CHONGQING -- China's giant Baihetan hydroelectric dam, the second largest in the country, began generating electricity on Monday, in a boost to Beijing's push toward a carbon-neutral society.

The Baihetan hydropower station, which feeds off the Jinsha River in southwestern China, turned on two of its 16 generating units, each having a capacity of 1 gigawatt. The dam is due to operate at full capacity in July 2022.

President Xi Jinping has said that China, the world's

TOKYO -- The Fugaku supercomputer, developed by Fujitsu and Japan's national research institute Riken, has defended its title as the world's fastest supercomputer, beating competitors from China and the U.S.

Fugaku held the top spot on the TOP500 list by achieving a score of 442 petaflops, or quadrillions of floating point operations per second. In second place was IBM's Summit supercomputer, which scored just 148 petaflops. The ranking, compiled by an international panel of experts

JAKARTA -- The resort island of Bali will begin offering all visitors coronavirus vaccines in a bid to boost tourist traffic, the Indonesian government said Monday.

A start date for the program was not not given, with Tourism Minister Sandiaga Uno saying the initiative is still awaiting final approval by President Joko Widodo.

The vaccine program will take a two-pronged approach. Domestic travelers will have free access to shots made by China's Sinovac Biotech and the U.K.'s AstraZeneca as part of a national program launched

TOKYO -- The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development aims to impose digital taxes on roughly 100 companies with at least 20 billion euros ($23.9 billion) in revenue and a 10% profit margin, according to a proposal presented to roughly 140 countries and regions.

Negotiating countries hope to iron out the details of the international digital taxation scheme at a two-day online meeting starting Wednesday, with an agreement to be signed at the Group of 20 finance ministers and central

WASHINGTON/BEIJING -- The top U.S. diplomat and the Chinese foreign minister will not meet one on one alongside the Group of 20 meeting in Italy, a decision that marks a stark contrast to the Sino-Russia relationship that Beijing highlighted Monday.

China's Wang Yi is set to attend the G-20 gathering virtually on Tuesday rather than in person, stymieing what had been seen as an opportunity for the U.S. President Joe Biden's administration to set the stage for Biden

YANGON/BANGKOK -- Myanmar's military on Feb. 1 detained State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint in the country's first coup since 1988, bringing an end to a decade of civilian rule.

The Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy had won a landslide in a general election in November . But the military has claimed the election was marred by fraud.

For all our coverage, visit our Myanmar Coup page.

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GUANGZHOU -- China seeks tighter scrutiny of electronic cigarettes, with plans to expand regulations on traditional tobacco use to cover vaping products and possibly quintuple their tax rate.

"Enforcement on ID requirements has really gotten strict since last year," grumbles a worker at a RELX shop in the city of Guangzhou. RELX dominates China's vaping market with a more than 60% share.

"The government is really cracking down," the employee says.

The clampdown on an industry that has grown rapidly over the past several

TOKYO -- SoftBank Group's robotics unit has halted production of the Pepper humanoid robot, owing to weak demand.

The artificial-intelligence-equipped robot was marketed to stores and other customer-facing jobs in such markets as Japan, China, Europe and the U.S. But production was stopped last summer as inventories piled up, Nikkei has learned.

Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry, or Foxconn, has manufactured the robots. Pepper went on sale in Japan in 2015 and is currently

Greg Austin is senior fellow for cyber, space and future conflict at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is based in Singapore.

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato recently warned that cyberattacks should be expected during the upcoming Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, due to start on July 23. Yet Japan's defenses in this sphere remain somewhat immature, creating cause for concern given escalating threats and reports about shifting power balances, both in cyberspace and more broadly.

In this debate, China is often