Two disputes emerge from a 5.09 billion baht spending review A reported State Audit Office letter dated October 7, 2026, asks the Thai PBS policy board to take action concerning director Vanchai Tantivitayapitak and pursue repayment of 85,222,935.65 baht over…

Electricity demand puts project deadlines under scrutiny Vietnam has ordered a review of individual power projects as it seeks electricity supplies capable of supporting annual economic growth of at least 10% through 2030. The pressure is already visible: electricity generation…

A Million Copies and a Record Shared With B'z Snow Man's AMENITY sold 1,014,000 copies in its opening week on the Oricon Weekly Album Ranking, giving the nine member group its fifth consecutive album to pass one million sales in…

Two constitutional powers, one displaced government Governor Faisal Karim Kundi is administering Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with an 11 member advisory council after President Asif Ali Zardari imposed emergency and governor’s rule on the advice of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The federal…

One sampling point records 114,860 milligrams per litre Water collected about 65 metres from a leaking embankment near an industrial waste landfill in Hua Wa, Si Maha Phot district, Prachin Buri, contained petroleum hydrocarbons at a reported concentration of 114,860…

Protection Through February 2027 Has Not Prevented Arrests At least 12 Hong Kong residents protected from deportation under a presidential directive have been detained at U.S. airports since June 2026, according to immigration lawyers. Judges subsequently ordered their release after…

Five consecutive scoring innings send Brothers into the final The CTBC Brothers defeated the Uni Lions 8–2 at Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium on October 12, ending a tense playoff challenge series and securing the first Taiwan Series meeting between the…

Treatment expanded as the nutrition crisis worsened UNICEF and its partners screened 1.3 million children for wasting in Afghanistan in August 2026 and admitted 111,099 for treatment, including 58,891 with severe wasting. At the same time, supplies of specialized nutrition…

Ten firefighting units struggle to contain sixth floor blaze A fire at Manzur Khan Plaza in Old Dhaka's Chawkbazar remained uncontrolled into the early hours of Tuesday, October 13, after firefighters spent hours battling locked warehouses, dense smoke and a…

A year of easier entry, with a 30 day limit Vietnamese citizens holding ordinary passports will be able to enter Russia without a visa for visits lasting up to 30 days from October 15, 2026, under a decree signed by…

Press detentions deepen the confrontation in Delhi Nearly three dozen journalists were detained while covering protests in New Delhi over October 10 and 11, according to accounts from reporters, as a dispute over the removal of more than 130 million…

A return to farming on land still burdened by salt In Shyamnagar, near Bangladesh's Sundarbans, the government agriculture office lists 71,000 farmers and 17,539 hectares of cultivable land. Its assessment identifies five obstacles to production: salinity, irrigation shortages during the…

Two candidates, one place aboard Tiangong Pakistan is preparing to send its first astronaut into orbit, with military pilots Muhammad Zeeshan Ali and Khurram Daud training in Beijing for a mission expected to last about one week aboard China's Tiangong…

Parliament approves 313 articles, but implementation must wait Indonesia's House of Representatives approved the Employment Protection Law on October 6, 2026, introducing tighter dismissal rules, a four year ceiling on temporary contracts and protections for digital platform workers. The legislation…

97 eligible Goa voters expose a gap between decisions and software In Goa, election officers examined documents and found 97 voters eligible for inclusion in the electoral roll. Eight communications over seven days sought the software access needed to reverse…

Two New Groups and a Performance You Can Enter Lee Soo-man introduced 24 new performers across two groups at KINTEX Exhibition Center 2, Hall 9, in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, on October 12, 2026. His Singapore headquartered company, A2O Entertainment, presented…

A widening gap between fuel ambitions and supply Indonesia's biofuel ambitions face a basic supply constraint: a study led by Yayasan Madani Berkelanjutan estimates that biodiesel and bioethanol supply will reach 26.6 million kiloliters in 2030, against projected demand of…

Reform agreement meets an urgent financing need Bangladesh is seeking around $4 billion in budget support for fiscal 2026/27 while pursuing a five year recovery strategy that its government says shares key goals with the International Monetary Fund and World…

A $5.2 billion dispute divides Kashagan partners ExxonMobil has reportedly blocked a proposed settlement of Kazakhstan's 2.356 trillion tenge environmental fine against the operator of the Kashagan oil field, with TotalEnergies joining its opposition. The reported breakdown comes after authorities…

A smaller memory cell and an ambitious deadline ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), China's largest memory chipmaker, plans to introduce DDR5 registered server memory using a 4F2 DRAM architecture by the end of 2026. President Cao Kanyu outlined the plan on…

A new catastrophe arrives in Matsumoto Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus Zero moves the surviving Shikishima family into 1949, introduces King Ghidorah in an attack on Matsumoto and expands the filmmaker's vision of a Japan still recovering from war. The 135…

A 56,825.7 square kilometre proposal faces another test India's seventh draft proposal to designate 56,825.7 square kilometres of the Western Ghats as an Ecologically Sensitive Area has brought the dispute over conservation boundaries back to state legislatures and village communities.…

Gifts, accelerated applications and an alleged subsidy fraud A former Cyberport director and five people connected to a technology supplier have been charged in Hong Kong over alleged bribery and fraud involving at least 400 applications for government technology subsidies…

A 30% cap faces a broader test The Supreme Court has questioned why India's proposed 30% trade margin cap should cover only selected cancer medicines when large gaps between procurement prices and patient prices also occur across other drugs and…

Nearly four in five people needing care go without it Nepal's mental health crisis is as much about access to treatment as the number of people experiencing illness. Dr Krishna Prasad Paudel, acting director general of the Department of Health…

