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Vietnam, which has now emerged as the fastest-growing tourism destination in Southeast Asia. Now, Vietnam has emerged as the third-most-visited country in the region, with 17.5 million international arrivals in 2024, edging ahead of Singapore. It follows Malaysia, which had 25 million visitors, and Thailand, which remains at the top with 35 million. The numbers also make Vietnam, also referred to as the Land of the Ascending Dragon, the regional leader in tourism recovery. Five years after the Covid-19 pandemic brought global travel to a halt, Vietnam has regained 98% of its pre-pandemic tourism business, outpacing all its neighbours, including Thailand (87.5%) and Singapore (86%). The momentum shows no signs of slowing down. Nearly four million international tourists arrived in Vietnam in January and February this year, a 30.2% increase from the same period last year, according to figures from the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism.

Perplexity on Friday expressed its interest in buying TikTok, which faces a deadline to divest from its Chinese owner or be banned in the United States. Perplexity in a blog post laid out a vision for integrating its AI-powered internet search capabilities with the popular video-snippet sharing app. «Combining Perplexity's answer engine with TikTok's extensive video library would allow us to build the best search experience in the world,» the San Francisco-based firm reasoned.

Taking to LinkedIn, Elliot Rosenberg shared how a daring move he made 12 years ago changed his life for the better. He explained that while most personal finance experts emphasize strategies such as budgeting expenses, making long-term investments, and establishing multiple income streams to achieve financial independence and early retirement, he recognized a significant challenge: the high cost of living in America. Although inflation played a role in rising expenses, he believed that the real issue lay in “lifestyle creep.” In many social circles, there seemed to be an unspoken expectation to maintain a costly social life—frequenting upscale restaurants, purchasing event tickets, indulging in shopping sprees, or joining expensive recreational clubs. The pressure to sustain these expenditures often dictated friendships and social acceptance.

tariff concerns. Selling pressure has intensified in recent weeks after a string of economic indicators signaled the economy and consumer sentiment may be cooling as the Trump administration imposes reciprocal trade tariffs.

NIA is probing foreign links to terror acts, human trafficking and terror financing emanating from foreign soil, minister of state for home Nityanand Rai informed the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. Referring to NIA (Amendment) Act, 2019, he said the agency has been empowered to investigate terrorist acts on Indian missions. In reply to supplementary questions during Question Hour, Rai said during the investigation of cases in the last year, NIA found that the accused were based outside India's borders.

National Investigation Agency (NIA) is probing foreign links to terror acts, human trafficking and terror financing emanating from foreign soil, Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai informed the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. Referring to the NIA (Amendment) Act, 2019, he said the agency has been empowered to investigate terrorist acts on Indian missions abroad as part of the dispensation’s commitment to zero-tolerance towards terrorism. In reply to supplementary questions during Question Hour in the Upper House, Rai said during the investigation of cases in the last year, NIA has found that the accused were based outside India’s borders.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Bengaluru: US-based Prologis Inc., the world’s largest owner of warehouses, plans to invest around $500 million in India by 2026 to build a large portfolio of warehousing parks in the country. The company could double its investment in India in the 5-7 years following the initial $500 million outlay, chief investment officer Joseph Ghazal said in an interview.

Uber saw its operating revenue in India grow by 41% for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024, reaching Rs 3,762 crore, up from Rs 2,666 crore in FY23, as it managed to reduce its losses, driven by improvement in its ride-hailing services and growth in its support and service operations. In FY24 the San Francisco-based Uber Inc’s India unit significantly narrowed its losses by 71%, bringing it down to Rs 89 crore from Rs 311 crore in FY23, according to the company’s regulatory filings sourced from business intelligence platform Tofler. Over the past five to six years, Uber has been doubling down on its focus on the mobility segment. In FY24, its ride-hailing revenue in India surged by 19% to Rs 806 crore, up from Rs 678 crore the previous year. Additionally, revenue from support services grew to Rs 2,936 crore, compared to Rs 1,977 crore in the previous year.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Comparison advertising is getting more confrontational as brands work harder to catch consumers’ attention, while the general tone of social media lowers the barrier to trading insults. Attack ads, of course, are almost as old as advertising itself.

