Bangladesh Agrees to Raise Minimum Wage for Garment Workers After Protests

The New York Post used a Hokusai work to depict Donald Trump being swept away by Democrats’ midterm election win. Some in Japan were bothered by the imagery.

An Indonesian police inquiry into the wiretapping of President Prabowo Subianto’s phone was a matter for law enforcement, the country’s police chief said on Thursday, as the scandal exposed the deepening cracks between Prabowo and his former backer and predecessor, Joko Widodo. “We assure you that this is ‌purely law enforcement and has nothing to do with rivalries or anything else,” police chief Suyudi Ario Seto told reporters without elaborating, adding that the arrests must serve as a lesson...

Toyota is cashing in on a U.S. hybrid boom as electric-vehicle demand slows, but shifting political tides in Washington could jeopardize its edge.

Singapore’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) on Thursday rejected a report that a power outage at Woodlands Checkpoint caused traffic congestion along the causeway and on several roads in Johor Bahru on Wednesday. In its account of Wednesday’s events, ICA said a build-up of Singapore-bound traffic occurred amid planned electrical maintenance works, while two vehicle breakdowns on the Malaysian side of the causeway subsequently contributed to traffic tailing back into...

Chinese authorities stopped the sale of ABB Robotics, owned by a Swiss conglomerate, to SoftBank of Japan amid wider scrutiny of global transactions that could affect Beijing’s technology ambitions.

Robots developed by Chinese humanoid maker Unitree Robotics can now paint pictures and play chess without any prior training, relying on frontier AI models to navigate complex physical tasks, according to founder and CEO Wang Xingxing. Speaking on Thursday at the China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, Wang said Unitree’s machines, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-6, were capable of executing intricate robotic sequences, such as dynamically replacing brush water and blending pigments, guided...

Vietnam’s growing nuclear partnership with Russia could help Hanoi gain the expertise needed to fuel its ambitious nuclear programme amid doubts over Western sanctions against Moscow and financing challenges complicating the plans. The Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute (Vinatom) and a subsidiary of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, which is leading the development of the MBIR International Research Centre, announced on Tuesday that they had signed a memorandum of understanding to...

China’s state planner has told Japanese investor SoftBank it will not allow the US$5.4 billion acquisition ‌of the robotics segment of engineering group ABB to go ahead, the Swiss firm said on Thursday. The case marks the second major deal blocked by China this year after Meta Platforms was ordered to unwind its US$2 billion-plus acquisition of artificial intelligence start-up Manus. The news comes as Beijing tightens scrutiny of foreign investment in domestic start-ups that are developing...

Labels exert extraordinary control over performers because only a few acts turn a profit.

A young Malaysian Muslim who took part in Hindu rituals to pray for his ailing mother publicly repented on Thursday in a ceremony live-streamed by state religious authorities, a day after a sharia court ordered him to undergo three months of faith rehabilitation. The spectacle has raised questions about the enforcement of Islamic orthodoxy in Muslim-majority Malaysia, where state religious departments wield significant influence to police the personal conduct and religious beliefs of...

For Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, imagining the life of North Korea’s leader was a risk worth taking, despite the backlash.