shared: “We believe that ideas with the power to shape the future do not always emerge from large laboratories or well-established institutions; they often arise from the insight, initiative, and determination of young people to make a difference. Through the Asian Hackathon for Green Future, we seek to create a platform where students across the region can transform their environmental awareness into tangible, innovative solutions that deliver meaningful impact for communities and the future.”

The Asian Hackathon for Green Future is expected to foster innovation aligned with sustainable development, while contributing to the development of a new generation of young talents capable of cross-border collaboration to create solutions with lasting, positive impact across the region.

Interested candidates may register for the competition via: https://forms.gle/o3L5BVLExUYKQtGJA

For any inquiries, please contact the Organizing Committee at [email protected] for further assistance.
Hashtag: #ForGreenFutureFund

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

Beijing HyperStrong Technology, one of the country’s biggest battery energy-storage system suppliers, expects shipments to more than double in 2026 as utilities, renewable developers and industrial customers accelerate orders at home and overseas. The company is projecting deliveries of about 70 gigawatt-hours this year, up from 26 gigawatt-hours in 2025, according to comments published on April 6, a jump that underscores how quickly large-scale storage is moving from a supporting technology to a central piece of power infrastructure.

The forecast places HyperStrong among the more aggressive corporate voices in a market that has expanded far beyond its earlier role of smoothing short bursts of solar and wind volatility. Storage is now being bought to stabilise grids, capture cheap midday renewable power, support evening peaks and back up electricity-hungry data centres. Global spending on batteries for power-sector storage is set to reach about $66 billion in 2025, reflecting the scale of investment now flowing into the sector.

HyperStrong’s position helps explain why its target is drawing attention. The company says it has been ranked among the top three global battery energy-storage system integrators and has held a Tier 1 standing with BloombergNEF since 2024. It also says it is the top integrator in China’s mainland market by cumulative installed and contracted project capacity. On its own figures, it has deployed more than 50GWh across more than 400 projects after being founded in 2011.

Demand inside China remains the first pillar of that growth story. The country’s clean-power build-out has been so rapid that storage is becoming essential to absorb output and protect grid reliability. Government data showed wind and solar capacity reached 1.84 billion kilowatts in 2025, accounting for 47.3% of total installed power capacity and overtaking thermal power for the first time. Separate official data showed installed new-type energy storage reached 136 million kilowatts in 2025, after already topping 70 million kilowatts in 2024.

Policy has also shifted in ways that improve the commercial case for storage. Earlier concerns that many projects were being built faster than they could be profitably used have given way to a more market-based system in which capacity payments, peak pricing and wider power-sector reforms are strengthening returns. Analysts have said those changes, combined with subsidies in some provinces, helped turn storage into a far more investable business. That domestic backdrop matters because it gives manufacturers and integrators a large home market from which to scale.

Overseas demand forms the second pillar. Chinese storage suppliers have benefited from orders tied to renewable expansion, ageing grids and the electricity needs of AI-linked data centres in North America, Europe and the Middle East. HyperStrong has been widening its footprint in Europe and said in March that it had projects across 15 countries there. The company has also been visibly pushing its international profile through industry events in Europe and the Americas, a sign that it sees export growth as more than a side business.

Competition, however, is unlikely to ease. China’s battery and clean-tech industries have shown how quickly rapid capacity growth can feed price wars and margin pressure. Rival suppliers ranging from CATL and BYD to other storage specialists are expanding at speed, while trade frictions and policy shifts abroad could complicate the export story. At the same time, technology is moving on: lithium-ion remains dominant for daily cycling, but sodium-ion and longer-duration storage systems are being pushed for specific use cases, especially where mineral costs, safety or duration become bigger factors.

Dentsu has appointed Yusuke Kagohara as chief financial officer for Southeast Asia, handing him a mandate that goes beyond traditional finance oversight as the advertising and marketing group tightens governance and prepares for a more disciplined phase of expansion across one of Asia’s most competitive markets. The appointment took effect immediately, and Kagohara will report to Sanjay Bhasin, chief executive for Southeast Asia.

The move lands at a sensitive point for global agency networks. Growth remains available across Southeast Asia, but margins, client expectations and regulatory scrutiny are all sharpening. Dentsu’s own framing makes clear that this is not merely a replacement hire. Company statements and industry reports describe the post as part of a wider effort to deepen strategic and financial discipline and strengthen governance across the regional cluster, which covers Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The business employs more than 4,000 people in the region under what Dentsu describes as a borderless operating model formed in 2023.

Kagohara arrives with a profile that fits that brief. Before this appointment, he served as group head of risks and controls at Dentsu Group Inc., where he worked on internal controls, enterprise risk management and broader governance and remediation efforts. Earlier assignments included chief financial officer and deputy chief financial officer roles in Beijing and at Dentsu Creative China, experience that gave him exposure to large and complex operating environments in Asia. Industry coverage of the appointment has also highlighted his background in corporate strategy, transformation and all-round finance, suggesting the company wanted someone comfortable with both compliance architecture and commercial execution.

