TOKYO -- Japanese personal care group Unicharm will double exports of masks by 2023 to answer Asian demand for functional products, particularly those carrying the "Made in Japan" label.

The company will ramp up exports to Asian markets such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. The products will be sold in high-income Saudi Arabia as well. Unicharm will use sales channels that already exist for diapers.

The company will sell Cho-Kaiteki and Cho-Rittai brand masks. The company produced 1.3 billion

NEW YORK -- In a speech sprinkled with words such as "democracy" and "freedom," Chinese President Xi Jinping used his address to the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday to slam the past two decades of U.S. foreign policy and portray China as the defender of a U.N.-centered international order.

"Recent developments in the global situation show once again that military intervention from the outside and so-called democratic transformation entail nothing but harm," Xi said.

He was indirectly

MANILA -- Southeast Asia's economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic will be much slower than initially expected, the Asian Development Bank said in a report on Wednesday, as the region continues to wrestle with the highly infectious delta variant.

Southeast Asia's gross domestic product is expected to grow 3.1% this year before expanding by 5% next year, according to an update to Asian Development Outlook, ADB's widely followed economic publication. The new 2021 outlook is lower than

LONDON (Financial Times) -- High inflation is set to continue over the next two years, the OECD warned on Tuesday, requiring skilful handling by policymakers to ensure price rises are a temporary blip while the economic recovery remains on track.

In its latest economic outlook, the Paris-based club of nations projected that inflation would be significantly higher in 2021 and in 2022 than it had previously forecast for most G20 countries, but that this need not become a persistent problem.

Publishing

SINGAPORE -- Autonomous robots powered by artificial intelligence sound like plot devices straight out of a Hollywood science-fiction movie, but soon these service droids could be the norm in the food industries in Japan and Singapore, thanks to SoftBank Robotics and China's Keenon Robotics.

The two countries will be the first to use such robots in a partnership announced by SoftBank and Shanghai-headquartered Keenon on Tuesday. The two companies hope to expand the use of intelligent machines in sectors such as food and beverage to ease labor shortages.

HONG KONG -- Even as China Evergrande Group's bonds have fallen toward 25 cents on the dollar amid worries the developer will default, fund managers including BlackRock, UBS and HSBC Holdings have been increasing their holdings of the debt.

Some funds have added Evergrande bonds "given widening spreads and attractive valuations," said Patrick Ge, a research analyst at Morningstar. "This is in line with what we have heard from some managers where they said that at its current levels, they believe Evergrande is a buy.

NEW DELHI -- India on Tuesday slammed a new British COVID-19 travel policy that will still require fully vaccinated passengers from India to quarantine as "discriminatory," with Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla warning of "reciprocal measures."

New U.K. rules that come into effect on Oct. 4 will allow vaccinated arrivals from a host of countries including Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and others to enter without an isolation period. Those coming from India, however, will be obliged to quarantine for

MANILA -- Manila Mayor Isko Moreno will run for Philippine president next year, his chief of staff Cesar Chavez said on Tuesday, bringing the former actor into a race that already includes a boxer-turned-senator.

Moreno will make an announcement on Wednesday via a "special broadcast" on various radio and TV stations, Chavez said.

This brings the number of confirmed candidates for the May 2022 presidential election to three. Boxing icon Manny Pacquiao, an incumbent senator, declared his candidacy on Sunday, while

TOKYO -- Japan's financial regulator will oversee Mizuho Financial Group's troubled computer system for the next few months to prevent new crashes, taking an unprecedented step that follows a series of breakdowns at its retail banking unit this year, Nikkei has learned.

The Financial Services Agency is expected to announce the action as early as this week. The FSA informed Mizuho Bank of its plans on Tuesday.

Under the FSA supervision order, the agency will oversee a system inspection and improvements at Mizuho, Japan's third-