Fever

• Venture capitalists in Southeast Asia are reducing funding for consumer startups as investment focus shifts heavily toward artificial intelligence. • Struggling firms are seeking alternative financing or pivoting business models, such as livestreaming platform Kumu launching a paid data annotation service. • The trend is highlighted by significant market exits, including a coffee chain that shuttered operations in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea in 2023.

• The Australian government is planning to implement a ban on sports betting advertisements to combat rising gambling addiction across the country. • The move follows pressure from critics and health advocates who highlight that Australia suffers from some of the world's highest gambling losses. • This policy aims to protect vulnerable citizens, particularly youth, from the pervasive influence of betting promotions integrated into sports culture.

The country is ready to blow away decades of dashed hopes and celebrate, with marching bands and all-night partiesScotland is leaning into one its most treasured traditions: embracing the hope and anxiety of a football World Cup, with a healthy dose of self-deprecating style.There are brash new tartans, an Edinburgh bar offering free Irn-Bru-infused “fiery ginger” beers for patrons with red hair, a collaboration between Scottish whisky firms and a Brazilian distiller, and all-night parties in nightclubs repurposed as fanzones. Continue reading...

• Inspired by India's Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), satirical political accounts have emerged in Pakistan, most notably the Cockroach Awami Party. • The movement uses the cockroach as a symbol for resilience and the ability to survive despite attempts at elimination. • These accounts position themselves as satirical alternatives to Pakistan's established political giants, including the PTI, PML-N, and PPP.

Tony award-winning actor will play lead role of Judith Bliss in Noël Coward’s comedy at Wyndham’s theatre in LondonChristine Baranski is to make her West End debut alongside Richard E Grant in a revival of Noël Coward’s comedy Hay Fever. The US star, known for her TV roles in The Good Fight and The Gilded Age, says she is looking forward to “tearing a passion to tatters” in the 1925 play about a family toying with their guests at a country house party.She will star as the newly retired actor Judith Bliss, with Grant playing her novelist husband. Baranski has twice won the Tony award for best featured actress in a play – with New York productions of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing in 1984 and Neil Simon’s Rumors in 1989. She also appeared in the comedies Hurlyburly (in 1985) and Boeing-Boeing (in 2008) on Broadway. Continue reading...