But then came the question many expats might have encountered: How would he obtain legal status－a visa allowing him to stay in China while self-employed－after quitting his job?

After consulting with an incubator based in Shanghai’s Hongqiao area, Olivier found the answer to the question－an “entrepreneurship visa”, which he soon applied for and obtained in August.

The incubator, K-Tech Hongqiao International Incubation Center in Shanghai, provides working space, finance options, company registration and, more important for Olivier, visa service.

Zhu Peiyi, the managing partner of the center, said that after consultation with the Shanghai Exit-Entry Administration Bureau, the center’s staff helped Olivier apply for the special residence permit for entrepreneurs.

“That’s what people now call the ‘entrepreneurship visa’ or ‘business startup visa’,” Zhu said, adding that there are 20 startup companies working in the center, and one-third of them are foreign teams.

“Many foreign businessmen just didn’t know that they were qualified for it, and after the news is out, many consulates have contacted us for more details,” she added.

Since 2015, Shanghai has launched 25 pilot visa policies to streamline and simplify the foreigner visa application process and to diversify the visa types to better fit the demand, said Cai Baodi, chief of the foreigner visa management division at the Exit-Entry Administration Bureau.

Among the 25 pilot visa policies, four are directly linked to foreigners opening businesses in the city. These include issuing visas that allow current international students in Chinese colleges to start businesses in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and the Zhangjiang National Innovation Demonstration Zone, and allow foreign technological specialists or college professors to commercialize their research in those areas.

Chinese-American Zhang Zheng is a professor of computer science at New York University Shanghai. Before joining the university’s Shanghai campus, he was the founder of the System Research Group of Microsoft Research Asia, where he served as principal researcher and research area manager.

Since his expertise was needed by Amazon’s Shanghai branch, Zhang was approached by the company to put the research into future products.

“Before, our visa policy didn’t allow foreigners to hold two jobs, but … Shanghai launched a talent visa program in May that made it possible,” said Cai, from the Shanghai Exit-Entry Administration Bureau.

Zhang got his new work permit on Sept 4, which allows him to work at both NYU Shanghai and Amazon.

Besides current students and professors, graduates with a degree from the world’s top 300 universities ranked by the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University can get the “entrepreneurship visa” within two years of graduation to live and work in Shanghai.

Foreign entrepreneurs with a business plan and documents proving their investment and source of income can also apply.

Cai said his department has issued 95 such entrepreneurship visas in the past three years.

“We hope this kind of residence permit will encourage talent and entrepreneurs to come to the city with their innovative ideas and plans,” Cai said.

Compared with a business visa, which allows the holder to stay in China no longer than six months, the permit for entrepreneurs is valid for one year with multiple entries and can be extended to a maximum of two years.

“We will soon open a center for entry-exit and immigration affairs in Zhangjiang, providing one-stop services, from language training and job hunting to legal consultation,” Cai said. “It’s going to be the first of its kind in the country.”

In a two-page order signed on Thursday, Fox’s request for extension was denied by the BI citing the deportation order previously issued against her.

“The BI already saw that Sister Fox violated the conditions of her stay and is considered undesirable, hence a deportation order was previously issued against her,” said BI spokesperson Dana Krizia Sandoval.

“Our legal team saw that approving the extension of her missionary visa will be inconsistent with the findings cited in her deportation order,” she added.

The BI said that Fox already spent 27 years in the country as a missionary and according to the memorandum of agreement between the BI and the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines, foreign missionaries should stay in the country for only 10 years.

Fox would be required then to apply for the downgrading of her visa within 15 days from receipt of the denial order. Downgrading will revert her status to a temporary visitor’s visa, with a 59-day validity, starting from the date of the expiry of her missionary visa, said Sandoval.

Fox has a pending appeal before the Department of Justice (DOJ) on her deportation. Sandoval said that the BI “still needs to wait for the decision before acting on the deportation.”

The BI said they may grant Fox the Temporary Visitor’s Visa upon downgrading, without prejudice to the resolution of her appeal to the DOJ on her deportation.

    The issue came to light last week when a man was taken to hospital with stomach pains after eating the fresh produce bought at a supermarket in Queensland state.