That background matters because agency finance chiefs are no longer judged only on forecasting, cost control and reporting. They are increasingly central to how networks integrate acquisitions, police internal controls, price AI-enabled services and defend profitability while clients demand more measurable returns. Dentsu has been signalling this shift at group level for months. Its global management overhaul announced in February was pitched around stronger execution, while its 2025 integrated report and governance materials emphasised capital discipline, internal investment, productivity and the strengthening of leadership and controls.

Southeast Asia gives that challenge extra complexity. The cluster spans fast-growing but highly uneven markets, each with different media structures, regulatory standards, client mixes and digital maturity. Dentsu has described the region as one of the world’s fastest-growing, and its own ad spend outlook has projected Asia Pacific growth ahead of the wider global economy. In December, the company forecast that global advertising spend would rise 5.1 per cent in 2026 to more than $1 trillion, with Asia Pacific remaining the fastest-growing region. For a network trying to convert that momentum into durable earnings, stronger financial control becomes a strategic tool rather than a back-office function.

Bhasin’s comments underline that point. In remarks carried by multiple reports and company-linked posts, he said growth on its own was not enough and that the business needed expansion that was “accountable, resilient, and built to last”. He described Kagohara’s experience in governance, transformation and complex markets as critical to the next stage of Southeast Asia’s development. Kagohara, for his part, said the region stood out for its scale, complexity and ambition, adding that strong fundamentals were universal even when market conditions varied widely. Those comments indicate a leadership view that the next test for Dentsu is not whether Southeast Asia can grow, but whether it can do so with tighter controls and greater consistency across markets.

The timing also follows a change in the seat Kagohara is filling. Trade reports late last month said Bharti Agrawal, who had served as CFO for Southeast Asia at Dentsu, had moved to Monks as chief financial officer for APAC marketing services. That succession gives the new appointment a sharper operational significance, because it suggests Dentsu moved quickly to avoid drift in a role that sits at the centre of planning, compliance and regional coordination.

In its stock exchange disclosure dated April 4, Tata Steel said the notice, dated March 30, alleges extraction of about 162.4 million tonnes of mineral coal beyond permissible limits during the period from FY2000-01 to FY2006-07. The company said the demand had been framed on grounds similar to those examined by the Supreme Court in the Common Cause versus Union of India litigation, a landmark case that hardened official scrutiny of mining done beyond environmental or statutory limits.

The scale and vintage of the claim are striking. By reaching back more than two decades, the notice underscores how historical mining records, clearances and production caps remain exposed to reinterpretation by regulators long after the ore or coal has been extracted. For Tata Steel, which has spent years simplifying its structure and strengthening its balance sheet while managing volatile steel demand, the notice also revives a regulatory risk investors know well: mining-linked liabilities that can surface suddenly and run into hundreds or thousands of crores.

Tata Steel has taken a firm line in response. In its filing, management said the claim “lacks justification and substantive basis” and indicated it would pursue legal remedies. That wording suggests the company does not see the notice as an immediately payable liability, but as a disputed demand that will have to be tested through litigation or administrative review. Bloomberg, citing the company statement, reported the amount at about $189 million.

The case fits into a wider pattern. Tata Steel’s annual reports already describe other significant Jharkhand mining disputes, including older claims tied to alleged unlawful iron ore extraction after the expiry of lease renewals. In those disclosures, the company said a demand of ₹3,568.31 crore had been challenged before the Jharkhand High Court, while another ₹421.83 crore notice had also been disputed and partly paid under protest after transit permits were halted. Tata Steel said in that filing that it believed it was remote the state’s demand would ultimately survive.

That history matters because it shows the latest notice is not an isolated compliance issue but part of a broader tension between mining companies and state authorities over how production limits, lease terms and environmental permissions should be interpreted. The Common Cause rulings sharpened the legal and financial consequences of excess extraction, especially where production outstripped environmental clearance or statutory approvals. Courts and regulators have since shown a greater willingness to revisit older conduct and calculate compensation on a far more punitive basis than companies had anticipated years ago.

For Jharkhand, one of the country’s key mining belts, such claims carry a dual message. They show the state remains determined to pursue compensation linked to alleged over-extraction, while also signalling to miners that legacy operations are not beyond review. For the industry, the episode is another reminder that captive mines, often central to cost control for steelmakers, bring legal and policy exposure alongside raw material security. The business logic of owning mineral assets remains strong, but it comes with increasingly intense compliance scrutiny.

The timing is also notable. Tata Steel has faced other mining-related claims over the past year, including a demand from Odisha in July 2025 linked to mineral dispatch issues at the Sukinda Chromite Block. While the factual basis of that case differs from the West Bokaro matter, the accumulation of notices across jurisdictions suggests large resource companies remain under close watch from state mining departments even as policymakers push for higher domestic output of minerals and metals.