Flagship

HK stocks benefit from China stimulus

Stock brokerages in Hong Kong are staying open around the clock to handle a surge of orders following China’s stimulus measures. Hong Kong stocks on Wednesday saw their biggest single-day jump since March 2022 in a flurry that one prominent local broker described as a “once in a century” event. “I had no lunch due to non-stop inquiries from clients,” another investment strategist said. China’s economic woes in recent years and a crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong have dented foreign investment. But Wednesday’s gains — without capital from the mainland, where markets are closed for a holiday — suggest strong support from outside investors who think Beijing “has demonstrated that it’s willing to act,” a Hong Kong-based asset manager said.

Chinese self-driving carmakers leave US

Chinese self-driving carmakers are running fewer test drives on American roads as tensions over the tech ratchet up. Some companies have fully pulled out of the US, while other major players reduced their test mileage by up to 90% last year, the South China Morning Post reported. The retreat comes as US officials heighten scrutiny of the sector, arguing that the troves of data collected by the vehicles could be made accessible to Beijing. US commerce officials last week proposed a ban on the sale of self-driving cars that use Chinese- or Russian-made software after 2027. Chinese firms make up a small portion of the total US autonomous driving market, which has seen a resurgence this year.

Biden opposes Israeli strike on Iran nuclear

US President Joe Biden said he doesn’t support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, as Israel weighed its retaliation to Tehran’s missile attack. Israeli officials on Wednesday dismissed speculation about plans to target Iranian nuclear sites, The New York Times reported, saying an attack on oil production or military sites is more likely. As the war in Gaza drags on, Israel “may see more opportunity in the fight against Hezbollah and Iran,” a Middle East scholar wrote in Foreign Affairs, adding that Israel is clearly “not seeking a diplomatic off-ramp.” Experts expect the US to temper the country’s response as it has in the past, but American officials are not trying to privately convince Israel to hold back this time, CNN reported.

Russia seeks to boost births alongside army

Russia is prioritizing boosting childbirth in the face of a declining population, a teetering economy, and extensive battlefield losses. President Vladimir Putin recently said that Russia should “make it fashionable to have many children, as it used to be… in the past,” and lawmakers last week introduced a bill that would make it illegal to advocate for a “child-free” lifestyle. The birth rate push is intertwined with the Kremlin’s goal of recruiting more men for the military, The New York Times reported. In Russia, “the body is turning into a public good,” an Estonia-based expert said. “A woman’s body is a producer of children, and a man’s body is the ability to pull the trigger.”

SKorea AI textbooks could be global model

South Korea’s plan to introduce artificial intelligence-powered textbooks in its schools next year could serve as an example globally, experts said. The $70 million investment in the digital textbooks faced pushback from some parent groups and academics, but “if Korea can crack this, you can market this to the world,” an Australia-based researcher told The Korea Herald. Still, he warned, the textbooks might be part of an AI hype cycle that could burst, echoing recent concerns from some experts: Renowned MIT economist Daron Acemoglu told Bloomberg this week that “a lot of money is going to get wasted” in AI investments, and that the tech will only replace about 5% of jobs over the next decade.

Electric air taxis are taking off

Toyota invested another $500 million into a US air taxi firm. California-based Joby Aviation plans to build electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) capable of carrying four passengers for short intercity journeys, and hopes to have a commercial service running next year. Toyota previously backed it with $400 million, while Uber invested $75 million. Air taxis are an increasingly near-future proposition: This year, China’s aviation watchdog gave a preliminary license to an autonomous eVTOL craft that resembles a consumer drone, and the manufacturer has already received 1,100 orders.

India stalls Pakistani movie release

India stalled the release of a highly anticipated Pakistani blockbuster following political blowback. The Legend of Maula Jatt was set to be the first Pakistani movie in Indian theaters in a decade, but its planned 2022 release faced numerous delays, and the Indian government on Wednesday blocked its screening in the only state where it was to be shown. Cross-border artistic collaborations have often survived the countries’ historically fraught relations, but rising military tensions in 2016 led to tit-for-tat restrictions on entertainment. The cultural freeze especially hurt Pakistan’s film industry, which relied on the millions brought in by Bollywood, while Indian cinema has adopted an increasingly nationalistic tone. Pakistan’s “love affair” with Bollywood is “souring,” a Pakistani fan wrote.

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Scientists map fruit fly’s brain

Thanks to a fly, scientists are closer to solving one of the world’s greatest mysteries: how our brains work. In a Nature paper, researchers revealed a complete map of the connections within a fruit fly’s brain for the first time, in the most detailed analysis of an adult animal’s brain yet. Humans have about a million times as many brain cells as a fly, but with 130,000 neurons and 50 million connections, a fly’s brain can perform complex and powerful tasks that no computer of the same size could. It will likely take decades until scientists map a human brain with such precision, but these “Google Maps but for brains” could eventually shed light on how we think, a scientist told the BBC.

Push to study Great Lakes’ beds

Scientists are pushing for funding to map the bottoms of the US Great Lakes. The lakes are enormous, with a combined surface area larger than that of the Aegean Sea. But little is known about the lake beds: “We know more about the surface of the moon,” one scientist told The Associated Press. The last effort to study the beds, in the 1970s, used low-resolution methods and only covered about 15% of the area. A proposed congressional bill would allocate $200 million to develop updated techniques to examine the whole lot, uncovering shipping hazards, allowing the tracking of climate-related changes, improving fishery estimates, and identifying the estimated 6,000 ships that have sunk in the lakes since the European colonization of North America.

Chinese baristas make Italy’s espresso

Espresso in Italy is increasingly being served by Chinese baristas in Chinese-owned coffee bars. Italy has more than 100,000 espresso vendors, and Italians regard it as “a quintessentially Italian cultural product,” Pekingnology reported. But many were forced to close during the 2008 recession and large numbers were bought by foreign owners, most notably Chinese immigrants. This has “touched a raw nerve” with some Italians, one scholar said, and many do not believe that “a person of Chinese descent… from a totally alien culture [could] make an authentic Italian coffee.” But this skepticism is out of step with reality, and “Italian consumers, albeit perhaps reluctantly, are getting used to coffee made by Chinese baristas.”

Oct. 3:

• Former Singapore Transport Minister S Iswaran is sentenced after pleading guilty to receiving expensive gifts.
• Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket group, releases half-year financial results.
• Season 3 of Heartstopper premiers on Netflix.

The World of Studio Ghibli arrives in Singapore this week, bringing the beloved Japanese anime studio’s most famous films to life. Visitors to the ArtScience Museum can enter the bathhouse from Spirited Away, or peer inside a tree trunk to see the snoozing forest spirit who lent his name to My Neighbour Totoro. First shown in Japan in 2013, the blockbuster exhibition asks visitors to actively collaborate in reimagining the films, promising “creative immersion rather than the Western approach of constant stimulation,” The Straits Times wrote. “In Singapore, there are so many digital experiences. We think people will like this because it’s so analogue,” a producer at the museum said.

• The ‘Midwest Nice’ debate: Vance and Walz put the ‘civil’ in civil war.
• New OpenAI update brings advanced voice features to any app.
• Dockworkers strike poses political dilemma just before election.