Since then, people have posted on social media photos of other strawberries with small metal pins stuck into them.

Several brands grown in Queensland have been withdrawn from supermarkets, and there have been multiple reports of other cases in the states of New South Wales and Victoria.

“Whoever is behind this is not just putting families at risk across Queensland and the rest of Australia — they are putting an entire industry at risk,” Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said Saturday.

Her government is offering a Aus$100,000 (US$71,500) reward for any information that leads to the capture and conviction of those responsible.

“I would urge anyone with information that may be relevant to this incident in any way to contact police as soon as possible,” she added.

Queensland Police told national broadcaster ABC the contamination of the strawberries — usually sold in small plastic boxes called punnets — was done “obviously to injure somebody”.

They have yet to reveal possible motives but the Queensland Strawberry Growers Association said a disgruntled former worker might be responsible.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said Sunday he had ordered the national food safety watchdog to assess the handling of the cases, calling the sabotage a “very vicious crime”.

The Queensland strawberry industry is valued at about Aus$160 million (US$114 million). The ABC said Saturday wholesale prices had fallen by half to 50 Australian cents per punnet, below the cost of production.

Consumers have been urged to cut up their strawberries before eating.

Moon — whose own parents fled the North during the Korean War — flies north on Tuesday for a three-day trip, following in the footsteps of his predecessors Kim Dae-jung in 2000 and mentor Roh Moo-hyun in 2007.

No details of the programme have been announced, but Pyongyang is likely to pull out all the stops to create a good impression, with tens of thousands of people lining the streets to welcome him.

The visit comes after the North put on its “Mass Games” propaganda display for the first time in five years.

The new show featured imagery of Kim and Moon at their first summit in April in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula — prompting the unusual sight of tens of thousands of North Koreans in the May Day Stadium applauding pictures of Seoul’s leader.

One diplomatic source predicted the visit would see “Kim and Moon together receiving the same sort of applause”.

But while the Panmunjom summit was high on headline-grabbing symbolism, with Moon stepping briefly into the North and the two sharing an extended one-to-one woodland chat, pressure is mounting for substantive progress.

Moon was instrumental in brokering the historic summit between US President Donald Trump and Kim in Singapore in June, when Kim backed denuclearisation of the “Korean peninsula”.

But no details were agreed and Washington and Pyongyang have sparred since over what that means and how it will be achieved.

At the same time the US and South have sometimes moved at radically different speeds in their approach to the North.

Moon will try again to “play the role of facilitator or mediator”, said his special advisor on foreign affairs Moon Chung-in.

“He believes that improved inter-Korean relations have some role in facilitating US-DPRK talks as well as solving the North Korean nuclear problem,” he told reporters, using the North’s official acronym.

Last month, Trump abruptly cancelled a planned visit by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Pyongyang, after the North condemned “gangster-like” demands for what it called its unilateral disarmament.

Washington has been adamant that the North carry out a “final, fully verified denuclearisation” first, while Pyongyang is demanding a formal declaration from the US that the Korean War is over.

But Kim has since sent Trump a letter seeking a second summit and held a military parade for his country’s 70th birthday without showing off any intercontinental ballistic missiles, prompting warm tweets from the US president.

– Special guests –

North Korea will want to exploit Trump’s eagerness to declare progress before the US midterm elections in November to secure concessions, said Go Myong-hyun, an analyst at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies, and will view “every meeting as a viable political opportunity” towards that goal.

But whether Pyongyang is willing to offer something concrete in return has yet to be seen.

Moon may try to convince the North Korean leader to verbally commit to providing a list of the country’s existing nuclear programme, said Shin Beom-cheol, another analyst at the Asan Institute.

“It won’t be South Korea that inspects and verifies so if we can get something out of Kim Jong Un’s mouth, that will be significant,” Shin said, adding the next step could be a summit between Kim and Trump sometime in October.

Despite the deadlock in denuclearisation talks, since the Panmunjom summit the two Koreas have sought to pursue joint projects in multiple fields.

But North Korea is under several different sets of sanctions for its nuclear and missile programmes, hampering efforts to revive cross-border economic schemes.

