SEOUL -- Kim Yo Jong, a powerful North Korean official and sister to leader Kim Jong Un, is currently in charge of diplomatic and national security affairs, according to a report by South Korea's top spy agency.

The assessment by Seoul's National Intelligence Service, given to the National Assembly's intelligence committee on Thursday, is based on Kim Yo Jong's promotion to a seat on North Korea's State Affairs Commission, a body that decides key national policies. A lawmaker on the committee

TOKYO -- Japan's Renesas Electronics reports a 96% jump in group net profit on the year for the January-September period, propelled by a strong performance from its automotive chips.

Earnings reached 75.4 billion yen ($662 million), the chipmaker said Thursday. This marks the highest profit ever for the nine-month period, although past results were reported under different accounting standards.

A key supplier to Toyota Motor and other automakers, Renesas has been closely watched during the global

TOKYO -- SoftBank Group's Vision Fund has invested in a Japanese company for the first time, Nikkei has learned, as the tech investor accelerates a push for geographic diversity in its portfolio.

The Vision Fund led a 6.8 billion yen ($59.7 million) investment into Aculys Pharma, a biotech startup co-founded in January by Kazunari Tsunaba, the former president of the Japanese arm of Novartis.

Aculys, based in Kanazawa Prefecture, aims to bring sleep disorder treatments approved for sale in

TOKYO -- Toyota Motor seeks to rev up its development of batteries used in electric vehicles by employing quantum computing to research new materials that can increase performance.

The automaker will tie up with Tokyo-based QunaSys, which has expertise in quantum computing software, to perform simulations to determine the properties of a wide range of materials.

The research will employ a technique call density-functional theory, or DFT, that models the electronic structure of a material. Conventional supercomputers, however, can require months to make simulations using the

OSAKA -- Giant fossils decorate hallways and meeting rooms at the Osaka headquarters of sensor maker Keyence -- a reminder, the company says, that it too could become a fossil if it does not continue to evolve.

This continued adaptation has helped Keyence grow to become Japan's third-most-valuable listed company, behind only Toyota Motor and Sony Group, with a market capitalization of nearly 16 trillion yen ($141 billion).

Keyence reported a record 141.78 billion yen

PALO ALTO, U.S. -- Facebook, the U.S. tech company known for its namesake social media app, is changing its name to Meta, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday, to reflect "the future that we want to help build."

With controversy swirling around the core business, after a series of leaks and whistleblower claims, Zuckerberg has sought to project a vision for the company that goes beyond traditional social media to encompass a buzzy new term, the "metaverse."

The

NEW DELHI -- Afghanistan's opium poppy farmers resumed cultivating the crop this month with apparent impunity, despite assurances from the Taliban that the country will not become a hotbed for the illegal drug trade.

"We've started planting poppy seeds for this year," said a farmer in the southern province of Helmand. "We're also growing wheat and corn, but poppies sell at a high price."

The farmer expects to harvest 20 kg of poppies in April. A grower can fetch about $

Alice Wang is an Asia-focused portfolio manager at Quaero Capital, an investment manager.

Critics scoffed back in 2006 when South Korean entertainment company CJ E&M said that soon the world would be watching "two to three Korean movies a year, eat Korean food one or two times per month, watch one to two Korean dramas per week and listen to one to two Korean songs per day."

Yet as the runaway success of the South Korean drama "Squid Game" suggests -- now the

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday unveiled a new framework for his signature "Build Back Better" agenda, with plans to spend $1.75 trillion over ten years on child care assistance, climate measures and other key policies.

The framework will "put us on a path not only to compete, but to win the economic competition for the 21st century against China and every other major country in the world," Biden said in a speech.

Unable to bring together the