Ma, entering the stage on the Harley, wore a gold-and-silver mask and military-style outfit at the Sept 8 party, CNBC reported.

After thrilling the crowd with a few splashy King of Pop’s moves and poses, Ma soon pulled off his prince’s mask to reveal he was behind the nifty footwork.

A group of Alibaba’s employees then joined him onstage, dancing and clapping to a medley of Jackson’s hits, CNBC said.

This is not the first time Ma has performed at an Alibaba event.

At a 2009 event, Ma had dressed up as heavy metal lead singer and performed Elton John’s Can You Feel The Love Tonight.

In a Chinese business environment dominated by buttoned-down bureaucrats, Ma, 53, certainly stands out with his flamboyance.

Like Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, Ma relishes outrageous publicity stunts, particularly when they involve dressing up, the Telegraph reported.

Ma is Asia’s richest person, according to Bloomberg in August.

Forbes gives the former English teacher’s net worth as US$38.5 billion (S$52.9 billion).

Ma’s Alibaba Group is one of the world’s largest e-commerce businesses. Its revenue in the 12 months ending in March 2017 rose by 56 per cent to US$23 billion, according to Forbes.

Chinese netizens, entralled by Ma’s latest performance, praised him widely on the Internet.

“Papa Ma’s dance moves are fascinating,” says one netizen.//AFP

The firm claims that the “drive-thru” service is a first in Japan, where a rapidly ageing population means funerals are anything but a dying trade.

Elderly mourners can register their names on a touchscreen tablet device and make a traditional offering of incense just by rolling down a car window – a process relayed to screens inside the venue for the grieving funeral host to watch.

The initiative aims to speed up funeral services and also to give infirm relatives the chance to participate, said the firm’s president Masao Ogiwara.

“Older people may hesitate to attend a funeral because they have to ask for help to get out of the car,” he told AFP.

“But we want as many people as possible to be able to come to say farewell to their friends or neighbours,” he said.

It usually takes at least 15 minutes for someone in a wheelchair to offer incense at the altar during a traditional Japanese funeral ceremony.

Ogiwara said the time is cut down to just a few minutes by the service, which the Kankon Sosai Aichi Group in the central Nagano prefecture expects to offer from December.

‘Rent-a-monk’

With a high average life expectancy, Japan is on the verge of becoming the first “ultra-aged” country in the world, meaning that 28 per cent of people are aged 65 or above.

The latest government report shows that 27.3 per cent of a population of 127 million – one in four people – are aged 65 or older and the figure is expected to jump to 37.7 per cent in 2050.

Drive-through funerals are the latest in a series of Japanese innovations attempting to win a slice of the competitive 1.76-trillion-yen (S$21.6 billion) funeral business.

One trend that has sparked controversy is a so-called “rent-a-monk” system, where at the click of a mouse, a mourning family can order a monk delivered to perform the funeral rites.

Another company went even further by replacing a real Buddhist monk with a chatty human-shaped “Pepper” robot for a funeral.

How about a mail-order funeral? For those who cannot afford to pay expensive funeral fees, a temple near Tokyo accepts the ashes of the deceased via mail and places it in its burial facility.

If visiting a grave in a remote area is too much trouble, one firm has pioneered an app allowing relatives to pay a virtual visit to the gravesite.

And in urban areas where space is tight, several buildings have been constructed to house the ashes of hundreds of dead people.

Mourners are given a card which they place on an electronic sensor, whizzing the right ashes automatically to an altar for prayer.//AFP

A comprehensive evaluation system was used to value a region’s competitiveness of international talents in six dimensions – scale and structure of international talents, as well as innovation, policy, development and living environments. The report was conducted and released by the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) and the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics’ Institute of Development Studies.

“With rapid economic globalization, China has become international talents’ new choice for long-term development and relocation and regional competition for international talents has begun,” Wang Huiyao, president of CCG, said.

Shanghai beat other cities and scored 65.17 out of 100, or 3.91 out of 6 in global talent competitiveness index, due to the openness of the city, work environment, job opportunities and preferential policies, according to the report.

Beijing, with 3.67 out of 6 in global talent competitiveness index, ranked second in the report, and gathers most of international students due to prestigious universities, such as Tsinghua University and Peking University, available.

Although East China’s coastal province Jiangsu ranks the fourth, it is home to many foreign companies due to the preferential policies to attract elite-level international talents.

Southwest China’s Sichuan province, with 1.92 out of 6 in global talent competitiveness index, ranked 10th on the list; however, it was the top among regions in middle and western China, according to the report.

