TOKYO -- Over 2,000 employees at Honda Motor applied for early retirement, Nikkei learned Thursday, as the Japanese automaker restructures its workforce to gear up to make more electric vehicles.

Honda's move is the latest in the trend among automakers to move away from the production and sales of internal combustion engines.

Those employees account for around 5% of Honda's full-time staff in Japan. The early retirement program is open to those aged between 55 and 63 and offers a package

Ben Scott is director, Australia's security and the rules-based order project at the Lowy Institute.

Donald Trump's foreign policy often seemed guided by a simple rule: do the opposite of Barack Obama.

Trump's administration scorned the long-standing U.S. efforts to engage China and formally embraced the concept of great power competition. By the time COVID-19 hit, the U.S. and China had ended almost all efforts to cooperate on the great global issues.

Six months

TOKYO -- Nintendo on Thursday reported a 13% fall in net profit for the first quarter of this fiscal year due to dwindling pandemic-driven demand for its Switch gaming console.

The company logged a net profit of 92 billion yen ($845 million) for the April-June period and said operating profit decreased 17% to 119 billion yen from a year earlier. Revenue fell 10% to 322 billion yen.

Combined with its handheld Switch Lite, the gaming

HSINCHU, Taiwan -- Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn said on Thursday it will buy a semiconductor plant from a local memory chip supplier for $90 million, marking a major step by the iPhone assembler to secure a source of chips for its nascent electric vehicle business.

Foxconn has made electric vehicles a major focus of its growth strategy as it looks to offset a slowdown in its mainstay consumer electronics segment. Securing supplies of chips is crucial to that goal given the global semiconductor supply shortage, company chairman Young Liu has said,

BAGRAM/KABUL -- As the U.S. military drawdown in Afghanistan nears completion, concerns are growing over the country's fledgling economy and weakening security.

Nowhere is the impact of the troop withdrawal more apparent than in the local economies of cities that profited from trade associated with nearby U.S. military bases, such as Bagram and Kabul.

For many years, Bagram, located in the eastern province of Parwan, was the nexus of regional economic opportunity. But today it resembles a ghost town. The

TOKYO -- Kansai International Airport, in western Japan, is undergoing a major renovation to welcome more foreign tourists ahead of Osaka's hosting of the World Expo in 2025. The airport's operator says the 70 billion yen ($635 million) project is "what the Kansai region needs," despite the heavy blow from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Benoit Rulleau, co-CEO of the airport's operator, Kansai Airports, told Nikkei Asia in a recent interview

SINGAPORE -- Singapore banks this week loosened their purse strings to reward investors on strong second quarter results, showing they are comfortable that the recovery from COVID-19 remains on track despite setbacks across Asia.

DBS Group Holdings, Southeast Asia's largest lender, on Thursday announced interim payouts to shareholders at 33 Singapore cents per share for the quarter, up from 18 cents a year ago.

For the April-June quarter, the bank booked a net profit of SG$1.7 billion (US

TOKYO -- The Tokyo Olympics are well underway after a long journey filled with controversy, and an unprecedented one-year postponement because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The proceedings officially began with the opening ceremony at the National Stadium , a mostly subdued affair mixed with joyous moments like a high-tech drone show, and capped by tennis star Naomi Osaka lighting the Olympic cauldron.

We're tracking the latest medal count .

Read our breakdown of the events to watch .

Here are the latest developments:

Thursday,

TAIPEI -- Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin became household names in Taiwan on Sunday when they won the island's first ever Olympic gold medal in badminton -- a victory made sweeter as the male duo's opponents were from China.

The historic victory was followed by another first when host Japan played the "national flag anthem" of the Republic of China, as Taiwan is formally known, as the duo stood atop the podium. Lee then took to Facebook to ecstatically post, "I am Lee Yang