TOKYO -- Only a year into Barack Obama's presidency, his chief of staff nearly resigned.

The battle to pass the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, had resulted in big electoral loss for the Democratic Party. And Rahm Emanuel, went around Washington, venting that he had warned the president this would happen.

"Having your chief of staff appear to distance himself from you after you've been knocked down in a fight is less than ideal," Obama wrote in his 2020 memoir

TOKYO -- Japan announced on Friday that it will expand its coronavirus state of emergency to include three more prefectures as the nation struggles to contain rising infections, casting further doubt over the Tokyo Olympics 70 days ahead of their scheduled opening.

The government declared a COVID-19 emergency for Hokkaido, Okayama and Hiroshima prefectures that starts on Sunday and will last until May 31. That brings the total number of prefectures under the state of emergency to nine, including Tokyo and the greater Osaka region.

Meanwhile, a

HONG KONG -- Hong Kong billionaire Adrian Cheng has raised $300 million through a Nasdaq Stock Market IPO for a special-purpose acquisition company focused on acquisitions of health care, consumer and technology businesses with potential for the greater China market.

The initial public offering for Artisan Acquisition marks the first SPAC created by an Asian company in the U.S. since Washington's Securities and Exchange Commission issued warnings last month to cool overheated deal-making in the sector.

The closing of the Artisan Acquisition offering on

Andrew Collier is managing director at Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong.

After years of rampant growth, there is widespread talk in Beijing about a return to slower pace of credit expansion. This is being echoed by the western media. But is it true?

I would argue that, while there is a continued effort to de-risk the financial system, and reduce the influence of large conglomerates such as Alibaba, the government is not willing to touch the third rail of reducing credit. The risks of an economic and financial

SINGAPORE -- A cluster of COVID-19 infections traced to Singapore's Changi Airport has prompted authorities to announce the tightest restrictions seen since last year, a setback that casts serious doubt on plans to open a travel bubble with Hong Kong this month.

From Sunday through June 13, restaurants will be restricted to only takeout and deliveries. Residents will only be allowed to go out in pairs, down from the current limit of five people -- a figure that was already cut from eight due to rising community

TOKYO/NEW DELHI -- The U.S. earlier this month said it supports temporarily waiving intellectual property protections on COVID-19 vaccines. In doing so, President Joe Biden's administration threw serious weight behind a proposal brought to the World Trade Organization by India and South Africa.

Other emerging countries such as Pakistan, Mongolia and a group of least-developed nations including Bangladesh have backed the idea as well. They argue patents and other restrictions hinder timely access to affordable inoculations and could prolong the pandemic.

PHNOM PENH -- Denmark's Bestseller should resume sourcing from Myanmar "as quickly as possible," as the exit of international companies threatens to cause widespread poverty and famine, according to an independent report commissioned by the company.

Bestseller tasked lawyer Jonas Christoffersen, previously the head of Danish Institute for Human Rights, to assess the company's business in Myanmar following the Feb. 1 military coup.

Bestseller is among several international fashion companies to have halted new orders in the wake of the military's takeover, which

TOKYO -- Toshiba posted a 104.4 billion yen ($953 million) operating profit in the fiscal year ended March, down 20% from the previous year as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Japanese industrial conglomerate's bottom line, the company said Friday.

Toshiba's operating profit recovered in the January to March quarter, reversing a loss in the April to June quarter last year.

After years of clashes with activist shareholders over the company's governance and growth strategy

TOKYO -- The Academy Award-winning 2013 film "Gravity" begins with two astronauts on a spacewalk being caught in a massive storm of debris caused by a Russian missile strike on a defunct satellite.

The astronauts flee to the International Space Station in hopes of using a Russian Soyuz module to return to Earth, only to find that the sole remaining capsule is no longer usable for that purpose. In desperation, one of the two astronauts rides in the Soyuz to China's nearby Tiangong station and manages