Jake Maxwell Watts

If HTC isn’t quite a sinking ship, it is certainly taking on a lot of water. The world’s top smartphone maker as recently as 2011 has lost ground to Samsung, sales of its well-reviewed HTC One flagship phone fell short of expectations due to supply glitches, its much-hyped Facebook phone has been a total dud, and more than a half dozen top executives—including chief product officer Kouji Kodera and, on Thursday May 23rd, Asia CEO Lennard Hoornik—have fled the company.

North Korea is on the back foot, but U.S. sanctions on Kim Jong-un’s tempestuous regime are having unintended consequences for aid agencies trying to feed the impoverished country.

Barely a week passes without a tense incident in the disputed waters of the South and East China Seas: A Philippine naval ship shooting up a Taiwanese fishing boat, Chinese patrols edging closer to islands claimed by Japan—even diplomatically provocative cruise ship outings.

This article has been corrected.

Qihoo 360’s grand ambition to take on China’s search giant Baidu came one step closer to being realized this week with the launch of 360.etao.com, a Chinese language online shopping search engine which was developed in partnership with e-commerce giant Alibaba.

China appears to have beaten back the latest strain of bird flu, according to global health authorities, but at no small cost. A total of 36 people have died, and UN experts said on Tuesday that the economy lost $6.5 billion as a result of the outbreak.

As new data from Japan shows, just because your exports are cheaper doesn’t mean people can afford them (or, in the case of China, want to buy them at all). Despite the yen-weakening effects of Abenomics, Japan posted its 10th straight month of trade deficits on Wednesday—and the gap in April was almost 70% wider than last year.

Prime minister Shinzo Abe’s government seems to have a knack for getting people to let their hair down. Thanks in part to Abe’s bold economic policies—often referred to as “Abenomics”—traditionally cautious Japanese consumers are now buying up luxury watches, Honda is back in Formula 1 racing and now lawmakers want to relax strict rules curbing late-night dance clubs.

An absurd episode involving a Chinese fishing boat hijacked by North Korea has come to an end with the safe return of the vessel and its crew. Although the matter was resolved by officials behind closed doors, a fervent discussion took place on social media–and it was decidedly one way.

Goldman Sachs ended a seven-year investment in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China on Monday, selling its remaining $1.1 billion stake in the world’s largest bank by market value and most profitable lender for HK$5.50 per share—2.5% less than the market’s closing price.

Thailand, Southeast Asia’s sunny tourist hub and economic powerhouse, is slowing down. Official statistics released on Monday show that the kingdom’s economy grew only 5.3% in the first quarter of 2013 compared with the same period last year, below the 6% expected by analysts.

A contentious territorial dispute between Taiwan and the Philippines is having nasty repercussions–and the US is caught in the middle.

Like an attention-seeking toddler, albeit one with nuclear weapons, North Korea rarely allows much time to go by without some destructive antics. As of this weekend, the unpredictable country appears to be ransoming a Chinese fishing boat, potentially talking with the US about an American prisoner it’s holding as a bargaining chip, and lofting a series of short-range missiles into the ocean near its concerned southern neighbor.

Property prices in China are rising relentlessly, according to new government data, and not even strict property controls have been able to stop them.

World War II would have ended much faster if Japanese soldiers actually died like Shi Zhongpeng, an extra at the Hengdian film studios in Zhejiang who met his end in spectacular style over 200 times last year for Chinese TV. Sadly for Mr Shi, not everybody finds his deaths entertaining.

When dealing with its volatile and unpredictable North Korean ally, China giveth, and China taketh away. Under pressure to curb North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Beijing closed the Kim Jong-un regime’s most important foreign bank account last week—but also quietly boosted shipments of free food and fertilizer.

Cyclone Mahasen made for an ominous sight as it bore down on the Bangladeshi coastline on Thursday. It claimed around 12 lives and caused extensive damage, but the most palpable emotion was relief—the storm had weakened by the time it made landfall, and it and missed vulnerable refugee camps on the Myanmar coast.

Zombies. People seem unable to get enough of zombies, whether in movie form (“Shaun of the Dead,” “28 Days Later,” “Resident Evil”) or games (Half-Life, Walking Dead, Left 4 Dead). This fascination has not gone overlooked by Naruatsu Baba, the 35-year-old founder, president and boss of Tokyo-based app-maker Colopl.

Hong Kong’s stock market was number one in the world by value for initial public offerings between 2009 and 2010. In 2013, until this week, it was 13th—behind Iraq.

Japan’s robust economic growth in the first quarter—3.5% on an annualized basis, well ahead of predictions—is a sign that the radical monetary and fiscal policies of prime minister Shinzo Abe are helping. But if Japan’s growth and accompanying currency devaluation continue, they will have a ripple effect on other Asian economies. And some experts argue that Japan’s problems can’t be solved by simply splashing the cash.

Isao Iijima, a special advisor close to Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, is in North Korea talking with government officials. The interesting thing, however, is that nobody knows why.

Almost seven million children under five died in 2011, according to the World Health Organization, but the biggest culprits are not, as you might expect, AIDS, malaria and measles. Pneumonia is the biggest killer globally. And, the number two threat—diarrhea—kills 100,000 children annually in India alone.

For 70,000 displaced Rohingya Muslim refugees in western Myanmar, the choice is simple: wait until Cyclone Mahasen swallows their low-lying camps on Wednesday (May 15), or run back to higher ground they were once violently forced from.

If there was a winner in the multi-year legal fight between US authorities and Indian drug maker Ranbaxy, it was far more likely to be the whistleblower and ex-director Dinesh Thakur, than the US consumer.