The international talents policy index is an important indicator for a region’s competitiveness for international talents, and the policy incentives provide international talents in eastern coastal cities are more favorable than middle and western regions, according to the report.

For instance, a medical park in Taizhou city gives each PhD holder an additional subsidy of 20,000 yuan ($3,070) and 150,000 yuan to buy a house, Global Times reported citing Jiangsu’s official newspaper, Xinhua Daily.

The Shanghai government began a pilot program in 2015 which also allows foreign students with a master’s degree from Shanghai universities to start a business after graduating, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Regional innovative development has been a main trend for international competitiveness, and the increase of regional competiveness can bring new opportunities for a country in global development competition, according to Wang Huiyao, president of the CCG.

As they rushed out of their homes to see where the cries came from at about 5.00am, a fire was already burning at the Tahfiz Darul Ittifaqiyah in Jalan Datuk Keramat.

Huge flames were seen at the topmost floor of the three-storey building where the students were sleeping in double-decker beds in a dormitory.

Fire and Rescue Department staff who arrived at the scene could not do much to save those trapped inside the school.

It is reported that the fire started right outside a room on the second floor, trapping scores of students and teachers inside the room.

City police chief Comm Datuk Amar Singh said charred remains of the victims were found piled on top of one another in the room on the top floor of the three-storey building.

“The fire is believed to have started right at the door of the room preventing any chance of escape,” he told reporters at the scene.

The charred remains of at least 23 students and two teachers were found in the room after the fire which started at about 5am at Tahfiz Darul Ittifaqiyah in Jalan Datuk Keramat.

It is learnt that many of the victims suffocated as they were trapped inside the room.

“It is premature to tell the cause of the fire. The Fire and Rescue Department and police will investigate it thoroughly.

“We can rule out foul play based on our investigations so far,” Comm Amar Singh said.

He said 12 students and two teachers managed to escape the fire and suffered various injuries.

“They were sent to the Kuala Lumpur Hospital for treatment,” he said.

He said the absence of hinged grills on the second floor was also one of the causes that caused the victims to be trapped in the room.

The shooting took place at Freeman High School in Spokane County, Washington state, 285 miles (460 kilometers) from Seattle, where witnesses described a scene of terror as the heavily armed shooter stalked the halls.

County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich told reporters the shooter was a student who was armed with more than one weapon, reportedly a rifle and a handgun.

“He proceeded to take his weapons out. At that point he attempted to fire one weapon and jammed,” the sheriff said.

“He went to his next weapon and a student walked up to him, engaged him, and that student was shot. That student did not survive,” he said.

“He then fired more shoots around down the hallway, striking three more students and those students are in the hospital,” he said.

Knezovich said the shooter was finally disabled by “a member of the Freeman community,” before police arrived on the scene.

The Spokesman-Review, a local news site, said the student was tackled by a school custodian.

‘A loud pop’

It said the bloodshed began outside a biology class on the school’s second floor.

“I was putting my backpack away and I heard a loud pop, and I turned around. He was walking around,” Elisa Vigil, a 14-year-old freshman, told the Spokesman-Review.

“He had his pistol. His face was completely passive. He shot someone in the head. I crouched down in the hall. I looked up and a girl screamed, ‘Help me, help me, help me.’ The hall was empty. She was shot in the back. I looked to my right, and there was a boy and he was shot in the head.”

The three wounded students were all girls, it said. They were reported in stable condition at a local hospital.

Students told the newssite the shooter was a sophomore who had ridden the school bus to classes with his weapons concealed in a duffel bag.

“We need to understand what’s going on in our society that students feel they need to take a weapon to solve the problems they are dealing with,” Knezovich said.

‘Nice and funny and weird’

Freeman High School has only 327 students, serving a small community near the city of Spokane.

Students said everyone knew each other, and some told local media they knew the shooter.

“He was handing out a note to his friend saying he would do something stupid that could get him killed or in jail,” one student told KXLY television. “That was a few weeks ago.”

Michael Harper, 15, told the Spokesman-Review that he was a good friend of the shooter.

“He was weird,” Harper was quoted as saying. “And he loved the show Breaking Bad. He never really seemed like that person who had issues. He was always nice and funny and weird.”

– Anxious parents

A large contingent of police and firefighters responded to a call to their emergency line, and anxious parents began arriving at the school.

Cheryl Moser said her son, a freshman, called her from a second floor classroom after hearing shots fired.

“He called me and said, ‘Mom, there are gunshots.’ He sounded so scared. I’ve never heard him like that,” Moser told the Spokesman-Review.

The state governor, Jay Inslee, said the shooting was “heart-breaking.”

