NewsBytes

US energy officials are reassessing the risk posed by Chinese-made devices that play a critical role in renewable energy infrastructure after unexplained communication equipment was found inside some of them, two people familiar with the matter said. Power inverters, which are predominantly produced in China, are used throughout the world to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids. They are also found in batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers. While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China. However, rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by US experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, the two people said. Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, one of them said. The rogue components provide additional, undocumented communication channels that could allow firewalls to be circumvented remotely, with potentially catastrophic consequences, the two people said.

Denmark is considering lifting a 40-year-old ban on nuclear power to enhance its energy security, its energy minister said, marking a significant policy shift in a country that has prioritised expanding wind and solar power. The Danish government will analyse the potential benefits of new nuclear power technologies, with a report expected to be ready next year, Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities Lars Aagaard said in a public hearing in parliament. "Denmark has no recent experience with nuclear power, which is why it is important that we start analysing the potential. Can this technology complement what will be dominant in our country: solar and wind?," he said. "We all know that of course we can't have an electricity system based on solar and wind alone. There has to be something else to support it," Aagaard added. In 2005, Danes celebrated as neighbouring Sweden shut down the Barseback 2 nuclear reactor, located near Copenhagen just across the Oresund strait. While Sweden has closed more of its nuclear plants over the past decade, the current government is taking a firmly pro-nuclear stance and is seeking to build new capacity.

The National Statistics Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation will start releasing the monthly employment numbers in the form of Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) from this month, starting with the data for April 2025. Besides, PLFS' quarterly numbers will now be brought out separately for rural, urban as well as the combined figures for rural and urban areas, according to a ministry statement. At present, the labour force survey is released on a quarterly as well as annual basis. The first monthly bulletin of PLFS for April 2025 is scheduled to be released in May this year, the statement said. The first quarterly bulletin of PLFS covering both rural and urban areas for the quarter April-June, 2025 is slated to be released in August 2025, it stated.

Sri Lanka summoned the Canadian envoy to formally protest the opening of a Tamil Genocide Monument in Brampton, Ontario, the foreign ministry said. Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath summoned Canadian High Commissioner Eric Walsh to register Sri Lanka's protest, the ministry said. “The government of Sri Lanka maintains that the allegation of genocide during the final phase of the conflict in Sri Lanka is unsubstantiated by any credible authority, either nationally or internationally, and is based on misleading information," a statement said.  Sri Lanka firmly "rejects this false narrative and believes it has been propagated primarily for electoral gains within Canada”, it added. The Tamil Genocide Memorial has been set up in Canada's Ontario province's Brampton to commemorate the victims of the final battle of the military conflict in May 2009, Tamil groups said.