More Than 60% of Americans Have Dined In a Restaurant in the Past Month, Despite Ongoing Concerns About the Spread of COVID-19

The government is exploring nuclear power options to guard against global energy shocks. One proposal is to switch on a plant in Bataan that has been mothballed for 40 years.

The prospect of United States, Chinese and Russian leaders meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Shenzhen this November has revived the Yalta analogy. Talk of a Trump-Xi-Putin summit – echoing the 1945 meeting that reshaped the world – surfaced during the first Trump term, and speculation returned last year with the 80th anniversary of the second world war. No such meeting occurred. However, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted the two presidents back-to-back in...

Former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak said on Sunday that he would remain in Kajang Prison as he and his legal team study the conditions attached to his “conditional pardon”, including the payment of a 50 million ringgit (US$12.3 million) fine before he can be transferred to house arrest. In a statement issued on his behalf by Messrs Shafee & Co, Najib said his transfer to house arrest depended on the conditions of the pardon being fulfilled. “Until the fine is paid to the court, our...

For more than five years, U Kyaw Moe Tun has refused to give up his United Nations post and a sandstone townhouse on the Upper East Side.

As heatwaves become more frequent and intense across Asia, the region faces a dangerous power paradox. Soaring demand for air conditioning threatens to push electricity grids closer to failure just as extreme heat puts the infrastructure under greater strain, raising the risk of cooling disappearing when people need it most. That risk has been visible across the region this summer. In South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung called a record heatwave a “national disaster” in August after the death...

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim caused a bit of a stir in India recently with his spirited rendition of a Bollywood classic – a lighthearted moment that also neatly captured his broader push to deepen ties with the South Asian giant. A video of Anwar singing, from memory, Kishore Kumar’s 1965 hit ballad “Khwab Ho Tum Ya Koi Haqeeqat” (“Are you a dream or are you reality?”) was first posted to his social media accounts last Sunday before quickly being picked up by Indian news outlets. The...

When Jordan Seow joined OpenAI in June 2025, he became the company’s first locally hired forward-deployed engineer in Asia-Pacific, joining a Singapore office that then had fewer than 20 employees. The 29-year-old is now part of a fast-growing workforce built in Singapore by the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies. Experts say the city state is emerging as a regional hub – not for training the latest AI models, but for the increasingly crucial task of deploying and adapting them...

A former Australian official’s use of a hypothetical “aggressive Indonesia” to make the case for Aukus at a public inquiry has been called “clumsy diplomacy” by analysts, who say the comments risk reviving old suspicions as Jakarta and Canberra try to strengthen security ties. Michael Pezzullo, a former deputy secretary of strategy in Australia’s defence department, made the remarks in testimony on September 2 to the Aukus Public Inquiry, an independent, crowdfunded review of the trilateral...

The U.S. president’s threats to seize Greenland left its people on edge, and with details scarce, the news of an agreement didn’t seem to be putting minds at ease.

The attack on a mosque inside a police compound, killing at least two dozen people, is the latest example of the worsening violence near the Afghan border.

India is trying to secure affordable energy while preserving a crucial relationship with Washington, a balancing act made harder by turmoil in global energy markets.

Chinese action camera maker Insta360 is deepening its US footprint with a flagship store opening in New York as it navigates escalating price competition with DJI and industry-wide memory cost pressures. The Chinese GoPro rival was slated to plant its flag in the heart of Times Square with its first flagship retail store in the US on Saturday, a marquee launch as the firm looked to “leap to the next stage of growth”, co-founder Max Richter said. “The US market plays a very important role for us...