By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The U.S. military said on Friday it plans to forge ahead with building the THAAD missile defence system in South Korea, separating the issue from a political crisis in Seoul that saw President Park Geun-hye’s removal from office on Friday. The United States started deploying the first elements of its advanced anti-missile defence system in South Korea on […]
Like millions of young readers around the world, Chinese children have grown up with popular titles such as Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox and the Harry Potter series. But Beijing is now introducing new measures to restrict access to foreign books and publications as it opens a new front in its battle to limit outside influence on Chinese society. Regulators have given verbal instructions to publishers to […]
A global research team has built five new synthetic yeast chromosomes, meaning that 30 percent of a key organism’s genetic material has now been swapped out for engineered replacements. This is one of several findings of a package of seven papers published March 10 as the cover story for Science. Led by NYU Langone geneticist Jef Boeke, PhD, and a team of more than 200 authors, the […]
BEIJING/SYDNEY/TAIPEI China said it would “resolutely strike” against the “Dalai Lama clique’s separatist activities” as protesters planned demonstrations in major world cities on Friday to mark the anniversary of a Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. The sensitive anniversary coincided with the yearly news conference of Tibet’s delegation to China’s annual meeting of parliament, under way in Beijing. Che Dalha, Tibet’s governor, said the government would […]
D.C. bureau chiefs from major news organizations, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the wire services, Fox News and CNN sent a letter to the State Department earlier this week protesting Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s decision to ditch reporters on his upcoming trip to Asia. “We were deeply concerned to hear that Secretary Tillerson plans to travel to Beijing, Seoul […]
By Kentaro Hamada and Makiko Yamazaki | TOKYO TOKYO The Japanese government, fretting over the future of Toshiba Corp’s flagship memory chips unit, is prepared to block a sale to bidders it deems a risk to national security, sources said, a stance that gives U.S. suitors a major advantage. The government would use Japan’s foreign exchange and foreign trade laws to control the auction if need be, […]
Uber’s crisis PR activities have returned to relative normality in Asia after the U.S. firm ran into fresh issues with government regulators in two countries this week: Hong Kong and Thailand. The ride-sharing giant has been fighting some serious corporate fires in the U.S. lately — around its toxic work culture, connections to a polarizing U.S. President, and its CEO’s attitude to its drivers — but it is back to basics as UberX drivers in the two countries come under […]
By Christian Shepherd | BEIJING BEIJING Doubling China’s Lunar New Year break, labelling Chinese cuisine “intangible cultural heritage” and restricting foreign influence in schools are among the patriotic recommendations made by delegates at this year’s meeting of Chinese parliament. Many of the 3,000 delegates from across China currently in Beijing for the 10-day meeting of the National People’s Congress, closing on Wednesday, came armed with proposals for […]
Via Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform blog, In Part One and Part Two of this article I revealed how the Deep State’s fake data and fake news propaganda machine can be overcome by opening your eyes, observing reality, understanding how Fed created inflation has destroyed our lives, and why the election of Trump was the initial deplorable pushback to Deep State evil. “The notion that a […]
SEOUL South Korea’s Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye on Friday, removing her from office over a graft scandal involving big business that has gripped the country for months. Park becomes South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be forced from office. A presidential election will be held in 60 days, according to the constitution. “We remove Park Geun-hye from office,” Lee Jung-mi, acting […]
WASHINGTON The U.S. State Department held out the possibility on Thursday that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson might take reporters with him to Asia after it initially broke with decades of tradition by telling the media he would not. “We are still working out the logistics for this trip, so (we) cannot yet speak definitively as to whether we’ll be able to accommodate any press on the […]
China’s Uber rival Didi Chuxing announced that it has officially opened its first US-based research and development lab in Mountain View, California this week. Didi Labs will seek out engineering talent and focus on artificial intelligence (AI)-based security and intelligent driving technologies, according to a statement made by the company. Founder, chairman, and CEO of Didi Chuxing, Cheng Wei said the company’s vision is to build an […]
