TOKYO -- As SpaceX and other U.S. startups ignite a space boom, companies in Asia are searching for their own niches in what is expected to grow into a $1 trillion market.

SpaceBD, a Tokyo-based rocket ride-share booking service established in 2017, appears to have found its niche in Australia and Taiwan.

Last month, SpaceBD helped two communications satellites from Australian universities find their way to the International Space Station by arranging a ride aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. From their

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. auto safety investigators have opened a new probe into 30 million vehicles built by nearly two dozen automakers with potentially defective Takata air bag inflators, a government document seen by Reuters on Sunday showed.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Friday opened an engineering analysis into an estimated 30 million U.S. vehicles from the 2001 through 2019 model years. Automakers were alerted to the investigation, which is not yet public.

TAIPEI -- Political tensions have decimated tech-sector investment between the U.S. and China as the world's two biggest economies attempt to decouple their supply chains, according to a recent report.

Between 2016 and 2020, overall direct investment between the two countries fell 75% from $62 billion to $16 billion, with the tech sector alone plunging 96% over the period, according to Bain and Co.'s latest annual technology report released on

HONG KONG -- Hong Kong's largest pro-democracy labor group is set to join a growing list of civic groups succumbing to pressure from a crackdown on dissent under the national security law imposed on the city by Beijing last year.

"We tried our best, but we just can't see any more room for us to stand anymore," Joe Wong Nai-yuen, chairman of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, told reporters on Sunday.

Wong said that the union and those involved with it

TOKYO -- Floats of yuan-denominated bonds in mainland China by foreign issuers have bounced back this year as global multinationals bank on the economy's long-term growth outlook to plot business expansion.

For the year through September, 19.5 billion yuan ($3.02 billion) worth of so-called panda bonds have been issued, according to Refinitiv, topping the 2020 total. The sum excludes floats by entities registered in Hong Kong and Macao.

Last year, the coronavirus

TOKYO -- WeWork Japan is expected to specialize in managing coworking offices, Nikkei has learned, moving away from directly leasing space to reduce its financial exposure while continuing to expand.

The company, which has 38 locations in Japan, intends to expand under the new business model as early as 2022, WeWork Japan CEO Johnny Yoo told Nikkei. The pivot would pave the way for growing to 100 to 200 locations, he said. With many of the current coworking spaces in Tokyo and

HONG KONG -- The intensifying crisis at China Evergrande Group, the world's most indebted property developer, is causing tremors across the Chinese junk bond market and stoking fears that there could be damaging consequences for the rest of the nation's financial system.

International investors are no longer just shunning Evergrande's bombed-out bonds. Debt issued by other stretched developers has also slumped. Banks with exposure to the Chinese property sector are coming under scrutiny.

And with angry creditors descending on Evergrande's headquarters, and

William Pesek is an award-winning Tokyo-based journalist and author of "Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan's Lost Decades."

The house always wins. Just not in Macao, where this gaming industry maxim is being turned on its head. A plunge in casino-related stocks has analysts pointing fingers, junket operators reeling and investors taking chips off the proverbial table.

This losing streak is a long time coming. And, not surprisingly, it bears China's fingerprints. As part of

TOKYO -- As ransomware attacks grow increasingly frequent, more than half of the targeted organizations in seven major markets have made payments, according to a recent survey.

Roughly 2,400 out of 3,600 companies and organizations surveyed by U.S. cybersecurity specialist Proofpoint faced a ransomware attack in 2020, with 52% paying the attacker in the hopes of restoring access to data. American entities paid in 87% of cases, followed by 59% and 54