Hidden loan costs and missing risk checks draw court scrutiny A bank sought to raise the annual rate on a 750,000 yuan loan from 6.9% to 23.10% through overlapping default clauses. Another bank sold an investor a 6 million yuan…

A broader picture of dementia risk A study of 499,992 UK Biobank participants has linked 76 environmental, lifestyle and social factors to dementia, drawing together associations involving air pollution, sleep, employment, housing and physical activity. Over a median follow-up of…

Unpaid cinema revenue stretches beyond the reported claims Megabox Central's court rehabilitation has left 23 film distributors waiting for 5.26682 billion won in revenue from 52 films, while a separate complaints center recorded 2.46439 billion won in delayed payments to…

A 0.04% offer with a costly condition Bithumb advertised a trading fee of 0.04%, but customers who did not separately register a coupon could face a standard rate of up to 0.25%, or 6.25 times the advertised rate. The difference…

Trade paperwork at the center of nearly $52 million in transfers Seven people have been charged in Hanoi over an alleged currency transfer operation that moved more than US$40.2 million out of Vietnam and more than US$11.7 million into the…

Damayanti draws a line between coordination and control Bank Indonesia Governor Destry Damayanti says the central bank alone decides interest rates, despite closer involvement with President Prabowo Subianto's government. Her assurance on October 12, 2026, comes after a total increase…

Three laboratories seized, but ownership remains unresolved Myanmar's military announced on January 14, 2026 that it had captured three major methamphetamine laboratories in northern Shan State, presenting the operation as its largest drug enforcement success. Police linked the facilities to…

Safety checks and platform duties move into transport bill Indonesia is preparing to bring online motorcycle taxis and other transport services booked through apps into its road transport law, with vehicle maintenance checks, safety equipment standards and stronger duties for…

AI answers put news revenue and market access under scrutiny Indonesia's competition regulator is examining whether digital platforms' control over news distribution, audience data and advertising could leave publishers increasingly dependent on companies that also use their journalism to generate…

Five Greenhouses and an Unfulfilled Employment Promise An agricultural park promoted with a planned investment of 120 million yuan and a promise of jobs for 300 villagers has stalled in Tongliao, Inner Mongolia. By late September 2026, the site in…

A zinc transport pathway linked to immune escape A study of molecular data from 258 people with colorectal cancer has identified a chain of events that connects zinc uptake inside cancer cells to a signal that stops macrophages from engulfing…

Hospital accounts cannot close the funding gap Thailand's hospital funding dispute has two stark sets of numbers: remaining maintenance funds fell from 60.078 billion baht in 2023 to 46.499 billion baht in the second quarter of fiscal 2025, while the…

A Four Percentage Point Cut for Vehicle Exporters China will reduce the value added tax export rebate for new energy vehicles from 13% to 9% on April 1, 2027, withdrawing part of the tax support behind an industry whose overseas…

Reliance controls Jio, but the IPO figures need a closer look Reliance Industries owns 66.43% of Jio Platforms, while Meta affiliate Jaadhu Holdings owns 9.98% and Google International holds 7.73%, according to the company's draft prospectus. The proposed initial public…

Settlement proposal reaches the Malaysian courts Malaysia's 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) is discussing a proposed settlement with Deutsche Bank over a claim of approximately US$1.11 billion, with a hearing in the case scheduled for October 26, 2026. The talks could…

Nearly P199 billion in spending shifts face scrutiny The Philippine House of Representatives approved the proposed P7.2 trillion national budget for 2027 on third and final reading on Monday, October 12, 2026, sending a spending plan to the Senate amid…

A 48 Hour Response and Human Review for Account Bans China's proposed labor rules would require platform companies to respond personally within 48 hours when workers challenge pay, working hours, performance assessments or account bans. The 54 article proposal, drafted…

Competition and Data Security Dominate Final Review Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has until October 27, 2026, to decide whether Grab can acquire foodpanda's Taiwan business for US$600 million, equivalent to about NT$18.92 billion. Opposition groups argue that the transaction…

Eight Members Together Ahead of an August Milestone Girls' Generation has brought all eight members together for its 2027 Season's Greetings project, with teaser images released on October 9, 2026, and a trailer following on October 11. The merchandise launch…

Rail refusals threaten a growing European market Russian Railways has rejected October 2026 applications to carry Kazakh grain to Estonia, putting a key export route under pressure just after Kazakhstan supplied 72.5% of the European Union’s flaxseed imports. The problem…

Cyclone damage exposes a growing financial risk Cyclone Ditwah caused an estimated USD 4.1 billion in direct physical damage across all 25 districts of Sri Lanka in November 2025, a sum equivalent to about 4% of the country's gross domestic…

New crackdown targets the people financing smuggling Indonesia launched a national task force on October 12, 2026, to combat lobster seed smuggling, with orders to pursue financiers and network controllers rather than stop at couriers. The launch at the Marine…

A large mortality gap behind a familiar treatment Improving blood pressure control to reach approximately 80% of eligible patients could prevent an estimated 518,476 cardiovascular deaths each year across 20 countries, according to preliminary research described in an American Heart…

A 44.1 Trillion Won Case Reaches Parliament South Korea's fuel pricing dispute has moved beyond what drivers pay at the pump to whether taxpayers could compensate refiners for losses calculated using prices inflated by alleged collusion. At an October 12,…

A 130-meter swing settles the final standings Kim Do-young hit his 100th career home run on October 12, 2026, breaking an eighth inning tie and sending the KIA Tigers directly into the KBO postseason's best of five semifinal round. His…