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European Commission announces new competitions for 2025 – European Capital and Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism

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BRUSSELS, March 7, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Today, the European Commission launches the 2025 edition of the European Capital of Smart Tourism and the European Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism competitions. Tourism destinations across Europe are invited to submit their innovative practices of smart and sustainable tourism to become leading examples in European tourism.

As the EU’s third largest eco-system, tourism plays a crucial role in economic growth and job creation. The Smart Tourism initiative recognises cities implementing new digital tools and practices such as equal opportunity and access to visitors, sustainable development and support to creative industries and local talent. With these competitions, the European Commission promotes and awards the future of smart and sustainable tourism in Europe.

To compete for the 2025 titles, cities are asked to demonstrate their innovative tourism practices and submit their applications using an online form. Applications will first be evaluated by a panel of independent experts. In the second step, shortlisted cities will be asked to present their city’s candidature in front of the European Jury. The European Jury will select two winners, the ‘European Capital of Smart Tourism 2025’ and the ‘European Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism 2025’, which will be announced in November 2024. 

Both competitions are open to cities across both the EU, as well as the non-EU countries that take part in the Single Market Programme (SMP)[1] – former COSME Programme.

European Capital of Smart Tourism 2025 – Smart gets you further

The European Capital of Smart Tourism competition has a proven track record of success. The 2025 European Capital of Smart Tourism is the sixth edition of the competition. Dublin was selected as the 2024 Smart Capital. Previous winners include Pafos and Seville as 2023 Capitals, Bordeaux and València as the 2022 Capitals, Gothenburg and Málaga as the 2020 Capitals, while Helsinki and Lyon won the inaugural competition and jointly held the 2019 titles. Since 2024, there is only one winner of the European Capital of Smart Tourism competition due to a change in competition rules, whereas previous editions featured two winners annually.

The European Capital of Smart Tourism 2025 will benefit from communication and branding support throughout 2025 which will tell the story of the outstanding smart and innovative practices that made it stand out and win. This will include the production of a promotional video, a large hashtag sculpture to install in a prominent location, diverse promotional activities and visibility at EU level and internationally. The winner will also have the chance to join a growing and active network of smart destinations that were shortlisted in the five previous editions of the competition, exchange best practices and learn from one another.

The European Capital of Smart Tourism competition is open to cities with a population of over 100.000. For more information, please refer to the European Capital of Smart Tourism Guide for Applicants.

European Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism 2025 – Green leads the way

The European Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism is the successor of the European Destinations of Excellence (EDEN) competition which was first introduced by the European Commission in 2007 to reward non-traditional, emerging sustainable tourism destinations in Europe.

The competition is founded upon the principle of promoting the development of sustainable tourism in smaller destinations which brings value to the economy, the planet, and the people. Being the European Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism 2025 will allow the winning city to serve as an inspiration to other tourism destinations across Europe, enhance their city’s profile as a quality travel destination, attracting visitors and generating economic growth in a sustainable way.

The Green Pioneer competition is open to cities with a population between 25.000 – 100.000. For additional information, please refer to the European Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism Guide for Applicants.

For both competitions, applications must be received by:

31 May 2024 at 17:00 CET.

For all the latest updates on the Smart Tourism initiative, follow us on our website, Facebook, or Twitter, and subscribe to our EU Smart Tourism Podcast series in Spotify and Amazon Music.   

Contact:

European Smart Tourism Secretariat:
Sandra Bumbar-Malchow or Antigoni Avgeropoulou
info@smarttourismcapital.eu, +49 (0) 30 70 01 86 390 

[1] Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway,  Serbia, Türkiye and Ukraine; https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/smp/guidance/list-3rd-country-participation_smp_en.pdf

 

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LYKSTAGE Launches Patented Video Platform That Pays Creators and Viewers — Now Live Across Five Countries

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MUMBAI, India, April 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LYKSTAGE, a video-sharing platform owned by LYK Inc., a Delaware-based entity, and founded by New York-based entrepreneur Adris Chakraborty, is redefining how the creator economy works — with a patented monetization model no other platform can legally replicate.

