WASHINGTON -- The abrupt U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the American public's quickly fading support for military endeavors in the greater Middle East, could send the wrong message to Beijing and push it to take action in Taiwan, historian Niall Ferguson told Nikkei in an interview.

Ferguson, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, said big wars usually happen when the aggressor "thinks that time is not on its side and that it's better to act sooner rather than wait."

NEW DELHI/NANNING, China -- Hitting out at the U.S and its allies, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that their withdrawal from Afghanistan has led to "a new crisis" in the world and it is still unclear how this will affect regional and global security.

"That's why it is for good reason that our countries [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] have paid special attention to this issue," Putin said in his opening remarks at the 13

NAGOYA -- Toyota Motor will acquire South Korean conglomerate SK Group's car leasing business in China to fuel its expansion in the world's biggest auto market.

Financing subsidiary Toyota Financial Services will buy the entire stake in Beijing-based SK Auto Service for an estimated 5 billion yen ($45.5 million), aiming to close the deal by month's end.

SK Auto Service has operated mainly in major cities with a fleet of several thousand vehicles for corporate customers.

In China, TFS,

Imran Shamsunahar is an external relations executive at the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS), based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Views expressed here are his own.

It is never a good sign when your fellow Malaysians are seriously debating whether your country has become a failed state.

The country is currently undergoing its cruelest wave of COVID-19, already having surpassed a record 24,000 daily cases. Its health care system is teetering, suicide rates have spiked and citizens had at one point

VAN, Turkey -- A third dose of a coronavirus vaccine decreases the hospitalization rate by 6 to 7 times compared to those who have just received two Sinovac Biotech shots, Turkey's health minister announced Thursday.

So far, 15 million people in Turkey have received two doses of the Chinese Sinovac, while 9 million of them also received a third dose of a vaccine as a booster, which could be either Sinovac or the recently added Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

The hospitalization rate of the 9 million who received a

TOKYO -- Shozo Saito, a 71-year-old former CEO of Toshiba's electronic device group, has long been frustrated about the decline of Japan's semiconductor industry. "Japanese chipmakers are becoming less competitive," Saito laments.

When he was with Toshiba, Japan had a global share of more than 50% in the semiconductor market, thanks partly to memory chips that Saito's own group commercialized. Today, Japan's share has slid to 10%, data from the

TOKYO -- Japanese technology group Toshiba will shutter a Chinese plant in the northeastern city of Dalian -- the company's first production center in the country -- at the end of this month as part of an ongoing business restructuring.

The plant, which employs roughly 650 people, makes industrial motors and broadcast transmitters. But the site found itself on the chopping block due to a steep drop in production.

The Dalian plant opened in 1991 as Toshiba's first Chinese production center, when

BANGKOK -- Thailand's raging pandemic has failed to deter aspiring Chinese entrepreneurs from starting businesses, with some even plowing money into acquiring hotels, property and land amid record-low prices.

This comes as the Southeast Asian country battles its worst outbreak yet, which hit a high of over 23,000 infections per day in mid-August. Recent cases have hovered around 15,000 a day.

"The most trying times will teach us more lessons than usual. ...

Vandana Hari is founder of Singapore-based Vanda Insights, which tracks energy markets.

Pressured by U.S. inflation running at 13-year highs and surging gasoline prices, the Biden administration acted somewhat uncharacteristically in July by publicly urging OPEC and its allies to pump more oil.

Oil-producing nations shrugged off the request, but the White House drew flak from both sides of the energy and climate change debate. Coming from an administration touting a green agenda, the move was seen as hypocritical by many. But