The dovish South Korean president has invited the heads of the country’s largest conglomerates — including Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motors — to accompany him to Pyongyang.

“He is sending a message to the North to speedily complete denuclearisation, conclude talks with the US so that South Korea can begin full-fledged economic cooperation,” said analyst Go.

And special advisor Moon Chung-in added that the South Korean president could look to convince Kim to come up with a “somewhat radical and bold initiative”, such as dismantling some nuclear bombs, and press the US for reciprocal measures.

“And the United States should be willing to come up with major economic easing of economic sanctions,” he said.

Citing anonymous sources, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal reported that the tariffs would be set at 10 per cent.

Trump has already imposed 25 per cent tariffs on steel imports and 10 per cent on aluminum, as well as 25 per cent on $50 billion in goods from China.

The prospect of new tariffs undercuts hopes of an imminent reduction in trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.

On Thursday, China had welcomed a US offer to hold fresh trade talks, providing some hope the world’s top two economies could step back from the brink of an all-out trade war.

The report  analyses the energy innovation landscape of the next decade and identifies possible breakthroughs in fields such as energy production, storage, distribution, and consumption. It also looks at how breakthrough innovation occurs at the grassroots level and describes how small-scale renewable systems are on the rise.

South East Asia is at the third place globally in terms of innovation. Singapore leads the region with a high score in most of the indicators. Globally it has moved two positions up since last year.

South Korea is also among the high income countries that has increased investment in innovation and is ranked second in Asia. The country has not only increased the investment but also “improved its performance in the quality of its scientific publications and the quality of its universities,” It is followed by Japan that is ranked third in Asia.

China is ranked fourth in Asia. The country has been on a dynamic innovation trajectory. China’s innovation prowess has been evident in its global R&D companies, hightech imports, the quality of its publications, and tertiary enrolment.

It is followed by Malaysia which is ranked fifth in Asia and is one is one of the middle income countries that is edging closer. This year it moved ahead in the rankings with strengths in Tertiary education, Knowledge diffusion, and Creative goods and services.

Thailand ranked sixth has outperformed on innovation relative of its development, according to the report. It is followed by Vietnam and Mongolia ranked seventh and eighth in Asia respectively.

India ranked ninth is Asia is also seen as an overachiever in relation to its development.  As per the report India is one such country that make a significant change in the innovation landscape.

Although Brunei is a high income country the innovative input score is very less.  It is ranked tenth in Asia. It is followed by Philippines and Indonesia. Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh are the least innovative countries in Asia.

As per the report, innovation in Asia can grow if if increased protectionism—in particular protectionism that impacts technology-intensive sectors, IP, and knowledge flows across the board—could be contained.

Such dynamics, as per the report, could create the basis for productive knowledge spillovers and opportunities for collaboration and the generation of new knowledge and innovation.

The move aims to step up efforts to investigate marine poaching, because illegal operations by foreign vessels are believed to be one of the reasons behind recent poor catches in Japan of sanma saury and other marine products.

The envisioned scheme will use a system called Global Fishing Watch, which was developed by the U.S. information technology giant and other entities. The system can display ships’ positions and courses on a map, based on information sent from the vessels’ automatic ship identification systems that is received by satellites and base stations on the ground.

It is expected that the system will make it easier to find which ships are operating in areas where fishing is prohibited, and to which ports products caught in illegal fishing are being delivered. The FRA will provide images of ships and other data to Google, which will provide map data such as vessel movements. They plan to start their investigations in the Pacific.

The FRA has signed an agreement with the organization operating Global Fishing Watch — which Google is involved with — and an Australian research institute. The three groups will hold a meeting in October or later to figure out their plan of action, before starting joint surveillance of illegal fishing with the Fisheries Agency.

According to the agency, a record-high 5,191 warnings were issued in 2017 to demand that foreign ships fishing illegally in the Sea of Japan leave those waters. In the Sea of Japan in particular, there is an increasing number of illegal operations by what are believed to be North Korean ships for catching surume squid.

The most powerful storm to hit the region so far this year left a trail of battered homes, landslides and fallen trees in its wake.

At least four people were killed as the typhoon smashed across the rural north of the country, a farming area home to millions.

