Lunar new year 2025: How Asia is celebrating the year of the snake
As several Asian nations gear up to celebrate the lunar new year, families are preparing to partake in the unique traditions associated with the festival and welcome the year of the snake.
The lunar new year marks the first new moon of the lunar calendar, which this year rises on 29 January, kicking off festivities that last 15 days until the first full moon.
While the duration of the festival and the ceremonies associated with it vary by country, the main idea is to usher in the new year with loved ones.
Asian nations have bolstered their transport facilities to keep up with the surge in travel demand. Flights to Japan from Hong Kong will be leaving every 15 minutes, with the acting CEO of the city’s airport authority saying there were 150 flights scheduled to and from 13 Japanese cities in the holiday period.
The Chinese government expects nine billion trips – nearly 510 million by train, 90 million by air, and the rest by car – to be undertaken during the festive period, the Associated Press reported.
According to local media, South Korea expects to see 6.39 million cars on the highways, despite Tuesday’s heavy snowfall throwing a wrench into some travel plans.
In China, most businesses and government offices close for an official eight-day public holiday to allow people to travel back home for reunions, while South Koreans get a six-day break after the government designated 27 January as a temporary holiday.
While it has origins in China and Chinese communities in other places, the festival is celebrated in many countries and is even known by different names – the Chinese call it Spring Festival, the Vietnamese call it Tet, South Koreans Seollal, and Indonesians Imlek.
The Chinese zodiac calendar is a continuous 12-year cycle, each year represented by 12 animals in a specific order – Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig.
A person’s zodiac is determined by the year and the animal they are born under, and it’s believed to influence their personality, career, relationships, and fortunes.
According to this cycle, 2025 is the year of the snake and children born through this year will be snakes.
Planning and preparing for the festivities begins at least a week before the new year arrives, with houses hanging red banners carrying auspicious phrases and lanterns. These banners are meant to invite good fortune and keep away an underwater beast named Nian.
Fireworks are an integral part of the new year celebrations, as the vibrant display is meant to drive away any bad luck that may be lurking.
Hong Kong expects to see close to 400,000 people at the Victoria Harbour for a 23-minute fireworks show on Thursday, the South China Morning Post reported.
Families also start spring cleaning, with the assumption being that it empties the house of any bad luck. Many even believe that cleaning the house or taking the trash out in the first few days of the new year will sweep away all the good luck they have just managed to gain.
People often travel back to their hometowns during this period and spend the first few days of the new year meeting relatives and loved ones, with bags full of fruit and presents.
Married people are expected to distribute red envelopes with money to unmarried people, supposedly to keep away evil spirits.
In South Korea, a ritual called sebae is observed where people dress in traditional clothing called hanbok to offer deep bows to elders and ancestors to wish them a happy new year. In return, they are given pocket money, rice cakes, and fruit.
Traditional lion dances are often seen in lunar new year parades. They are considered lucky and believed to ward off evil spirits from homes and workplaces.
Many head to temples to pay their respects and make offerings to even out any potential bad luck.
One of the most important parts of the festival is the reunion dinner, where the entire family gathers for a feast, with each dish carefully selected for its symbolism.
Malaysians and Singaporeans make a salad called yee sang, which can’t be eaten without a “prosperity toss”, where everyone gathered stirs together the shredded ingredients and then tosses them high in the air to symbolise good luck.
Vietnamese families come together to make a sticky rice cake known as banh chung, which takes close to 12 laborious hours. The idea is to share the joy of good food with each other.
In Korea, a rice cake soup named tteokguk is consumed, which represents rebirth, new beginnings, and the passing of time. A sweet rice cake shaped like a half-moon, called songpyeon, is eaten for good luck as its shape is meant to signify abundance and prosperity.
Man arrested after ‘accidentally’ opening emergency exit on flight
A man was arrested after opening the emergency exit on a domestic flight minutes before it was to take off from an airport in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan on Tuesday.
