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China removed a three-decade-old tax exemption on contraceptive drugs and devices from January 1 in new steps to spur a flagging birth rate.

Condoms and contraceptive pills now incur value-added tax of 13%, the standard rate for most consumer goods.

China exempted childcare subsidies from personal income tax and rolled out an annual childcare subsidy last year, following a series of "fertility-friendly" measures in 2024, such as urging colleges and universities to provide "love education" to portray marriage, love, fertility and family in a positive light.

Top leaders again pledged last month at the annual Central Economic Work Conference to promote "positive marriage and childbearing attitudes" to stabilise birth rates.

China's birth rates have been falling for decades as a result of the one-child policy China implemented from 1980 to 2015, and rapid urbanisation.

The high cost of childcare and education as well as job uncertainty and a slowing economy have also discouraged many young Chinese from getting married and starting a family.

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South Korean e-commerce company Coupang (CPNG.N), opens new tab announced on Monday a compensation deal worth 1.69 trillion won ($1.18 billion) to holders of 33.7 million accounts for a massive data leak that triggered a backlash from users and lawmakers.

Coupang said customers will get company vouchers of 50,000 won (35 usd) each.

Last year, Meta had to reckon with an ugly conclusion about its Chinese advertising customers: They were defrauding Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users worldwide.

Though China’s authoritarian government bans use of Meta social media by its citizens, Beijing lets Chinese companies advertise to foreign consumers on the globe-spanning platforms. As a result, Meta’s advertising business was thriving in China, ultimately reaching over $18 billion in annual sales in 2024, more than a tenth of the company’s global revenue.

But Meta calculated that about 19% of that money – more than $3 billion – was coming from ads for scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned content, according to internal Meta documents reviewed by Reuters.

The Trump administration has removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from next year's calendar of entrance fee-free days for national parks and added President Trump's birthday to the list, according to the National Park Service, as the administration continues to push back against a reckoning of the country's racist history on federal lands.

In addition to Trump's birthday — which coincides with Flag Day (June 14) — the updated calendar of fee-free dates includes the 110th anniversary of the NPS (August 25), Constitution Day (September 17) and President Teddy Roosevelt's birthday (October 27). The changes will take effect starting January 1.

Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Slovenia withdrew from the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest on Thursday after organizers declined to hold a vote on Israel's participation, marking the largest boycott in the competition's 70-year history.

The European Broadcasting Union's General Assembly in Geneva voted 738 to 264, with 120 abstentions, to adopt new voting regulations without holding a separate ballot on whether Israel should be barred from next year's contest. The decision prompted immediate withdrawals from four countries that had threatened to boycott if Israel remained in the competition.

In a puppy pen in the Art Basel Miami Beach, you can watch Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos make a mess—as if we don’t get enough of that in the real world.

A Chinese court has sentenced five top members of an infamous Myanmar mafia to death as Beijing continues its crackdown on scam operations in South East Asia.

In all 21 Bai family members and associates were convicted of fraud, homicide, injury and other crimes, said a state media report published on the court website.

The family is among a handful of mafias that rose to power in the 2000s and transformed the impoverished backwater town of Laukkaing into a lucrative hub of casinos and red-light districts.

In recent years they pivoted to scams in which thousands of trafficked workers, many of them Chinese, are trapped, abused and forced to defraud others in criminal operations worth billions.

Malaysia handed over the chairmanship of Southeast Asia's regional bloc to the Philippines on Tuesday (Oct 28), with territorial disputes in the South China Sea set to dominate its agenda when Manila takes charge in 2026.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who will remain chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) until the end of the year, symbolically passed the gavel to Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos at the close of a summit in Kuala Lumpur.

"On the first day of 2026, ASEAN will begin a new chapter," Anwar said.

In mid-2025, military sources in Vietnam began circulating unconfirmed rumors that new multi-billion-dollar contracts with Russia were imminent.

Documents from Rostec identify Vietnam under the discreet label “Customer 704.” According to the sources and those documents, one deal could be worth ~$8 billion and include up to 40 new fighter jets.