MANILA — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s choice to fill his cabinet with old friends and left-wingers has come back to bite him, with a foreign secretary forced out for lying about his U.S. citizenship and an environment secretary facing pushback for her hard stance on environmental protection. In light of Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay’s resignation, Duterte on Thursday named Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Enrique Manalo as acting secretary. […]
By Ben Hirschler | LONDON LONDON Scientists have taken a big step toward designing complex forms of life from scratch by constructing five new artificial chromosomes of baker’s yeast, representing a third of the micro-organism’s genome, or genetic blueprint. The international team used computers to create laboratory-made versions of the threadlike structures that carry genetic code inside cells. Synthesizing genomes may alarm some who see biotechnologists “playing […]
An ancient fish species with unusual scales and teeth from the Kuanti Formation in southern China may have evolved prior to the ‘Age of Fish’, according to a new study. Source
Thursday 14:30 GMT Overview The euro is firmer and Bund yields are trundling higher with Treasuries after the European Central Bank stood pat on interest rates and indicated it was not looking to ease policy further. Oil prices tried to rally but have resumed their sell-off, putting energy stocks under pressure and weighing on equity benchmarks. Hot topic (1) After a period when politicians seemed to rule […]
By Jessica DiNapoli and Makiko Yamazaki | NEW YORK/TOKYO NEW YORK/TOKYO U.S. nuclear firm Westinghouse Electric Co LLC has hired bankruptcy attorneys, in a sign that owner Toshiba Corp (6502.T) is more seriously weighing a Chapter 11 filing as an option to help it rein in a multibillion dollar financial maelstrom. People familiar with the matter said the nuclear engineering company had brought in law firm Weil […]
Via Damiel Lang of SHTFPlan.com, Since the end of World War Two, the United States has established itself on every continent with hundreds of military bases, and has sent troops to foreign nations (both covertly and overtly) on so many occasions that it’s difficult to keep track of them all. And this doesn’t even take into account the nations that our government has quietly and successfully pressured […]
WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messaging service used by more than 1 billion people worldwide, is testing a system that would let businesses talk directly to WhatsApp users for the first time, according to communications about the project seen by Reuters. The tests, which are being conducted with a handful of companies that are part of the Y Combinator startup incubator, are an important signal of how WhatsApp plans […]
By Adam Jourdan and Eric Walsh | SHANGHAI/WASHINGTON SHANGHAI/WASHINGTON China has granted preliminary approval for 38 trademarks linked to Donald Trump, documents on China’s state trademark office show, giving the U.S. President and his family protection were they to develop the “Trump” brand in the market. The trademarks – which in theory cover a wide sweep of businesses from hotels to mobile libraries and escorts – underline […]
|By Matein Khalid| Janet Yellen confirmed the Wall Street consensus that the Federal Reserve will raise its overnight borrowing (Fed Funds) rate at the March FOMC. Wage growth, inflation, crude oil, asset prices, economic data momentum and Trump’s fiscal stimulus all reinforce the dual mandate logic of a rate hike. Only a really awful February non-farm payroll shock (consensus is 200,000 jobs) will avert a rate hike […]
By Jonathan Barrett and Aaron Bunch | SYDNEY SYDNEY Notices in several languages emblazoned with the symbol of the skull and crossbones caution against the risk of being swept off the rocks at Maroubra Beach in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. But the warnings were not enough to prevent Nepali university students Shristi Bhandari, 23, and Sudeep Uprety, 26, from walking beside an ocean pool towards a rocky ledge […]
Kakao has launched a wire transfer feature in its chat app that allows users to send funds to the bank accounts of others in group chats. KakaoTalk users can press “To Bank Account” on the Kakao Pay interface within the chat app and enter their password or fingerprint to activate the feature. Funds can also be sent to people who are not using KakaoTalk or Kakao Pay. […]
There are efficiency gaps between the startup ecosystems in Singapore and Silicon Valley, which the former can address by introducing simpler and clearer investment terms. Doing so would, in turn, attract more mature startups to their fold and better set up founders for success, according to executives from muru-D’s Singapore outfit. The Telstra-owned accelerator had just completed its second batch of eight startups under the six-month programme, […]
