PHNOM PENH -- Harvest season is always a tense time for Cambodian longan farmer Oeum Raksa, but this year the 31-year-old is particularly nervous.

Even in normal circumstances, Raksa has less than three days after picking the tropical tree-growing fruit to sell to wholesalers. These buyers then must quickly move it to processing factories in Thailand to prolong its shelf life.

This year, however, COVID-19 border restrictions and recent contamination issues have brought longan exports to Thailand to a virtual halt,

HONG KONG -- If bond market moves after the bailout plan arranged for state-owned China Huarong Asset Management are anything to go by, investors are not betting on a government backstop for troubled nonfinancial borrowers such as property developer China Evergrande Group.

Investors and analysts say Chinese government support will be forthcoming only for financial institutions deemed systemically important while defaults at other companies, including those in the state sector, will continue.

A rally in the bonds of distressed-debt manager Huarong amid a continued sell-off of the debt

BANGKOK -- A slow recovery in tourism is expected to leave many Thais jobless, and Pattaya and Chiangmai look to postpone reopening to international visitors by a month to October due to insufficient vaccines.

Thailand's unemployment rate during the second quarter was 1.89%, the Office of National Economic and Social Development Council announced on Wednesday. That was a slight recovery from 1.96% in the first quarter but remained elevated compared to pre-COVID times, when the rate was below 1%.

The

MANILA/TOKYO -- The Philippines, home to the most merchant ship crew members in the world, has produced a personal finance app that hopes to take the industry by storm.

Fintech startup MarCoPay was founded two years ago in Manila as a 50-50 joint venture between Philippine logistics giant Transnational Diversified Group and Japanese marine transporter Nippon Yusen. Japanese trading house Marubeni purchased a stake in June.

From wage payments in electronic money, MarCoPay will branch out into mortgages and other financial services for sailors who spend months

Boonsithi Chokwatana is chairman of Saha Group, Thailand's leading consumer products conglomerate. This is part 28 of a 30-part series.

I have so far looked back on the Saha Group mainly through our collaborations with Japanese companies. Now I would like to shift the focus to our cooperation with South Korean and Chinese businesses, although we have not had so many joint venture deals with them.

Our relationship with South Korea's Samsung Electronics traces back to my hobby of flying small aircraft. As readers may

HANOI -- U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday will open an office of America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Vietnamese capital as the Southeast Asian nation scrambles to suppress deadly COVID-19 outbreaks in its economic hub of Ho Chi Minh City.

The opening of the Southeast Asia Regional Office of the CDC is scheduled to be announced in the afternoon following Harris' meeting with Vietnam President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

The vice president will attend an opening ceremony with

TAIPEI -- China has threatened to invade Taiwan for seven decades, yet its ability to execute the biggest amphibious invasion in human history has only recently reached the point where such a feat could be feasible.

One of the most-discussed missing pieces to the puzzle for planners in Beijing is amphibious lift capability -- the ability to transport equipment and personnel across the Taiwan Strait and unload off of Taiwan's rugged coast. The April 23 commissioning of China's first Yushen-class landing helicopter assault ship is a

TAIPEI -- The world's leading chip packaging and testing equipment maker is bucking the trend of supply chain diversification by continuing to expand in Singapore, its main production base, even as major chipmakers rush to build factories in the U.S., Europe and Japan.

Chan Pin Chong, executive vice president at Kulicke and Soffa Industries, told Nikkei Asia that the city-state will remain his company's biggest production site for the foreseeable future.

"Singapore has very strong infrastructure, as a simple example,

WASHINGTON/ISTANBUL (AP) -- U.S. President Joe Biden declared Tuesday he is sticking to his Aug. 31 deadline for completing a risky airlift of Americans, endangered Afghans and others seeking to escape Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The decision defies allied leaders who want to give the evacuation more time, and opens Biden to criticism that he caved to Taliban deadline demands.

"Every day we're on the ground is another day that we know ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack