A treaty from the 1960s declared that nobody can own outer space. Half a century later, billionaires and superpowers see fortunes to be made nonetheless.

The United States wants a reactor on the moon by 2030. A Russian-Chinese alliance is working on one for 2036. Some leading scientists say the danger is great.

The matter threatened to revive tensions over the American military presence on the Japanese archipelago.

A cluster of whale and whale shark strandings across Indonesia – five in the past three weeks alone – has raised questions over whether such incidents are becoming more frequent, with experts pointing to a mix of environmental shifts, human activity and improved reporting as possible explanations. On September 25, a whale shark became stranded and died on a beach in Aceh province, just days after a decomposed whale carcass was discovered in a mangrove in Riau province. Another whale was found...

A 20-year-old US marine was arrested on Sunday in Japan’s Okinawa prefecture on suspicion of robbing and murdering a local woman, police said. Davin Ballard stationed at the Futenma Airbase is suspected of killing Anna Yagi, 39, and taking her wallet and backpack in the early hours of Saturday at a hotel in Naha, according to the Okinawa prefectural police. The suspect has denied the charges, they added. Ballard was seen entering the hotel with Yagi, who was found dead on Saturday morning,...

Three male students have been detained by police in connection with the murder of a Form Four female student whose body was discovered at a school in Yong Peng, Malaysia’s Johor state, on Saturday. The victim, identified as 16-year-old Irene Sofiya Mohd Khairool Faisal, was found dead inside the school hall at around 5.30pm, Sinar Harian reported. Police arrested the three 16-year-old suspects, who attend the same school as the victim, just hours after the body was uncovered. On Sunday, one of...

For months, the air over West Kalimantan has been thick enough to taste. Now, some of the province’s residents are taking the government to court over it. Indonesia’s worst wildfire season in 11 years has been sending plumes of toxic haze drifting across borders to Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines since at least August. But nowhere has been worse hit than West Kalimantan, where more than 48,000 hectares (185 square miles) of land and forest have burned since the start of the year,...

Two decades after stepping away from the spotlight, iconic actress Joey Wong made an unexpected return to the screen – not through a traditional production, but via artificial intelligence-powered reconstruction. In a two-minute video by NetEase this summer, Wong, one of the most well-known actresses of the 1980s and 90s, had some of her most celebrated roles recreated, including the beautiful ghost in A Chinese Ghost Story and an alluring snake demon in Green Snake. The revival is just the tip...

Final-year students invited to recruiters’ apartments for help with their applications. Coffee dates with alumni who promise to explain how the company works. Inappropriate interview questions about boyfriends, marriage plans and sex lives. For young women in Japan, looking for a job has long entailed submitting themselves to the skewed power dynamics of the recruitment process. And before Thursday, no official legal safeguards existed to protect these jobseekers from such...

As floodwaters surged from Bangkok’s drains, Fon’s car sank faster than her hopes of escaping the floods unscathed. She had bought it less than a month earlier. “I woke up at 5am but it was too late,” the 24-year-old said, recalling her decision last weekend to wait until dawn to move her car to a nearby shopping centre. “My car was already submerged. I hadn’t even started making the payments and it’s gone.” Relentless rain paralysed Thailand’s capital this September, dumping a month’s worth of...

When one of my seniors from medical school was pregnant during her surgical residency, she planned the exact date of her C-section so she could complete her training on time. When I asked why she didn’t consider taking maternity leave to recuperate afterwards, she said she couldn’t bring herself to lag behind her peers. “I didn’t want motherhood to slow me down,” she said. In medicine, it is common for women to delay childbearing until after their early career years, often into their...

As global adoption of the open-source RISC-V chip architecture accelerates, US intellectual property provider MIPS is collaborating with Chinese firms at an unprecedented level, according to a senior executive, highlighting how cross-border cooperation persists despite intense tech rivalry between Washington and Beijing. MIPS, which was acquired by US chipmaker GlobalFoundries last year, was driving RISC-V standardisation “very closely with China”, chief technology officer Yankin Tanurhan said...

Four people were rescued after being adrift in a life raft in the South Pacific. One of them said he thought he had a better chance of winning the lottery than of being hit by a whale.

China has started limiting exports of refined products again as its own inventories of crude oil and refined products have dwindled.

North Korea said on Saturday it test-fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile that it claimed has manoeuvrable flight capabilities designed to evade missile defences in South Korea and Japan. The latest test comes amid heightened tensions between the two Koreas over border landmine blasts. Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said her brother supervised the test of the missile, which she described as strategic, implying it was designed to deliver nuclear...

Tukaram Mundhe’s surprise raids of Mumbai kitchens have made him an unlikely celebrity and set off a conversation about food standards in India.

Five years ago, Sarah and her husband were optimistic about Japan’s economic future and were expanding their small businesses across several sectors. Today, that optimism has been replaced by concern over a sense of hostility towards two hard-working foreigners who feel they have contributed to the society that they have worked hard to fit into. New regulations that took effect on Thursday mean the two Britons, who have been in Japan for more than 10 years, now face significantly higher costs...

The State Department has denied its funding for the next two years, jeopardizing the education of hundreds of female Afghan students.

After Ping An Bank became the first listed Chinese lender to formally adopt rules governing its use of artificial intelligence, analysts said more mainland institutions were likely to follow, with the move setting an early benchmark for how far the sector can go in applying the technology. The Shenzhen-listed bank said in a filing on Wednesday that its board had approved AI management measures, following a regulatory push for banks to strengthen oversight of AI use. The full rules have not been...

Like many films released during Chuseok, South Korea’s national mid-autumn harvest festival, The Assassin(s) shot right to the top, selling more than a million tickets in its first four days. But the box-office success of the film about the 1974 assassination attempt on former president and military leader Park Chung-hee was quickly overshadowed by calls to halt screenings, as well as a police complaint against the film’s director and producers. Park loyalists and conservative politicians are...

When the time came to renew his certificate of entitlement (COE), Andrew Tan hit the brakes on coughing up an eye-watering S$112,000 (US$87,400) to keep his car on Singapore’s roads for another 10 years. Instead, the 49-year-old business consultant decided in May to go without a car for the first time in two decades. High COE prices, rising running costs and the hassle of parking and congestion are prompting more Singaporeans to reconsider car ownership, as the land-scarce city state expands...

Hundreds were detained in New Delhi as demonstrators expressed anger over the removal of 130 million people from the rolls. The government denies accusations of “vote theft.”