JAKARTA -- Tourist sites in Java will reopen gradually and diners can stay for an hour in a restaurant under the latest easing of COVID-19 mobility restrictions that take effect Tuesday across the densely populated Indonesian island.

The government said only small parts of Java -- where over half of Indonesia's 270 million people live -- remain under the strictest PPKM Level 4 emergency curbs, reflecting continued declines in coronavirus cases and deaths in recent weeks after a surge driven by the delta variant.

But the island

BEIJING -- The Chinese government will offer rewards of up to 1 million yuan ($155,000) for reports of safety problems or misconduct involving consumer products, double the current ceiling, to encourage employees and the public to blow the whistle on corporate wrongdoing.

Set to begin in December, the bigger incentives respond to a steady rise in consumer complaints driven by the online shopping boom of recent years.

The China Consumers Association reports that related organizations received more than 980,000

TOKYO -- Former Japanese Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba has expressed reservations about running in this month's ruling party leadership election as party support grows for a rival, popular vaccination minister Taro Kono.

If Ishiba, once seen as a leading contender, skips the race, the Liberal Democratic Party election could become a three-horse race among Kono, former LDP policy chief Fumio Kishida and former internal affairs minister Sanae Takaichi.

"If I end up just participating in the race with no chance of winning, it will achieve nothing

TOKYO -- Filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf was once a guerrilla in his native Iran before trading his gun for a camera. He later defected from the country, where film and other artistic expression are subject to strict censorship by the Islamic theocracy. Since then the director has been a fervent antiwar supporter with unshakable faith in democracy.

Nikkei interviewed Makhmalbaf about his thoughts regarding changes in Afghanistan since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the U.S. The following is an edited version of the interview in

Scott Beaumont is president of Google Asia Pacific.

Most of the 2.5 billion people online in the Asia Pacific today would barely recognize the internet of 2001.

When Google opened its first overseas office in Tokyo 20 years ago this month, smartphones, as we know them today, had not been invented. The digital economy ran on desktops, laptops and at a sluggish 9.6 kilobits per second on rudimentary mobile internet. The word "app" was not part of our lexicon.

By the

SHANGHAI -- Ａ Chinese developer of robots used in physical therapy has won the backing of the Saudi Aramco group in a vote of confidence for its growth prospects from one of the world's largest companies.

Fourier Intelligence received tens of millions of dollars from Prosperity7 Ventures, an Aramco Ventures fund, during a July funding round.

The Chinese company looks to deepen its ties to Saudi Arabia, opening the door to opportunities such as a joint rehab center there as part of its international expansion.

Fourier, a medical startup

ISTANBUL/TEHRAN/DUBAI/NEW DELHI/KARACHI -- The Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan has triggered tough measures from countries in the region and beyond to stem an expected refugee inflow.

Governments from Islamabad to Ankara and Tehran have bolstered border restrictions in anticipation of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the new regime in Kabul.

Those actions and similar curbs signaled by Western countries have highlighted an emerging tension between claims of international sympathy for Afghan refugees and the reality on the ground. Governments are worried that refugees could start to

TOKYO -- The spectatorless 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games leaves a financial loss for host nation Japan, setting up talks in the coming months on filling the hole left by hundreds of millions of dollars in unsold tickets.

Under the International Olympic Committee's contract with the host city, Tokyo bears primary responsibility for any funding shortfall. Whatever the host city cannot bear falls to the national government.

With the spectacle of competition over, the cost burden will hit home for a nation that questioned the decision to proceed

Tobias Harris is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, an independent nonpartisan policy institute. He is the author of "The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan."

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's decision on Friday not to seek a new term as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has scrambled the fortunes of ambitious politicians, as well as the ruling and opposition blocs.

What once seemed to be certain -- that the LDP would have to contest a general election with a deeply unpopular leader deemed