IndiGo flight 6E 6033, bound for Bengaluru in southern India, was scheduled to depart the Jodhpur airport at 10.10am local time.
The cabin crew had just begun the safety demonstration when a passenger, later identified as Axis Bank employee Siraj Kidwai, reportedly opened the emergency exit flap.
Mr Kidwai claimed it was accidental and not intentional.
The incident caused disruption on board, and led to a 20-minute delay in takeoff, NDTV reported.
The pilots and the cabin crew “followed standard operating protocols” and alerted airport security.
“Today, during the safety briefing before the departure of flight 6E 6033 from Jodhpur to Bengaluru, a passenger opened the emergency exit flap. The crew immediately followed standard operating procedures. The passenger was disembarked and handed over to law enforcement officials for investigation,” an IndiGo spokesperson said.
Mr Kidwai was handed over to the Central Industrial Security Force for questioning.
IndiGo expressed regret for the incident. “We regret the inconvenience caused to other passengers on the flight and reaffirm our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of safety and security in all our operations,” the airline said.
A similar incident took place in 2023 in South Korea when a man opened the emergency door of an Asiana Airlines aircraft just before it landed in Daegu city. The passenger said he was overwhelmed by stress after losing his job, felt suffocated and needed to exit quickly. He was arrested for violating aviation law.
On 8 November last year, an “aggressive” Korean Air passenger was restrained by cabin crew after attempting to open the emergency exit door during a flight to South Korea. Flight KE658 from Bangkok to Seoul was reportedly an hour into its almost five-and-a-half-hour journey when the unidentified man reached for the emergency exit door handle after refusing to move from a crew-only jumpseat.
Japanese city hires security guards at site of iconic sea view
A Japanese city has hired security guards to oversee a scenic vista after it became inundated with tourists.
Officials have been stationed to manage the overflow of tourists during the lunar new year holidays at the Funamizaka slope in Otaru of Hokkaido prefecture. The spot, featured in the 1995 Japanese film Love Letter, is popular with tourists for its views of the sea.
A Chinese tourist was struck by a train and killed while taking pictures on the tracks near the slope earlier this month. Her husband said she was trying to photograph a location featured in the 2015 Chinese film Cities in Love and did not notice the oncoming train.
There have been a growing number of complaints by residents about visitors blocking roads and trespassing on private property. “The road is lined with houses and has heavy traffic. Tourists standing on the street or walking side by side often make it impossible for vehicles to pass. The impact on residents has been significant and this fiscal year has been particularly severe,” a city official told the Mainichi Shimbun.
On Tuesday, guards were stationed at three places carrying signs in English, Chinese and Korean urging visitors not to trespass on private property or take photos in the middle of the road, Kyodo News reported.
The guards will remain deployed until the end of March and local police will step up patrols in the area.
“People are even entering private property without permission to take photos,” local resident Hidetoshi Itagaki, 80, told the Japanese media outlet.
Japan welcomed a record 36 million tourists in 2024, according to official numbers released this month. Otaru saw over 90,000 foreign tourists staying in the city during the first half of fiscal 2024, the highest number since records began in 1997, local officials said.
The record surge in tourists has been attributed in major part to a weaker yen which has made Japan more attractive to international visitors. The soaring numbers, however, have sparked concerns about “overtourism” at popular destinations, leading to challenges in managing visitor flow and preserving local environments.
Last year the Japan Tourism Agency launched a travel etiquette – a series of guidelines encouraging better behaviour from tourists, such as travelling light and “minding your manners”.
It also produced 22 pictograms designed to be easily replicable for hotels, guesthouses and other local establishments, with messages like “Selfie sticks prohibited”.
The Japanese government has an ambitious target of attracting 60 million visitors each year by 2030.
Meanwhile, following the death of the Chinese tourist near the Asari station, Hokkaido Railway Co is considering adding safety announcements in English and Chinese on its trains.