“It felt like the end of the world… that was stronger than Lawin”, said Saquing, 64, referring to a powerful super typhoon which hit the region in 2016.

“I did not sleep,” she told AFP by phone from her home on Luzon, which withstood Mangkhut’s pounding.

Evidence of the massive storm’s passage was everywhere on Saturday.

Wind-struck power poles bent from the ground at odd angles, while uprooted trees blocked roads. Corrugated steel roofs shivered and bounced in the continuing gusts.

Authorities were just beginning their surveys of the damage on Saturday afternoon.

Convoys were heading out on the winding roads of the rural area, which produces a significant portion of the nation’s corn and rice.

‘Twice as strong’

Fear was widespread among many of the estimated four million people in the storm’s path long before it made landfall.

Thousands of people evacuated high-risk areas following major flooding and landslide warnings.

Myrna Parallag and her two young grandchildren fled their home a day before Mangkhut struck.

“I’m afraid that the floodwaters will be high and will reach our house,” the 53-year-old told AFP on Friday as she looked for shelter near the city of Tuguegarao.

This was not her first storm. Parallag survived Lawin, also known as Super Typhoon Haima, but it destroyed her house.

“The newscaster said the typhoon now is twice as strong,” added Parallag, who makes money selling street food.

Her worries and those of thousands of others were well founded.

The storm claimed its first victims on Saturday, including two women who were buried when a rain-soaked hillside collapsed.

“As we go forward, this number will go higher,” said Ricardo Jalad, head of the national civil defence office, referring to the death toll.

An average of 20 typhoons and storms lash the Philippines each year, killing hundreds of people and leaving millions in near-perpetual poverty.

The massive storm cut a swathe of destruction when it struck the northern tip of Luzon island, threatening the lives and homes of roughly four million people.

“As we go forward, this number will go higher,” Ricardo Jalad, head of the national civil defence office, told reporters, referring to the death toll.

As the powerful storm left the Southeast Asian archipelago and barrelled towards densely populated Hong Kong and southern China, search teams in the Philippines began surveying the provinces that suffered a direct hit.

“We believe there has been a lot of damage,” said Social Welfare Secretary Virginia Orogo as thousands of evacuees took refuge in emergency shelters.

Mangkhut was packing sustained winds of 170 kilometres (105 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 260 km per hour as it left the Philippines.

An average of 20 typhoons and storms lash the Philippines each year, killing hundreds of people and leaving millions in near-perpetual poverty.

Thousands of people fled their homes in high-risk areas ahead of the storm’s arrival because of major flooding and landslide risks.

In Taiwan, a woman was swept away by high waves caused by the typhoon, the government said.

The two lifeless bodies of the two women in the Philippines were pulled from the soil of a hillside that collapsed after the storm’s torrential rains, police said.

– ‘We are terrified’ –

Residents had started lashing down their roofs and gathering supplies days before the arrival of the storm.

“Among all the typhoons this year, this one (Mangkhut) is the strongest,” Japan Meteorological Agency forecaster Hiroshi Ishihara told AFP on Friday.

“This is a violent typhoon. It has the strongest sustained wind (among the typhoons of this year).”

After blasting the Philippines, Mangkhut is predicted to hurtle towards China’s heavily populated southern coast this weekend.

“They (authorities) said this typhoon is twice as strong as the last typhoon, that’s why we are terrified,” Myrna Parallag, 53, told AFP after fleeing her home in the northern Philippines.

“We learned our lesson last time. The water reached our roof,” she said, referring to when her family rode out a typhoon at home in 2016.

The country’s deadliest on record is Super Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,350 people dead or missing across the central Philippines in November 2013.

Poor communities reliant on fishing are some of the most vulnerable to fierce typhoon winds and the storm surges that pound the coast.

“The rains will be strong and the winds are no joke… We may have a storm surge that could reach four storeys high,” Michael Conag, a spokesman for local civil defence authorities, told AFP.

As the storm heads for China’s southern coast, Cathay Pacific airline said it expects more than 400 flight cancellations over the next three days.

The Hong Kong government said Mangkhut will pose “a severe threat to the region” as many residents in the city and neighbouring Macau stocked up on food and supplies.

