Southeast Asian live streamers hustle to fuel booming e-commerce sales

Najib Razak, Malaysia’s corrupt former prime minister, may be back home to serve the rest of his prison sentence, but that does not mean he will be living in comfort with wife Rosmah Mansor and the rest of his family, a member of his party has confirmed. Najib returned to his house on Jalan Langgak Duta at about 9.30pm on Tuesday, after the High Court cleared the way for his release from jail. The start of his house arrest also marked the end of Anthony Loke’s stint as transport minister. Loke,...

Hong Kong is expanding clinical trials of histotripsy, a non-invasive treatment that uses focused ultrasound to destroy tumours, as the city seeks to establish a role in developing the technology for kidney cancer. The CUHK Medical Centre, Gleneagles Hospital Hong Kong and Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital would begin trials involving 30 patients targeting kidney cancer, the Li Ka Shing Foundation said on Wednesday. The trials mark the latest development in Hong Kong business tycoon Li Ka-shing’s...

In a new memoir and interview, the Italian-born woman who married into the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty recalls her political battles and the assassinations of her husband and mother-in-law.

Alibaba has applied to list chip-design unit T-Head in Hong Kong, as the Chinese tech giant braves a cooling initial public offering (IPO) market to raise funds for artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions. The Hong Kong stock exchange has approved the proposed separation and a confidential listing application was filed in September, Alibaba said in a statement on Tuesday. T-Head, which provides full-stack data centre chips, will remain a unit of the company. Alibaba also owns the South China...

Ukraine has captured its first Indonesian prisoner of war, exposing Jakarta’s uphill battle to stop its citizens from being recruited to fight for Russia in the war sparked by Moscow’s 2022 invasion. The 49-year-old contract soldier from Java was captured in the frontline Zaporizhzhia region after entering Ukrainian-held territory following a drone strike on his Russian unit, The Guardian reported, citing Kyiv’s state-backed “I Want to Live” surrender initiative. According to the project,...

World leaders began arriving on Wednesday to start formal discussions at the United Nations climate change conference in Turkey, hoping to agree on concrete actions to curb global warming after a year of deadly floods, heatwaves and other climate-related disasters. But what can and will be accomplished at the 11-day Conference of the Parties, called Cop31, remains to be seen. Past talks have been criticised for making promises that later fell flat, and some big names are missing from this year’s...

China has overtaken South Korea in monthly orders for liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers for the first time, challenging its rival’s long-standing dominance in a high-value shipbuilding segment where demand is surging. The country secured five of the seven large LNG carrier orders placed worldwide in October, compared with just two won by South Korean shipbuilders, according to data from British shipping consultancy Clarksons Research. In the first 10 months of this year, Chinese shipyards...

We have put together stories from our coverage of Jensen Huang’s affair and its potential repercussions. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Could Jensen Huang’s affair become another ‘spy balloon’ saga for US-China ties? China hawks in Washington could weaponise allegations that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was targeted by Chinese intelligence, despite denials from Beijing, Chinese experts warn. 2. ‘Adding fuel to fire’: how Nvidia CEO’s troubles could...

In the space of just two months, India’s navy has held joint exercises off the coasts of Britain, France, South Africa, Oman, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and Russia’s far east. Such a run of exercises signals a bid for a larger maritime role on the world stage, analysts say. Yet it also raises questions about whether a navy currently short on submarines and struggling to expand can support such global ambitions while also guarding India’s home waters. Since mid-September, over a span of...

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSMC) move to take equity stakes in both OpenAI and Anthropic will give the world’s largest contract chipmaker direct financial ties to the frontier AI labs driving demand for its business. Its board on Tuesday authorised up to US$500 million to buy Anthropic common shares at its initial public offering (IPO) price, and up to US$500 million to buy preferred shares in OpenAI. Directors separately approved up to US$500 million to establish a dedicated...

Malaysia is seeking to reassure Taiwanese investors that it remains a reliable destination for hi-tech manufacturing after Taipei suspended bilateral investment talks over Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s remarks on China, raising concerns over the future of semiconductor investments in the Southeast Asian nation. Taiwan confirmed on Tuesday that it had paused negotiations scheduled for late October. The move came after Anwar told Al Jazeera in an August interview that he saw the self-governed...