“As Spokane County officials continue their investigation to get the answers to the questions so many of us have during these unthinkable tragedies, the Washington State Patrol and all state agencies will do whatever we can to help provide support and comfort in the days and weeks to come,” Inslee said.

An “active shooter” was arrested last Friday at a school in Columbus, Ohio, although no one was injured in that incident.

A year ago, an adolescent killed his father and then shot and wounded two children and a teacher at a South Carolina primary school.

According to the Gun Violence website, 253 mass shootings — defined as four or more people shot in a single incident — have been reported in the United States so far this year, including Wednesday’s shooting in Washington state.//AFP

The blaze broke out before dawn in the two-storey building, Tahfiz Darul Quran Ittifaqiyah, located in the centre of the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Firefighters rushed to the scene and the blaze was out within an hour but not before it wreaked terrible devastation — pictures in local media showed ash-covered, fire-blackened beds.

“It really does not make sense for so many to die in the fire,” Khirudin Drahman, director of Kuala Lumpur’s fire and rescue department told AFP.

“I think it is one of the country’s worst fire disaster in the past 20 years.”

He said that the number confirmed dead was 23 students and two adult wardens, adding that they could have died due to smoke inhalation or got trapped in the fire.

“We are now investigating the cause of the fire,” he said.

Loga Bala Mohan, the government’s federal territories deputy minister, said: “We sympathise with the families. It is one of the worst fires involving so many lives in the capital in recent years.

“We urgently want the authorities to quickly probe the cause of the deadly fire so that we will be able to prevent future disasters.”

A fire department official at the scene said that the blaze broke out in bedrooms before dawn, and firefighters from a nearby station were on the scene within minutes.

The Star newspaper reported that the fire and rescue department had raised concerns about fire safety measures at unregistered and private religious schools — known as tahfiz, and had recorded 211 fires at the institutions since 2015.

In August, 16 people including eight students fled an early morning fire at a family-run tahfiz in Baling, in the northern state of Kedah, the paper reported.

There were 519 tahfiz schools registered across the country as of April, but many more are believed to be unregistered, the paper said.

In October last year, six people died in a fire that swept through the intensive care unit of a major hospital in the southern state of Johor.

Almost 27 per cent of the population of Timor Leste remains undernourished, and more than 1 in 10 people report being hungry.   Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan are other Asian countries with the highest rates of undernourishment in the region. The rate of undernourishment is as high as 26.8 per cent in Afghanistan, 22 per cent in Sri Lanka and 22 per cent in Pakistan, as per latest data by the Asian Development Bank.

Mongolia (20.5 per cent) and Laos (18.5 per cent) are the other Asian countries which are battling high rates of undernourishment among the population.

South Asian neighbours India and Bangladesh, with comparatively large sets of population, also have 16.4 and 15.2 per cent rate of undernourishment respectively.

Elsewhere in Asia, Cambodia, Myanmar and Philippines have also recorded a high rate of undernourishment. While Cambodia and Myanmar both have recorded 14.2 per cent rate of undernourishment, Philippines’ is a whisker less at 13.5 per cent.

Even Vietnam, China and Indonesia have undernourishment rates of 11, 9.3 and 7.6 per cent respectively. Indonesia’s undernourishment rate is almost the same as Nepal (7.8 per cent) and Thailand (7.4 per cent).

In spite of economic growth and some amount of poverty reduction, Asian countries still face a massive challenge of undernourishment.

Besides undernourishment, Asian countries have also recorded increasing cases of stunting, micronutrient deficiencies, calorie consumption deficiency and now even obesity.

As per the FAO, overcoming these challenges would require a steady mix of policy and institutional framework rework, increased investment in agriculture as well as promoting awareness and sustainable practices.

Strengthening cooperation on a region wide basis may also help in tackling the problem of undernourishment.

    Halimah Yacob, a former speaker of parliament from the Muslim Malay minority, did not have to face an election for the largely ceremonial post originally due this month after authorities decided her rivals did not meet strict eligibility criteria.

It was not the first time in the affluent city-state — which is tightly controlled and has been ruled by the same party for decades — that the government has disqualified candidates for the presidency, making an election unnecessary.

But there was already unease about the process as it was the first time that the presidency had been reserved for a particular ethnic group, in this case the Malay community, and the decision to hand her the job without a vote added to anger.

Social media was abuzz with criticism as Halimah, a bespectacled 63-year-old who wears a headscarf, was formally announced as the president-elect, with Facebook user Pat Eng writing: “Elected without an election. What a joke.”

