Vietnam seeks Russia’s help for its nuclear ambition. Will sanctions stall it?

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.

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...

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.

Thailand has banned a textbook about the country on national security grounds, with the tome’s exiled editor saying on Thursday it was outlawed over its content on the Thai monarchy. The royal family holds revered status in Thai society and is shielded from criticism by a strict defamation law that critics say is used to muzzle dissent. The book, a second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Thailand published in English in August, was edited by Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a prominent...

Thai conservationists are sleuthing for clues to help save the country’s last herd of dugongs by testing the mammal’s poop for stress hormones, its microbiome and other health indicators to prevent the extinction of this beloved yet critically endangered sea creature. But first they have to find the faeces – a green fist-sized ball consisting of the seagrass the gentle dugongs graze on daily in the coastal shallows of the Andaman Sea. It is literally drop-in-the-ocean work for the teams using...

Philippine investigators are examining whether Thomas Markle Jnr, the half-brother of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, was involved in alleged child sexual abuse offences as an investigation into their father widens, according to the country’s interior secretary on Thursday. Interior Secretary Juanito Victor Remulla said witnesses had alleged that underage girls were brought to the younger Markle’s home. Markle Jnr was being treated as a “person of interest”, not a suspect, Remulla told reporters...