BEIJING/SINGAPORE -- Singapore has welcomed China's application to join the CPTPP trade agreement, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Friday.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told Chinese President Xi Jinping in a call that day that Singapore "welcomes and supports" China's application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, "which will benefit the prosperity and development of the region," a Chinese statement said.

A release from the Singaporean Foreign Ministry did not mention any discussions regarding the CPTPP.

SINGAPORE -- Foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on Friday agreed to not invite Myanmar's military chief to a leaders summit this month because of slow progress on restoring peace in the country, according to multiple diplomatic sources.

"Min Aung Hlaing will not be invited to ASEAN," said a Yangon-based ASEAN diplomat.

Gen. Min Aung Hlaing's exclusion from the region's highest-level meeting highlights the growing pressure on the Myanmar military government, which has been reluctant to cooperate with

TOKYO -- As Japan's political parties spar over how to reduce inequality ahead of the upcoming general election, three decades of nearly flat wages suggest that growing the economic pie first may be a more pressing priority.

Annual wages in Japan averaged about $39,000 in 2020 at purchasing power parity last year, an increase of just 4% from 30 years earlier, according to data by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Over the same period, U.S.

Nancy Snow is the co-editor of The Sage Handbook of Propaganda and the co-author of the 8th edition of Propaganda and Persuasion. She teaches media and international relations at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies.

In March 2019, Maria Ressa and I sat in a conference room at the headquarters of Facebook. We were part of a small group of academics, journalists, foundation and tech representatives sponsored by the company to brainstorm a response to the rise of misinformation and fake news.

We called our raison

TOKYO -- Japanese staffing service Pasona Group will start introducing foreign workers in the information technology field to work remotely from their countries to Japanese companies, which are suffering from a labor shortage exacerbated by COVID-19 travel restrictions, Nikkei has learned.

Pasona had been introducing hundreds of foreigners annually to Japanese companies before the coronavirus pandemic. About 60% of them lived in Japan, but the rest moved to Japan from their home countries.

Due to travel restrictions under the pandemic, an increasing number of Japanese companies are

Alexander Matheou is Asia Pacific director at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Like other humanitarian leaders who have visited Afghanistan in recent weeks, I left the country talking of crisis.

I visited projects, talked to Afghans, listened to the small diplomatic community remaining in Afghanistan, and met Taliban leaders, including the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Amir Khan Muttaqi.

I raised the same issues of the critical need for independent, neutral and impartial humanitarian action, the urgent necessity to bring in supplies, to scale

ISLAMABAD -- As part of their efforts to protect China's Belt and Road Initiative projects in Pakistan, Islamabad and Beijing have finally succeeded in pushing the Taliban to launch a crackdown on Pakistani separatist groups operating from their sanctuaries in Afghanistan and remove Uyghur rebels from an area that borders China.

In return, the Taliban expects economic cooperation and humanitarian assistance from Islamabad and Beijing, and are lobbying for sanctions to be removed, security analysts believe.

Separatist groups in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan have been alarmed by the

TASHKENT -- Kyrgyzstan on Friday caps a tumultuous 12 months since President Sadyr Japarov took the reins of power, and the convulsions that have strained the country's social and political fabric show no sign of abating.

In a move widely seen as another step to consolidate his power, Japarov on Wednesday appointed a new cabinet of ministers led by a prime minister-like chairman. Legislative changes signed into law the previous day placed the president at the top of the executive branch.

The overhaul of the government is the latest

TOKYO -- Japan's annual home electronics and IT trade show held an opening event on Friday featuring online speeches from Toshiba's CEO and the country's digital minister, both of whom stressed the importance of accelerating digital transformation in a post-pandemic "new normal" world.

The four-day Ceatec expo, which officially kicks off on Tuesday, is being held online for the second year in a row due to COVID-19.

Under the slogan "Toward Society 5.0 with the New