“I will call her President Select from now on,” said Joel Kong on the networking site, while some posts were marked with the hashtag NotMyPresident — echoing the message used by upset Americans after the election of President Donald Trump.

Halimah, a member of parliament for the ruling People’s Action Party for nearly two decades before resigning to contest the presidency, tackled the doubts about the selection process in a speech to a cheering crowd after she was named president-elect.

“I’m a president for everyone. Although there’s no election, my commitment to serve you remains the same,” she said.

Authorities had decided to allow only candidates from the Malay community to put themselves forward for the presidency, a bid to foster harmony in the city-state of 5.5 million people which is dominated by ethnic Chinese.

Singapore’s head of state has limited powers, including vetoing senior official appointments, but an establishment figure has always held the role and there are rarely tensions with the government.//AFP

    The fortune teller, whose name is believed to have been inspired by her resemblance to the character in Steven Spielberg’s film “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”, died Sunday at her home in Yangon.

Her clients came from across Southeast Asia’s elite, including generals in Myanmar’s former junta.

Than Shwe, Myanmar’s feared former dictator, is rumoured to have been a regular client, while Thai ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra also leaned on her wisdom.

Legend has it that the mystic, whose full name was Swe Swe Win, lost her hearing and ability to speak during a thunderstorm as a child — but gained the power of a higher vision.

Funeralgoers wiped away tears as the soothsayer was carried by in a glass casket, adorned with flowers, before her burial.

Dozens of pink-clad nuns carried her portrait as they prayed.

One mourner told AFP she travelled from France for the occasion.

“We feel very blessed that she has also helped us and helped a lot of people in the families around the world. And today we hope that she is in a better place, in paradise,” Kelly Lee said.

ET’s sister Thi Thi, who acted as her interpreter, told AFP in 2013 that that her sibling’s predictions over the years had been “80 per cent correct”.

One of these was that she would have an early death from heart failure.

But Thi Thi said at the time the prediction did not worry her sister, who was confident she would be “very pretty” in her next life.//AFP

India’s colonial-era rail network carries some 22 million passengers daily, making it one of the busiest in the world. But it is also among the most dangerous.

A government report published in 2012 said almost 15,000 people were killed every year in rail accidents, describing the deaths as an annual “massacre” due mainly to poor safety standards.

Modi has pledged to invest billions of dollars to modernise the country’s crumbling railway infrastructure, which is plagued by delays, and the bullet train was one of his key election promises ahead of a landslide victory in 2014.

As New Delhi and Tokyo seek to forge closer ties to combat China’s growing regional influence, the project offers a diplomatic and economic boost.

The premiers will lay the foundation for the bullet train network in the western city of Ahmedabad — connecting Modi’s home state of Gujarat with India’s financial capital Mumbai.

Japan is a pioneer in high-speed rail transport — with its Shinkansen bullet train ranked among the fastest in the world.

With projected top speeds of up to 350 kilometres (217 miles) an hour — more than double the maximum speed offered by the fastest trains operating in India — it will reduce travel time between the two cities from eight hours to at most three-and-a-half hours.

The new train, which will have a capacity of 750 passengers, is also expected to be safer than the country’s creaking rail network, the world’s fourth largest by distance.

Modi recently replaced his railway minister after a series of derailments, including one last month in which at least 23 people were killed in northern Uttar Pradesh state. Nearly 150 died in a similar accident in November.

The agreement for the 508-kilometre network was signed in 2016, with plans to make it operational by December 2023.

Nearly 85 per cent of the total project cost of $19 billion will be provided by Tokyo in soft loans, with repayment over 50 years.

 – ‘Balance China’s hegemony’ –

Abe’s visit to Ahmedabad comes ahead of Modi’s 67th birthday on Sunday and many have dubbed it as part of his practice of “birthday diplomacy”.

The right-wing Hindu nationalist leader hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in Gujarat on his birthday in 2014.

“India’s relation with Japan is designed to balance China’s hegemony,” Rajrishi Singhal, a Mumbai-based independent policy consultant, told AFP.

The two countries have close security ties and hold regular joint military exercises.

A proposed joint investment of billions of dollars in Africa is set to be the cornerstone of the relationship, Singhal said.

“India truly values the relationship with Japan and we look forward to further boosting our bilateral ties in a wide range of sectors,” Modi tweeted Tuesday.

There are more than 1,500 Japanese companies in India, including auto major Suzuki, the largest car maker in the country.

The success of Suzuki and others transformed India’s auto industry, which employs millions today.

Experts are pinning similar hopes on the bullet train project.

“Just like Suzuki changed India’s car market and brought millions of jobs, the bullet train will change the entire industry,” Singhal said.