Asia Pacific

One of Australia's oldest property sales companies, Forsyth Real Estate, is making a digital leap to try to keep up with international investors' passion for the Sydney market. The 115-year-old company has decided it will accept the virtual currency Bitcoin payments for deposits on the purchase of Australian property. Forsyth managing director James Snodgrass said accepting Bitcoin payments will make purchases easier and cheaper for foreign buyers.

Vietnam is raising the haulage charges on containers to cover increases in operation and transport costs.

Xanana Gusmão, prime minister of East Timor, says rapid economic growth since independence from Indonesia in 2002 means his country is now ready to become the 11th member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

U.S. companies operating in China are having an increasingly hard time recruiting qualified managers because of the bad air quality in the country’s major cities.

On April 1, Burma will enact rules making it compulsory for companies employing two or more people to pay fees to cover their employees’ government social security contributions.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Labour has ordered 14 Vietnamese and 11 Taiwanese employment companies to stop work while allegations they are ripping off recruited migrant workers are investigated.

South Korea plans to cut the number of regulations on business activities by 20% by 2016. President Park Geun-hye said last week her administration plans to remove 2,200 regulations, dropping the total from 15,269 to 13,069.

A study in Cambodia has found that children are 2.5 times more likely to attend school regularly when the school has filtered drinking water available.

Young South Koreans much prefer their smartphones over their computers as the electronic gadget of choice.

India is by far the largest importer of arms, in large part because it has failed to develop a robust domestic arms industry.