Ian Lloyd Neubauer is an Australian freelance journalist.

Treason. Duplicity. A stab in the back. A breach of trust.

These are just some of the colorful ways in which French officials have described Australia's decision to cancel a 2016 deal to build 12 conventional-powered submarines in favor of at least eight nuclear-powered submarines supplied by the U.S. and the U.K.

On the surface, French outrage -- which saw President Emmanuel Macron recall his ambassadors from Australia and

TOKYO -- In a bid to accelerate development and cut costs, 10 Japanese automakers and major parts suppliers said Friday they will standardize the way they design vehicles.

Mazda Motor, Toyota Motor, Honda Motor, Nissan Motor and Subaru along with parts suppliers Denso, Panasonic, Mitsubishi Electric, Aisin and Jatco will be the founding members of a new organization created to promote model-based development.

While some major automakers already use model-based development, bringing small and midsize parts suppliers into the fold is expected to stoke

WASHINGTON -- The leaders of the U.S., Japan, India and Australia -- known as the Quad -- met in person for the first time Friday, signaling the prominence of the informal grouping of like-minded nations as the key and critical format for discussing Indo-Pacific issues.

This time, they launched a new working group on space to join the three existing frameworks on "vaccines," "climate," and "critical and emerging technology" that they announced when they met online in

BEIJING -- Before China Evergrande Group's slide into crisis, its founder and chairman Xu Jiayin turned heads with a photo op along the Tiananmen gate tower during the July 1 celebration of the Chinese Communist Party's 100th anniversary.

His ascent to these rarefied heights underscored his connections to heavyweights in the party, which decides whether Chinese companies live or die. Market watchers speculated -- at least for a time -- that debt-laden Evergrande had navigated through the worst of its problems.

But it

NEW YORK -- Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou has reached an agreement with U.S. prosecutors to resolve fraud charges against her on Friday. With a Canadian judge signing her discharge, she is free to leave Canada after nearly three years.

Meng appeared virtually in a hearing at Brooklyn federal court. She pleaded not guilty to fraud charges and agreed to the terms of a deferred prosecution, which is a speedy trial that will be delayed to Dec. 1, 2022. It means the U.

HONG KONG -- China Evergrande Group, the world's most indebted property developer, inched closer to its maiden bond default after it failed to make a coupon payment as scheduled to at least some investors, two people familiar with the matter said.

Evergrande, which is running out of cash and owes funds to staff, contractors, suppliers, banks and buyers of investment products, was due to pay $83 million in interest to holders of an offshore dollar bond on Thursday.

Two investors said the deadline of midnight

NEW DELHI -- The Indian government on Friday signed a deal worth about $3 billion with Europe's Airbus for 56 C295 transport aircraft to replace the Indian Air Force's aging fleet of Avro transport planes.

Under the agreement signed between India's Ministry of Defense and Airbus Defense and Space, Airbus will deliver the first 16 aircraft in "flyaway" condition from its final assembly line in Seville, Spain, over four years after the contract takes effect. The C295

Akhil Ramesh is a nonresident Fellow at Pacific Forum, a Foreign Policy Research Institute based in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan not only sounded the death knell for American unipolarity, but it was a wake-up call to U.S. allies and partners around the globe to reevaluate their overreliance on Washington for their security and defense needs.

And with last week's signing of the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, it will not be just Paris that will be

TOKYO -- U.S. reentry into "arenas of competition" through structures such as AUKUS and the Quad should give Asian countries the confidence to stand up to China, H.R. McMaster, Donald Trump's former national security adviser, told Nikkei.

The "[AUKUS] alliance is to deter China's aggression," the retired lieutenant general said in an online interview in reference to the new security pact between U.S., the U.K. and Australia. A key aspect