Adam Pasick

Alibaba and Apple, whose bosses expressed an interest in marrying their respective mobile e-payments platforms last month, have moved from flirting to dating. Alibaba’s Alipay payments affiliate announced yesterday that it will allow users to authenticate their accounts with the iPhone’s fingerprint sensor instead of a password, indicating a deepening relationship between the two companies.

Korean Air’s macadamia nut scandal—in which the daughter of the airline’s chairman dressed down staff for improper nut-serving protocol, and ordered a steward to exit a New York-to-Seoul flight—is raising new questions about the country’s family-dominated corporate culture.

If you’ve been near a tourist attraction lately, you may have seen someone posing—either solo or with a gaggle of friends—for a cameraphone attached to the end of a telescoping pole.

The Ferguson, Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson was an uncommon one—legal analysts have noted that most district attorneys can “indict a ham sandwich“ if they so desire.

Chinese internet giant Tencent has signed a deal with HBO (paywall) to stream the network’s shows online, potentially bringing hits like Game of Thrones and True Detective to a China, though Tencent said each show needs to be approved individually by the Chinese government.

St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch gave a long speech Monday night, explaining all of the reasons he did not secure a grand jury indictment of Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot dead the unarmed black youth Michael Brown in August.

A Lego pamphlet from 1974, unearthed and posted on Reddit this weekend, has some advice for parents that rings true 40 years later:

These are happy days for the once-downtrodden airline industry: Profits are high and costs are low, particularly the price of oil, which is the industry’s biggest expense. But that’s no consolation to flyers.

Apple has had more than its share of setbacks in China, but the company just cleared a major hurdle: A newly established partnership with UnionPay, the state-run firm that has a virtual monopoly on processing payments between merchants, banks, and credit card companies.

Burger lovers in Singapore queued up for hours today to get a chance at a burger from the cult-favorite In-N-Out, a California-base chain that is testing out foreign markets with one-day “pop-up” restaurants.

Just days after announcing that a group led by China Railways Construction would build a $3.7 billion high-speed rail link from Mexico City to the center of the country, Mexico’s government cancelled the deal, citing the desire to avoid “doubts about the legitimacy and transparency” of the bidding process.

A US security company has raised the alarm about a new breed of malware that has infiltrated hundreds of thousands of Apple devices, including Macs and iPhones. But unless you’re downloading pirated software from Chinese app stores, you probably don’t have anything to worry about.

Thais celebrate the Loi Krathong holiday by floating ceremonial baskets onto lakes and ponds, and sometimes by also releasing sky lanterns made from rice paper stretched over a thin frame, which are carried aloft by the hot air generated from a candle or fiery oil-soaked fuel.

A new music video from rock band OK Go is a dazzler: One long camera take shows the four band members lip-synching their song “I Won’t Let You Down” while smoothly gliding around on motorized unicycles. They’re joined by more than 2,000 precision-trained Japanese dancers with umbrellas—some of them also riding the unicycles—for a Busby Berkeley-scale dance routine, before the camera itself (which we realize is a drone) soars high into the sky.

Brazil’s incumbent president narrowly won re-election yesterday, beating pro-business challenger Aécio Neves in a run-off with just 51.6% of the vote. The election was largely seen as a referendum on Dilma Rousseff’s leftist Worker’s Party, which has ruled the country since 2003 and lifted many millions out of poverty, but has recently faced widespread street protests as it struggled to boost the country’s flagging economy.

The biggest city in the United States got its first confirmed case of Ebola tonight, after Dr. Craig Spencer came down with a high fever nine days after returning from treating the outbreak in Guinea and tested positive for the virus.

Iceland’s Wow Air just launched some incredibly inexpensive flights from Boston and Washington, DC to London and Copenhagen, routed through Reykjavik, in what may mark the kick-off of a transatlantic budget airline boom that many in the airline industry have long expected.

China is just about the only economy in the world to aim for a specific rate of GDP growth every year, and when you make a measure a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Chinese premier Li Keqiang has acknowledged that his government’s GDP figures are “man-made” and ”for reference only.” (paywall)

Runners World has concluded that it will take a wide range of geographic, psychological, and demographic factors to achieve a sub two-hour marathon—the current record stands at 2:02:57. It’s safe to say that none of the factors involve thick clouds of lung-choking smog, like at this weekend’s Beijing Marathon.

Albanian football fans were barred from last night’s Euro 2016 qualifying match against Serbia in Belgrade, so Olsi Rama—a former pro basketball player, George Soros staffer, and cancer researcher who happens to be the brother of Albania’s prime minister—allegedly found another way to make an impression on behalf of his country.

Apple design impressario Jony Ive is not a fan of Xiaomi, the upstart Chinese smartphone manufacturer that has been accused of copying design elements of the iPhone. Asked about Xiaomi at a Vanity Fair event last night, Ive said:

Chai Yan Leung, the daughter of Hong Kong chief executive CY Leung, hasn’t been doing her embattled father any favors lately. She recently drew the ire of pro-democracy protesters by bragging on Facebook that her luxury purchases are “funded by all you HK taxpayers.” Chai Yan quickly deleted her Facebook account after that rant went viral, but now the account is back (though the “all you HK taxpayers” post was deleted), and she is using it to threaten to sue every media outlet that reported on her social media foibles.

Everything was looking awesome for Lego, as revenues from “The Lego Movie” recently made the Danish company the world’s biggest toymaker by revenue. But then those pesky environmentalists from Greenpeace came along, with a brutal parody video criticizing Lego’s business dealings with oil giant Shell.

The grisly killings of two English tourists on the Thai island of Koh Tao remain unsolved after nearly three weeks, and the local police stand accused of bungling the investigation. Yet the response from the country’s tourism ministry seems unlikely to restore traveler confidence: it wants all foreign visitors to wear ID wristbands, and eventually tracking devices.