Built by a technology team in India under Manhattan Tech Ventures, LYKSTAGE runs on a patented Watch-Time Monetization Model that fundamentally changes who earns from video content. Creators earn whenever their content’s watch time gets monetized — no subscriber minimums, no waiting periods, and no thresholds to cross before earning begins.

What makes the model unprecedented is that viewers earn too. Logged-in viewers are rewarded whenever their watch time gets monetized — when they watch content uninterrupted and the ad served during viewing is fully consumed. When that happens, the creator earns, the viewer is rewarded, and the platform earns. Every reward is funded by actual ad revenue — not venture capital subsidies. The model is entirely self-sustaining.

The platform serves both skippable and non-skippable ads, determined by an ad server algorithm that optimizes based on viewing patterns and content traction. For advertisers, impressions are served intelligently — matching the right ad format to the right moment, delivering higher completion rates and genuine attention.

LYKSTAGE is now live across five markets — India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the UAE — and available on Samsung TV, LG TV, Roku, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, desktop, mobile web, and native apps on both the App Store and Google Play Store.

Adris Chakraborty, a Kolkata-born Columbia Business School alumnus based in the US since 2003, co-founded Mediamorphosis Advertising & Technology Inc. in New York in 2006 with his spouse and business partner Poulami Mukherjee. The company expanded to the UK in 2012, followed by Manhattan Communications in India — building a multicultural advertising group spanning five countries with over 100 clients, providing LYKSTAGE with built-in advertiser relationships and market intelligence.

The platform has crossed over one million users across all markets, with more than 20,000 creators on board and growing across all five countries — achieved with minimal paid marketing.

LYKSTAGE is a transparent, patented system where the people who create the value are the ones who earn from it.

Sign up at:
Android – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lykstage.app
Apple – https://apps.apple.com/in/app/lykstage-video-streaming/id6754064834

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2960187/LYKSTAGE_Logo.jpg

 

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Towngas and Tencent forge strategic partnership to drive “Energy + Tech” smart digital transformation

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HONG KONG, April 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited (Towngas) and Tencent have signed a strategic partnership agreement in Hong Kong. The two companies will collaborate extensively on unified cloud resource management, digital platform development, large artificial intelligence (AI) models and applications, customer engagement enhancement, and R&D tool synergy. Together, they aim to drive the smart digital transformation of the energy sector.

The partnership dates back to 2020, when Towngas Lifestyle, the extended business division of Towngas, first teamed up with Tencent Cloud. In 2021, Towngas Energy, the Group’s renewable energy arm, worked with Tencent Cloud to build a smart energy ecosystem, which currently supports over a hundred integrated energy projects for the business segment. In 2023, Towngas Lifestyle and Tencent Cloud entered into a comprehensive strategic partnership spanning cloud platforms, big data, AI, and customer engagement, delivering one-stop lifestyle solutions to 46 million household customers across Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland. This latest agreement marks a comprehensive, group-level strategic partnership between Towngas and Tencent. It is designed to pool their resources, achieve cross-divisional synergy, drive quality and efficiency gains, and accelerate AI innovation.

Over the past six years, this collaboration has yielded remarkable results. Powered by Tencent Cloud, Towngas Lifestyle has upgraded the digital foundation and driven application innovation for its Towngas Lifestyle Cloud (TLC) platform. Furthermore, leveraging Tencent Cloud’s TBDS (Tencent Big Data Suite), it built the Towngas Analytics Platform (TAP), which currently supports big data applications for over 70 affiliated city-gas companies as well as its Hong Kong operations.

In terms of AI applications, Towngas Lifestyle has capitalised on Tencent’s AI computing power and large model technology to launch innovative tools such as smart safety inspections and AI service agents, significantly boosting the efficiency of frontline staff at gas companies. To better serve its customers, the company has deeply integrated Tencent’s WeCom to improve customer outreach. On the R&D front, Towngas Lifestyle has widely adopted Tencent’s AI development tools to streamline workflows. Moreover, the partners have successfully replicated their mainland successes in Hong Kong, completing the cross-border deployment of the TAP platform and advancing the upgrade of the city’s business systems.

