TOKYO -- Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida emphasized his intention to "strategically promote the realization of a free and open Indo-Pacific" in cooperation with U.S. President Joe Biden, in a video message shown at an event held in Tokyo on Saturday.

The world is facing "many challenges including an increasingly harsh regional security environment, events that threaten universal values such as freedom, democracy and human rights, and global issues such as climate change and the novel coronavirus," Kishida said at the annual

HONG KONG -- Embattled China Evergrande Group is set to avert its first bond default after remitting $83.5 million to settle a coupon payment it missed last month.

The company, the world's most indebted real estate developer, could have been declared in default on Saturday, the end of a 30-day grace period for the missed coupon payment.

However, on Thursday it managed to send the funds due Citibank, the bond's trustee, according to a report on Friday by the state

TOKYO -- Tokyo Kikai Seisakusho, one of Japan's top makers of newspaper printing presses, has received shareholder approval for measures to block an acquisition by investment fund Asia Development Capital.

In an extraordinary shareholders meeting on Friday, a majority of shareholders voted in favor of activating the defenses.

ADC has sought an injunction against the measures in the Tokyo District Court. Whether the measures will go into force hinges on the court's ruling.

It was revealed in a securities filing in July that ADC became a major shareholder

BEIJING -- A senior Chinese official under international sanctions, including from the U.S. and European Union, has been promoted to the top post in Tibet, as President Xi Jinping seemingly doubles down against Western criticism over Beijing's treatment of the country's minorities.

Wang Junzheng was named the new Communist Party secretary for the Tibet Autonomous Region on Tuesday. He previously served as deputy party secretary in Xinjiang, leading the police and justice department in the region since 2019. He has also studied

BEIJING (AP) -- China on Friday said there is "no room" for compromise or concessions over the issue of Taiwan, following a comment by U.S. President Joe Biden that the U.S. is committed to defending the island if it is attacked.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin reasserted China's longstanding claim that the island is its territory at a daily briefing after Biden made his comment a day before at a forum hosted by CNN.

China has recently upped its threat to bring Taiwan under

TOKYO/LONDON -- Ministers from the Group of Seven advanced economies agreed Friday to seek to eliminate forced labor from global supply chains, taking a stance seen as in line with Western criticism of China's treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

The joint statement from the G-7 trade meeting in London marks the first time the group has endorsed import restrictions and other trade policy tools to stop forced labor.

The ministers voiced concern about states imposing forced labor on vulnerable groups. While not calling out China by name, the statement

SHANGHAI -- China Evergrande Group staved off default with a last-minute interest payment on a dollar bond, but the tough funding environment that brought on its crisis does not look set to improve anytime soon.

Evergrande's Hong Kong-listed shares jumped nearly 8% at one point Friday on reports that the developer had sent the $83.5 million payment to bond trustee Citibank on Thursday. The developer had missed the initial deadline last month, and the 30-day grace period was due to end

TOKYO -- Military helicopters took off from Chinese and Russian warships sailing near a Japanese island, according to the Ministry of Defense, days after a Sino-Russian naval passage through a chokepoint in Japan's north.

The latest incident took place around 4 a.m. Thursday about 50 km to 100 km southwest of Sumisu Island, part of the Izu archipelago stretching south of Tokyo off Japan's Pacific side. Two helicopters flew from frigates operated by China and Russia.

Japan scrambled Air Self-

NEW YORK -- A week after details of Chinese President Xi Jinping's new political slogan "common prosperity" were published in a Communist Party journal, investors on Wall Street are coming to the realization that the world's most populous country may be on a significantly different path from before.

Reducing wealth inequality and greatly expanding the middle class are the main pillars of the new era. A timeline for the program became public for the first time: "Remarkable and substantive progress" toward common prosperity by 203