Asia

16 hours agoShareSaveArchana ShuklaIndia Business Correspondent•@archanajsrShareSaveYouTuber Asmita Patel’s mission was to “make India trade”.
The wildly popular financial influencer called herself the “She-Wolf of the stock market” – her take on the Hollywood film The Wolf of Wall Street. At last count, she had clocked upwards of half a million subscribers on YouTube and hundreds of thousands on Instagram. Fees for her stock trading courses ran into thousands of rupees.
Last month, the market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) put a spanner in the works. It barred her and six others from trading, alleging she was selling illegal stock tips disguised as investor education and making millions of rupees in the bargain.
The regulator’s crackdown on Patel is its latest attempt to tighten the noose around social media influencers offering quick money schemes and trading advice disguised as education.
India’s post-pandemic market boom attracted a wave of new mom-and-pop ..

10 hours agoShareSavePeter HoskinsBusiness reporter, BBC NewsShareSaveMixue Ice Cream and Tea may be unfamiliar to many of us but the Chinese firm has more outlets than McDonald’s and Starbucks.
On Monday, the bubble tea chain’s shares jumped by more than 40% in their Hong Kong Stock Exchange debut.
The company raised $444m (£352m) in the financial hub’s biggest initial public offering (IPO) of the year.
Mixue’s popularity comes as many people in China are grappling with the country’s economic challenges – including a property crisis, and weak consumer and business confidence. It sells ice creams and drinks for an average of six Chinese yuan ($0.82; £0.65).
The company was founded in 1997 by Zhang Hongchao, a student at Henan University of Finance and Economics, as a part time job to help his family’s finances.
Its full name Mìxuě Bīngchéng means “honey snow ice city”, with its stores adorned with its Snow King mascot and playing the firm’s official theme tune..

4 days agoShareSaveAzadeh Moshiri and Usman ZahidBBC News, IslamabadShareSave”I’m scared,” sobs Nabila.
The 10-year-old’s life is limited to her one-bedroom home in Islamabad and the dirt road outside it. Since December she hasn’t been to her local school, when it decided it would no longer accept Afghans without a valid Pakistani birth certificate. But even if she could go to classes, Nabila says she wouldn’t.
“I was off sick one day, and I heard police came looking for Afghan children,” she cries, as she tells us her friend’s family were sent back to Afghanistan.
Nabila’s not her real name – all the names of Afghans quoted in this article have been changed for their safety.
Pakistan’s capital and the neighbouring city of Rawalpindi are witnessing a surge in deportations, arrests and detentions of Afghans, the UN says. It estimates that more than half of the three million Afghans in the country are undocumented.
Afghans describe a life of constant fear and near daily police raids on ..

A photojournalist narrates his experience of capturing the world’s biggest religious gathering for decades.

4 days agoShareSaveKelly Ng & Juna MoonReporting fromSingapore and SeoulShareSaveA plane crash in South Korea last December left Park Geun-woo an orphan. The 22-year-old had barely found space to mourn his parents when he came across a torrent of online abuse, conspiracies and malicious jokes made about the victims.
The Jeju Air plane, which was returning from Bangkok, Thailand, crash-landed at Muan International Airport on 29 December and exploded after slamming into a concrete barrier at the end of the runway, killing 179 of the 181 people on board.
Police investigations have identified and apprehended eight people who have been accused of making derogatory and defamatory online posts. These included suggestions that families were “thrilled” to receive compensation from authorities, or that they were “fake victims” – to the extent that some felt compelled to prove they had lost their loved ones.
Authorities have taken down at least 427 such posts.
But this is not the first time that ..

2 days agoShareSaveDavid MercerBBC NewsShareSaveAt least four people have died and several others are missing after an avalanche hit the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, authorities have said.
A rescue operation has been under way after the avalanche swept away road construction workers in the village of Mana, which shares a border with Tibet, on Friday.
Some 50 people who were buried under snow and debris were rescued, but four died from their injuries, the Indian army said.
Helicopters have been deployed in the search for five people who are still unaccounted for in the Himalayan mountain state, it added.
Uttarakhand state chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said rescue teams were “continuously engaged in relief efforts” following the avalanche, which hit a Border Roads Organisation camp.
He added that the government was committed to providing all possible assistance to those affected “in this hour of crisis”.
Footage posted on X on Friday by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police showed..

3 days agoShareSaveCherylann MollanBBC News, MumbaiShareSaveWas it pruning or felling?
The alleged chopping of centuries-old chinar trees in Indian-administered Kashmir has sparked outrage, with locals and photos suggesting they were cut down, while the government insists it was just routine pruning. The debate has renewed focus on the endangered tree and efforts to preserve it.
The chinar is an iconic symbol of the Kashmir valley’s landscape and a major tourist draw, especially in autumn when the trees’ leaves light up in fiery hues of flaming red to a warm auburn.
The trees are native to Central Asia but were introduced to Kashmir centuries ago by Mughal emperors and princely kings. Over the years, they have come to occupy an important place in Kashmiri culture.
But rapid urbanisation, illegal logging and climate change are threatening their survival, prompting authorities to take steps to conserve them.
The Jammu and Kashmir government has been geotagging chinar trees in an effort ..

5 days agoShareSaveJean MackenzieSeoul correspondentShareSaveDon’t insult the leaders. Don’t insult the ideology. And don’t judge.
These are the rules tour guides read out to Western tourists as they prepare to drive across the border into North Korea, arguably the most secretive and repressive country in the world.
Then there is the practical information. No phone signal, no internet, no cash machines.
“The North Koreans aren’t robots. They have opinions, goals, and a sense of humour. And in our briefing we encourage people to listen to and understand them,” says Rowan Beard, who runs Young Pioneer Tours, one of two Western companies which resumed trips to the country last week, after a five-year hiatus.
North Korea sealed its borders at the outset of the pandemic, shutting out diplomats, aid workers and travellers, and making it nearly impossible to know what was happening there.
Since then, it has further isolated itself from most of the world, relying on support from Russia and Chi..

3 days agoShareSaveKathryn ArmstrongBBC NewsShareSaveThe owners of a New Zealand volcano that erupted in 2019, killing 22 people, have had their conviction over the disaster thrown out by the country’s High Court.
Whakaari Management Limited (WML) was found guilty in 2023 of failing to keep visitors safe and fined just over NZ$1m ($560,000; £445,000). They were also ordered to pay NZ$4.8m in reparation to the victims.
However, following an appeal, the High Court ruled on Friday that the company only owned the land and were not responsible for people’s safety.
White Island, which is also known by its Māori name, Whakaari, is New Zealand’s most active volcano and has been erupting in some form since 2011.
It had been showing signs of heightened unrest for weeks before the fatal December 2019 eruption, which killed almost half of the people who were on it at the time. Most were tourists, including 17 from Australia and three from the US.
Another 25 people were injured, with many s..

3 days agoShareSaveKoh EweBBC NewsShareSaveQatar Airways says an internal review has found that its crew “acted quickly, appropriately and professionally” when they placed the body of a woman who died mid-flight next to an Australian couple.
The airline issued the statement to the BBC on Friday, after the couple told Australia’s Channel Nine that they were traumatised by the experience on the Melbourne to Doha flight.
Qatar Airways had apologised in a previous statement for “any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused”.
The incident sparked debate over procedures on dealing with deaths aboard planes.
Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin, who were travelling to Venice for a holiday, said the cabin crew had placed the dead woman, covered in blankets, next to Mr Ring for the last four hours of a 14-hour flight.
The cabin crew had trouble moving her body through the aisle to the business class section because “she was quite a large lady”, Mr Ring said.
They then asked Mr Ring t..