The president of neighbouring Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, told citizens to be ready.

“The typhoon is powerful and even it’s not expected to make a landfall in Taiwan, we should be well prepared and not… take it lightly,” she wrote on Facebook.

Four deaths were confirmed by officials as US media reported another.

Hundreds of people needed to be rescued after becoming trapped in their homes by a storm surge of up to 10 feet (three meters) in New Bern, a town of 30,000 in North Carolina at the confluence of the Trent and Neuse rivers.

Florence has been downgraded to a tropical storm by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) but authorities warned the danger was far from over, predicting that “life-threatening storm surges and strong winds” would persist through the night.

“We are expecting several more days of rain,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said, describing the amount of rainfall from the hurricane as a “1,000-year event.”

“Into next week our rivers are going to continue to rise and there will be more significant flooding,” Cooper said.

There had been three confirmed deaths from the storm and several others were being investigated to determine if they were storm-related, he said.

The mother and her baby were killed in New Hanover County when a tree fell on their house, the governor said, while confirming another death in Lenoir County.

Local authorities reported a death in Pender County when downed trees prevented emergency units from reaching a woman with a medical condition. Local media said she had suffered a heart attack.

US media later said a second man in Lenoir County died after heavy winds knocked him down as he tried to check on his dogs.

“This storm is going to continue its violent grind across our state for days,” Cooper said. “The storm is wreaking havoc on our state.”

More than 760,000 customers in North Carolina were without power and 21,000 people were being housed in 157 shelters across the state.

The White House said President Donald Trump was to visit hurricane-hit areas next week “once it is determined his travel will not disrupt any rescue or recovery efforts.”

“Great job FEMA, First Responders and Law Enforcement – not easy, very dangerous, tremendous talent. America is proud of you,” Trump tweeted on Friday, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which responds to disasters in the United States.

‘WE ARE COMING TO GET YOU’

As of 11:00 pm (0300 GMT), maximum sustained winds had weakened to 65 miles (104 kilometers) per hour but the NHC warned residents to be alert for life-threatening storm surges and “catastrophic freshwater flooding.”

“Flash flooding will be extreme and flood waters will come up quickly and seemingly out of nowhere,” the governor said.

“We’re deeply concerned for whole communities which could be wiped away.”

Some of the worst flooding was in New Bern, where authorities were enforcing a curfew.

Both the Trent and Neuse rivers overflowed their banks, flooding homes, stores and streets and trapping many people in their houses.

“WE ARE COMING TO GET YOU. You may need to move up to the second story, or to your attic, but WE ARE COMING TO GET YOU,” the authorities in New Bern said on Twitter.

Governor Cooper said there have been “several hundred” rescue operations and “there are still some people they need to get to.”

Besides federal and state emergency crews, rescuers were being helped by volunteers from the “Cajun Navy” who also turned up in Houston during Hurricane Harvey to carry out water rescues.

Hurricane Florence made landfall as a Category 1 storm at 7:15 am (1115 GMT) in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, after stalking the Carolina coast for days.

The NHC described Florence as a “slow mover” and said it had the potential to dump historic amounts of rain on North and South Carolina, as much as 40 inches (one meter) in some places.

“This is not the end of it,” said Jeff Byard, associate administrator for response and recovery at FEMA.

He said “24 to 36 hours remain for significant threats” from heavy rain, storm surges and flooding.

A tornado watch was issued for eastern North Carolina.

Downed trees and power lines

In Wilmington, near where the eye of the hurricane touched down, trees and power lines were felled and many windows were broken. The streets were mostly deserted and some were blocked by fallen trees.

The city awoke Friday to the sound of exploding electrical transformers with strong gusts of wind throwing street signs and other debris as well as water in all directions.

In Wilmington, Mason Tarr said he spent the night at a friend’s house but didn’t sleep well.

“Our house is on high ground so we’re not worried about the flooding,” he said. “But there are a lot of big trees around so we preferred to spend the night at a friend’s to be sure.

“We’re out of power so we spent the first few hours of the day playing board games with candles.”

About 1.7 million people in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia are under voluntary or mandatory evacuation orders, and millions of others live in areas likely to be affected by the storm.