Truck driver disappears into swimming pool-sized sinkhole
A large sinkhole appeared at a busy intersection in a Japanese city on Tuesday, swallowing a rubbish truck and trapping its driver inside.
The incident took place in Yashio at around 10am local time, Saitama prefecture governor Motohiro Ono said.
The crater measured about 32ft wide and 16ft deep. “It is thought to have been caused by a crack in the Nakagawa River Basin sewer pipe,” Mr Ono said on Tuesday. “As a result of this collapse, a passing truck fell in.”
The truck reportedly weighed two tonnes.
The Mainichi reported that sediment likely flowed into the heavily corroded pipe, laid about 33ft underground, creating a hollow beneath the road, which collapsed under the weight of passing vehicles.
Nearly 30 hours after the collapse, the driver remained trapped in the vehicle as sand and mud filled his seat, according to Japan’s Nippon TV.
Rescue workers were reportedly pumping air into the hole to supply oxygen to the 74-year-old driver. The driver was initially conscious but on Tuesday evening became unresponsive, according to local media reports.
The Asahi Shimbun reported that due to concerns over a gas pipe running underground, police urged residents living within a 200-metre radius of the sinkhole to evacuate. The Yashio city administration had set up an evacuation centre in a municipal building where some 150 people were now sheltering, an official said.
Aerial footage showed at least 12 fire trucks at the scene in Yashio, north of the capital Tokyo.
Police were reported to be investigating the cause of the accident.
The rescue team managed to remove the truck bed before dawn on Wednesday but had to suspend their work after 1pm local time as the sinkhole became unstable, CBS News reported. By Wednesday morning, water had begun accumulating in the sinkhole, submerging the truck’s driver’s seat, The Asahi Shimbun reported. Firefighters were forced to suspend the rescue operation to drain out the water.
As of 3.30pm local time, the operation had yet to resume.
Authorities were using drones and radar to assess the sinkhole’s interior and underground conditions while vacuum trucks were reportedly removing water.
The collapse also likely blocked other sewage pipes, prompting restrictions in 12 cities and towns. Japanese media said that around 1.2 million people had been affected.
The incident sparked concerns about the condition of local public infrastructure.
“I noticed a concrete wall on the side of the hole and when I checked the old map, I found it had been a waterway before. It looks like the waterway had been covered up and a road built over it, and the roof of the culvert had collapsed,” a user called “kaishi” wrote on X.
In the past decade, several sinkholes have appeared across Japan. In September 2024, a sinkhole in Hiroshima was caused by a burst underground water pipe.
In 2016, Fukuoka experienced a massive sinkhole, about 98ft wide and 50ft deep, that swallowed five road lanes.
North Korea troops partially withdraw from front in Russia’s Kursk
North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia near the Ukrainian border have temporarily withdrawn following weeks of heavy losses, Kyiv’s military has claimed.
A Ukrainian special forces commander tasked with retrieving DNA samples from North Korean soldiers claimed Pyongyang’s troops had retreated from one of the axes of the Kursk region, where they have been mobilised since last December, for roughly a fortnight.
It follows claims by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky last week that around a third of the 11,000 North Korean troops deployed to Kursk have already been wounded or killed.
The withdrawal was confirmed by Colonel Oleksandr Kindratenko, a spokesperson of the Special Operations Forces.
“[They] will be back soon,” the commander, who goes by the call sign “Puls”, reportedly said. South Korean intelligence has claimed that Kim Jong Un is also planning to send more troops to Russia.
It is unclear why the troops appear to have withdrawn, but the commander added that the North Korean troops had suffered significant losses due to an apparent lack of awareness about aerial threats. They have also been committing suicide to avoid being captured by Ukraine, which Kyiv says shows the extent of these troops’ brainwashing.
Colonel Kindratenko said that they were attacking on foot in groups of up to 60 soldiers, like “something out of World War II”. It made them easy targets for Ukrainian drones, which have become a staple of this war, as well as artillery.