Mr Peter Wong Wai-yee, Managing Director of Towngas, said: “Tencent’s leading position in AI and digital technology is obvious to all. Since 2020, the two parties have established a strong partnership, expanding from Towngas Lifestyle’s extended business to cooperation on the smart energy platform for the renewable energy segment, and gradually extending from the mainland to Hong Kong. As an enterprise with a 164-year history, Towngas has grown to possess a customer base of over 120 million since entering the mainland gas utility business in 1994. Facing such a massive number of customers, data security is of paramount importance. How to build a secure and efficient system for management and service has become a critical issue for business development. We are confident in joining hands with Tencent to co-build a secure and efficient digital system, comprehensively elevate the customer service experience and operational efficiency, and jointly pioneer more possibilities for ‘Energy + Tech’.”

Mr Dowson Tong, Senior Executive Vice President of Tencent and CEO of Tencent Cloud and Smart Industries Group, stated that as a household brand in Hong Kong, Towngas’s “customer-centric” service philosophy aligns closely with Tencent’s corporate mission of “Value for Users, Tech for Good”. Over the past six years, Tencent has engaged in deep collaboration with multiple segments under Towngas, empowering businesses with technology to achieve precise operations. Tencent looks forward to taking this exchange as a new starting point, further consolidating the “Cloud + AI” technological foundation based on existing cooperation, and deeply integrating Tencent’s digital capabilities with Towngas’s rich application scenarios. Through technological innovation, the goal is to achieve better customer service delivery and enhance operational efficiency, exploring a new path to sustainable development for the smart upgrade of the energy industry while ensuring data security and user privacy.

Looking ahead, the two companies will continue to deepen their collaboration in migrating core businesses to the cloud, co-building digital platforms, deploying large models and AI applications, and enhancing customer engagement. This will not only deliver a superior experience for gas customers but also set a benchmark for the high-quality transformational development of the energy industry.

 

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SOURCE Tencent Cloud

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DMEGC Solar Achieves EcoVadis Gold Medal, Underscoring Its Commitment to ESG Excellence

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JINHUA, China, April 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — On April 15, DMEGC Solar, a global leader in magnetic materials and renewable energy solutions, achieved a milestone breakthrough in sustainable development. With outstanding performance in environmental protection, social responsibility, and other key areas, the company earned a Gold Medal from the internationally recognized rating agency EcoVadis, scoring 82 points. This places DMEGC Solar in the top 3% of all rated companies worldwide, surpassing 97% of participants.

EcoVadis is a globally leading sustainability assessment platform, having rated over 150,000 companies across more than 250 industries and 185 countries. Its evaluation framework covers 21 indicators across four core themes: Environment, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement. The platform aims to assess the sustainability performance and social responsibility of companies within global supply chains.

DMEGC Solar participated in the assessment at the group level rather than as a single factory, demonstrating outstanding strength across all four dimensions. In the Labor & Human Rights dimension, the company has established a comprehensive employee rights protection system, strictly implemented occupational health and safety standards, and promoted employee development and career growth, ranking in the top 1% of its industry.

In the Sustainable Procurement dimension, the company has built a full-chain green supply chain management mechanism, collaborating with core suppliers to create a “cooperative carbon reduction” ecosystem. Initiatives such as packaging material recycling, green electricity usage, and localized collaborative production have enabled a low-carbon, traceable supply chain, also ranking in the top 1% of the industry.

Coupled with strong performances in environmental governance and business ethics, the company achieved an impressive score of 82, surpassing 97% of evaluated companies and earning the Gold Medal. This distinction places DMEGC Solar at the top in the global solar module manufacturers to receive such recognition.

This Gold Medal rating will for sure strengthen the company’s competitiveness in overseas markets. On one hand, its industry-leading ESG performance helps meet policy requirements related to sustainable supply chains, enhancing both the premium pricing of its products in international markets and its ability to secure orders. On the other hand, this recognition will boost customer and partner trust in the company’s brand, supporting the expansion of market share for its core products—such as photovoltaic modules, residential energy storage systems, and magnetic materials—while consolidating its market leadership.

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