World

"I used to upvote posts in his Weibo fan forum and buy products he promoted," Chen, 16, told AFP in a busy downtown shopping district. "It was pretty exhausting trying to keep him trending at number one every day." Fans power China's lucrative idol economy, previously forecast by state media to be worth 140 billion yuan (S$30 billion) by 2022. In a country where young people have few other means of influencing public life, full-time fan content creators – dubbed "zhanjie" or "station sisters" – can propel a star's rise from obscurity by creating viral images of them. Critics say fan culture is an exploitative industry aimed at profiting from minors, built on artificially inflated social media engagement – something the government wants to eliminate through the new regulations. Authori...

The hit Netflix series Squid Game from South Korea has gone viral across the world and online by morphing childhood games popular before the digital era such as "Red Light, Green Light" into deadly survival challenges. The playground game where players stop and go at a tagger's command is one of six kids games with fatal consequences depicted in the gory thriller named after a South Korean variation of tag played in the 1970s and 80s using a board drawn in the dirt. In the "Red Light, Green Light" episode, the show's first, players are shot for failing to stand still at the red light call. The Squid Game is the last one the 456 cash-strapped contestants on the show, ranging from a North Korean defector to a fund manager charged with embezzlement, must compete in for a prize of 45.6 billi...

SINGAPORE: Panasonic is laying off 700 workers in Singapore as it moves to shut its refrigeration compressor manufacturing operations in the country. This is due to the "challenging global business outlook" and Panasonic's "long-term business strategic review of the refrigeration compressor business portfolio", said the Japanese firm in a media release on Thursday (Sep 23). Operations of the affected unit will cease by the end of September next year. The layoffs represent about one-third of its workforce in Singapore. Panasonic said it will consolidate the compressor manufacturing operations to existing facilities in Malaysia and China. Casting operations will be done at its Malaysian factory in Melaka. The company's research and development department will continue to operate in Singa...

TAIPEI: The Royal Navy said a British warship was sailing through the Taiwan Strait on Monday (Sep 27), a move that challenges Beijing's claim to the sensitive waterway and marks a rare voyage by a non-US military vessel. "After a busy period working with partners and allies in the East China Sea, we are now en route through the Taiwan Strait to visit Vietnam and the Vietnam People's Navy," read a tweet from the official account for HMS Richmond, a frigate deployed with Britain's aircraft carrier strike group. Local media said it was the first time a British warship had transited through the narrow waterway separating Taiwan and mainland China. The British navy survey ship HMS Enterprise transited through the strait in 2019. The UK's defence ministry did not respond to a request for com...

SEATTLE : Boeing Co showcased efforts to boost efficiency in its aircraft on Monday, a week after rival Airbus staged a similar conference, as global aviation faces growing political pressure to cut emissions and demands by environmental groups for curbs to air travel. The U.S. planemaker is just one of many companies in the industry playing up its efforts to make its products more environmentally friendly, though there is debate over the speed at which new technology will be adopted. Boeing's event at its flight test hangar in Seattle was anchored by an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 flying demonstrator equipped with potential upgrades like a drag-reducing warning light and cabin sidewalls made from recycled carbon fiber. "Many of our improvements come with a lot of small things at once," B...

(Updates with Fed policy statement) By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK : The U.S. dollar was choppy on the heels of the latest policy announcement by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, while risk-sensitive currencies such as the Australian dollar and Chinese yuan strengthened after China's Evergrande said it would make a bond coupon payment. The Federal Reserve on Wednesday cleared the way to reduce its monthly bond purchases "soon" and signaled interest rate increases may follow more quickly than expected, with half of the 18 U.S. central bank policymakers projecting borrowing costs will need to rise in 2022. "The tapering of quantitative easing seems very likely now in November but this was something of a given and remains couched in a lot of qualifying criteria in the event that various r...

NEW YORK :The dollar slipped against a basket of currencies on Monday, pulling back from the 1-year high hit last week, as traders looked to U.S. jobs data at the end of the week for clues to the Federal Reserve's next move. The U.S. Dollar Currency Index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six currencies, was 0.2per cent lower at 93.802. The index rose 0.8per cent last week to its highest since late September 2020. With Chinese mainland markets closed until Thursday for the National Day holiday and South Korean markets also shut on Monday, investor attention was firmly on the upcoming U.S. data. "Nonfarm payrolls will be the big focus for markets this week," Brad Bechtel, global head of FX at Jefferies in New York. Friday's data is expected to show continued improvement ...

France isn’t the only country upset about a new security pact between the U.S., U.K. and Australia: Some Southeast Asian nations are also worried the partnership could provoke China and spur a regional arms race. The so-called AUKUS partnership, which will help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines, prompted China last week to warn of an arms race in a region riven by maritime territorial disputes. Since then, two key members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — Indonesia and Malaysia — have voiced similar concerns. That wariness in ASEAN is significant, particularly as both President Joe Biden and Australian leader Scott Morrison last week touted the arrangement as necessary for Indo-Pacific stability and mentioned a desire to work with the 10-nation bloc of Southeast ...

TAIPEI :Taiwan's central bank revised up the island's growth outlook for the year on Thursday as strong exports bolstered a trade-reliant economy that has boomed even in the face of local COVID-19 cases, also keeping interest rates steady as expected. Taiwan's economy has continued to perform strongly despite an uptick in infections that began in May - now well under control - buoyed by strong global demand for its tech products as many people work and study from home during the pandemic. The central bank raised its 2021 estimate for gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 5.75per cent from the 5.08per cent forecast in June. Growth hit 3.11per cent in 2020, after expanding 2.71per cent in 2019. GDP expanded by 7.43per cent in the second quarter of 2021, down from 8.92per cent in the fir...

1. Nasdaq futures sink as soaring bond yields slam tech The Nasdaq logo is displayed at the Nasdaq Market site in New York September 2, 2015. Brendan McDermid | Reuters U.S. stocks were sliding in Tuesday's premarket, indicating further September losses with just three days left in one of the historically weakest months of the year. Nasdaq futures were sinking 200 points, or 1.5%. S&P futures were down almost 1%. Dow futures were dropping nearly 0.5%. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 fell Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose modestly. Monday's divergence came as Treasury yields rose. The 10-year Treasury yield, increasing on economic optimism and inflation fears, remained above 1.5% on Tuesday, back to levels not seen since June. Higher bond yields, which move in the opposite direction o...