NCAA Tournament kicks off tonight, Tuesday, March 18, with the First Four games and continues until the national championship on Monday, April 7. This year’s Men’s March Madness tournament will be held in several cities across the country, including Seattle, Lexington, Kentucky, Providence, Rhode Island, and San Francisco. Both the men’s and women’s tournament will have 68 teams vying for the trophy. Below is the full schedule for the First Four, along with details on how you can watch and live stream tonight's matchups.

Trump administration's tariffs on imported goods from Canada, Mexico and China — some already in place, others set to take effect in a few weeks — are already driving up the cost of building materials used in new residential construction and home remodeling projects. The tariffs are projected to raise the costs that go into building a single-family home in the US by USD 7,500 to USD 10,000, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Such costs are typically passed along to the homebuyer in the form of higher prices, which could hurt demand at a time when the US housing market remains in a slump and many builders are having to offer buyers costly incentives to drum up sales. We Buy Houses in San Francisco, which purchases foreclosed homes and then typically renovates and sells them, is increasing prices on its refurbished properties between 7 per cent and 12 per cent. That's even after saving USD 52,000 in costs by stockpiling 62 per cent more Canadian lumber than usual. «The uncertainty of how long these tariffs will continue has been the most challenging aspect of our planning,» said CEO Mamta Saini.

OpenAI President Greg Brockman has just shared a game-changing framework to fix that—and it’s surprisingly simple.

«In the days to come, you should expect more visas will be revoked as we identify people that we should have never allowed in,» Rubio told reporters following a meeting of G7 foreign ministers. The Trump administration is moving to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the United States who recently graduated from Columbia University and had helped lead high-profile campus protests against Israel's war in the Gaza Strip.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The maker of the wildly popular mobile game Pokémon Go is making a sharp turn toward a new frontier in AI research.

Rupert Murdoch's company for when readers are directed to copyrighted articles from the Wall Street Journal and New York Post. In a Wednesday night complaint filed in San Francisco federal court, Brave said News Corp sent a cease-and-desist letter threatening litigation and demanding compensation for the alleged misappropriation of copyrighted articles by «scraping» its websites and indexing their content. Brave countered that it is «fair use» to index website content, «which all search engine operators must do to exist.»

federal workers who lost their jobs as part of mass firings carried out across multiple agencies. The back-to-back rulings were the most significant blow yet to the effort by Trump and top adviser Elon Musk to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy. Government agencies face a Thursday deadline to submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and to slash their budgets. U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore agreed with 20 Democratic-led states that 18 agencies which had fired probationary employees en masse in recent weeks violated regulations governing the laying off of federal workers. His decision came hours after U.S. District Judge William Alsup during a hearing in San Francisco ordered the reinstatement of probationary employees terminated at the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department. Alsup said the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the human resources department for federal agencies, had improperly ordered those agencies to fire workers en masse even though it lacked the power to do so.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. AI agents aren’t yet trusted by enterprises for high-stakes tasks like financial transactions or hiring new workers. OpenAI hopes that will start to change as its AI—especially its so-called reasoning models—improve.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. SAN FRANCISCO—The founder of the Museum of Failure, which celebrates product flops like Crystal Pepsi and a golf club that doubles as a urinal, has one wish for its highly anticipated exhibition slated to open here next month—that it bombs as spectacularly as the items on display. Samuel West is begging people not to buy tickets to the internationally acclaimed show, and he isn’t joking.

Motive has announced that it will more than double its India headcount by strengthening its product, engineering and R&D teams. Over the next two years, the company plans to hire over 300 engineers and designers, including some in senior leadership roles, at its Bengaluru development centre, cofounder and chief executive Shoaib Makani told ET. Valued at nearly $2.85 billion during its last funding round in 2022, San Francisco-based Motive builds technology to help companies run their physical operations with AI tools.

Elon Musk has called for the privatisation of the United States Postal Service (USPS). He argued that government-run entities should face market competition to drive efficiency. The proposal was made during a Morgan Stanley technology conference in San Francisco. His stand aligns with that of President Donald Trump’s on the matter.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. What do Sam Altman and David Sacks have in common? Certainly not politics. Mr Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, is part of the transition team of Daniel Lurie, the Democratic mayor-elect of San Francisco.