Apec finance ministers reach consensus on AI, digital financing in Hong Kong

All civil servants in Malaysia have been banned from using Waze, following a warning by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of security concerns over the Israeli government’s control of the mobile navigation app. The government announced the decision after a National Cyber Security Committee (NCSC) meeting chaired by Anwar on Tuesday, according to an official circular. “In this regard, all ministry secretaries-general and heads of department must make sure this decision is communicated to all officers...

South Korean social media posts displaying users’ running records to honour a local woman who died at a Seoul marathon have raised debate over the appropriateness of the gesture for mourning. Yoo Ji-won, a 25-year-old graduate student at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science Technology, collapsed just 500 metres (1,600 feet) from the finish line of the 2026 Seoul Race half-marathon on October 11, local media reported. The cause of her death has not been disclosed. Yoo was a running influencer,...

Singapore’s state investor Temasek has denied involvement in Indonesia’s looming MSCI reclassification, following accusations that the city state’s sovereign wealth funds were pulling strings behind the scenes for their own gain. On Wednesday, Fock Wai Hoong, head of Asia-Pacific at Temasek Global Investments, said the claims had “no basis” and were “patently untrue”. Former Indonesian trade minister Muhammad Lutfi on Monday claimed that Singapore’s sovereign wealth funds, Temasek and GIC, were...

Singapore has warned it will go after companies responsible for the forest fires in Indonesia causing the regional haze, but cross-border challenges remain stumbling blocks to solving a problem that has plagued the city state for decades. Analysts point to long-standing obstacles hampering the country’s decade-old haze legislation, such as complex corporate ownership and opaque transboundary supply chains. To date, no company has been prosecuted under the law. Beyond legal threats, greater...

A monthly trip to Costco has become routine this year for Kim Eun-young. The 42-year-old mother of two living in Seoul’s Gwangjin district used to pick up what she needed at a nearby supermarket, but rising prices prompted her to change her shopping habits. She said buying groceries and household essentials in bulk seemed more economical, at least for her family of four. “The bill is bigger each time, but buying in bulk works out cheaper for the same amount. I mainly buy food we eat regularly...

Draft rules on the export of artificial intelligence technology show how China is trying to balance national security risks with its desire to outpace the United States.

The secretary of state will meet with Asia’s richest men in Mumbai as Washington continues negotiations over a trade deal with India.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is set to take the stage in Berlin on Wednesday, as the world’s most valuable company faces heightened investor scrutiny over whether the massive artificial intelligence spending boom – the engine behind the chipmaker’s meteoric growth – can deliver long-term returns. The conference agenda focuses on sovereign AI, industrial automation and operational infrastructure – key sectors where Nvidia hopes to drive demand beyond the handful of US tech giants currently dominating...

Fresh from walking down red carpets laid out by his Southeast Asian neighbours, Myanmar’s ex-military chief Min Aung Hlaing appears to have a new diplomatic feather in his cap: re-engagement with the United States. Washington slapped sanctions on Min Aung Hlaing just 10 days after his February 1, 2021 coup and the ensuing bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. Waves of subsequent sanctions targeted military-linked companies and cronies. Yet since last month, two rounds of talks with US...

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has fully open-sourced an internally developed framework designed to run AI models efficiently, as a senior researcher at the company described the growing divide between open-source and closed-source AI as a battle between “light and darkness”. The company on Tuesday released DeepInfer, an inference framework tailored to support its DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash model on both Nvidia’s SM100 Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs) and Huawei...

Laddli Khatun pulled one document after another from a yellow bag, desperately hoping one would be enough to keep her name on India’s electoral rolls. As the world’s largest democracy overhauls its voter lists, millions like Khatun are scrambling to re-establish their credentials, despite having voted before. Critics and opposition parties say the exercise risks mass disenfranchisement, and those removed fear wider citizenship repercussions. More than 133 million names – including 28 million...