NEW YORK -- A meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will likely take place in October at the Group of 20 summit, the White House said on Thursday, noting Western countries' increasing alignment on China.

Biden "will look for opportunities to engage with President Xi going forward," U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on a briefing call when asked if such a summit is in the picture after Biden concluded his first trip abroad as president to Europe on

TOKYO -- "There are strange victories, but no strange defeats."

This remark by the late Katsuya Nomura, a professional baseball manager, is a well-known witticism in Japan. The gist is that there are always inevitable factors that lead to defeats.

That truth is not limited to baseball. It applies to all games or battles, politics included. For example, Donald Trump's loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. presidential election was largely due to his failure to

KUALA LUMPUR -- Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin on Thursday pledged to listen to a call from Malaysia's king to reopen parliament immediately, without setting a specific time frame for doing so.

Muhyiddin's office released a brief statement the day after King Sultan Abdullah Ri'ayatuddin made it clear he wants the legislature to resume. At a special conference on Wednesday, the king and Malay state rulers also rejected the possibility of extending the country's coronavirus emergency beyond the Aug. 1 expiry date.

Parliament has been suspended

TOKYO -- Sony Music Entertainment has acquired London-based podcast producer Somethin' Else, as the Japanese company looks to expand its U.S.-focused operation into a global enterprise.

Somethin' Else's output consists mainly of talk shows, music programs and serials. The shows are streamed on major platforms such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The Sony Group subsidiary did not disclose the deal's price in Wednesday's announcement.

The Japanese group has poured resources into Sony Music Entertainment's intellectual properties

SHANGHAI -- As the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party approaches on July 1, a museum here features President Xi Jinping more prominently than any other leader save Mao Zedong, the founder of modern China.

The exhibit at the site of the party's first National Congress opened in Shanghai earlier this month. Xi, the party's current general secretary, appears in 12 photographs, including one of him giving a speech at Tiananmen Square.

By contrast, Deng Xiaoping -- a core second

SYDNEY -- As Australia's ongoing border clampdown keeps out the international students on which many of the country's universities rely for income, state governments have begun taking action on their own.

The sector suffered a 1.8 billion Australian dollar ($1.4 billion) hit to revenue last year and lost 17,000 jobs, according to an estimate by Universities Australia, a group of 39 institutions. The organization said last month that it "conservatively estimates at least another $2

BEIJING -- Baidu, the Chinese technology company best known for its search engine, on Thursday unveiled an autonomous electric vehicle developed with carmaker BAIC Group that it plans to deploy in a ride-hailing fleet of 1,000 self-driving cars in three years.

Dubbed Apollo Moon, the 5G-ready robotaxi is based on BAIC's luxury EV brand Arcfox and equipped with autonomous driving technology from Baidu's business unit Apollo.

One big advantage is Apollo Moon's manufacturing cost of 48

TOKYO/PALO ALTO, U.S. -- Chinese viral video platform Kuaishou Technology ranks as the most valuable company that listed in the past year, with a market capitalization of roughly $110 billion despite a 30% drop since its initial public offering, Nikkei research shows.

That makes Kuaishou more valuable than Airbnb, which leads newly listed U.S. and European companies at around $92 billion. Data warehousing provider Snowflake, online game platform Roblox and food delivery service DoorDash also trail the

Elbridge Colby is a principal at the Marathon Initiative. He served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development from 2017-2018. Jennifer Lind is an associate professor at Dartmouth College.

The question of how to respond to China's enormous growth and increasing assertiveness is leading countries across the Indo-Pacific to grapple with uncomfortable -- even previously unimaginable -- policy changes.

Nowhere is this more true than in Japan. Most importantly, Japan must change