It comes as overnight Russian air attacks wounded eight people, set a private business on fire, and damaged residential buildings around Ukraine, local officials said on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 65 drones and 28 more did not reach their targets in the barrage.
A 62-year-old woman was taken to hospital for treatment and a 66-year-old man injured when drone debris damaged several houses in the Kharkiv district including the city of the same name, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
Emergency services were called soon after midnight to a private business that caught fire in Kharkiv due to the Russian drone attack, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram.
Ukraine’s state emergency service said the fire engulfed production facilities. Two people suffered acute stress reactions, including a child, the emergency service said.
It was not immediately clear what facility was burning. Video footage showed massive flames coming from what looked like an industrial building.
Russia also launched a drone attack on the Black Sea port of Odesa, damaging several residential buildings and cars, and injuring four people in the city and the nearby area, its governor Oleh Kiper said.
After the attack impacted power and heating in the central town of Uman in the Cherkasy region, local services were working to restore the supply, according to the mayor, Iryna Pletnova.
The drone attack on the Kyiv region destroyed nine vehicles and damaged 27 more in the vintage car museum. It also damaged residential houses and cars around the region, without causing any casualties.
India and China agree to resume direct flights after five years
India and China have agreed to resume direct flights nearly five years after they were halted, indicating a willingness to mend ties.
Air travel between the Asian neighbours was temporarily suspended due to travel restrictions during the Covid pandemic, only to be completely halted after military clashes and a standoff along the disputed Himalayan border led to a breakdown in relations.
India’s foreign ministry said on Monday that New Delhi had reached an agreement with China “in principle to resume direct air services between the two countries”.
“The relevant technical authorities on the two sides will meet and negotiate an updated framework for this purpose at an early date,” the ministry said in a statement.
The announcement came after a top Indian diplomat visited Beijing to help thaw relations.
Confirming the new deal, the Chinese foreign ministry said the two nations had been working to improve relations since last year.
“The improvement and development of China-India relations is fully in line with the fundamental interests of the two countries,” it said.
The agreement to resume direct flights came months after India and China reached a deal on military patrols along their disputed border.
The two countries share a 3,488km border that runs from Ladakh in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east. China holds a big piece of territory called the Aksai Chin in Ladakh that it won during a 1962 war and claims Arunachal as part of the province of Tibet.
Ties between the neighbours hit a nadir in July 2020 after at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed in a clash in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh. It was the first time in 45 years that a clash on the border had led to fatalities.
The clash quickly turned into a standoff, with both sides stationing thousands of soldiers backed by artillery, tanks and fighter jets along the border. The troops blocked each other from patrolling their claimed areas.
In the aftermath, India clamped down on Chinese firms, prohibiting them from investing in critical economic sectors and banning Chinese apps such as TikTok.
In October 2024, however, Beijing and New Delhi agreed on a significant military disengagement at a key border flashpoint. The deal came after a rare formal meeting between Chinese president Xi Jinping and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi during the Brics summit in Russia.
This week, Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri met Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and they made a slew of decisions, including the resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, a Hindu religious pilgrimage to a sacred mountain and lake in Tibet.
The pilgrimage to the shrine of Hindu deity Krishna on Mount Kailash and the Mansarovar lake had been paused since the pandemic and remained suspended as bilateral ties deteriorated following the Galwan valley clashes.
Chinese state media confirmed the two sides had agreed to push for the resumption of the Hindu pilgrimage to the Tibet mountain and lake this year.
They had also agreed to facilitate and promote people-to-people contact, including between media and think tanks. “The two sides took stock of the extant mechanisms for functional exchanges,” the Indian foreign ministry said.
“It was agreed to resume these dialogues step by step and to utilize them to address each other’s priority areas of interest and concern. Specific concerns in the economic and trade areas were discussed with a view to resolving these issues and promoting long-term policy transparency and predictability.”
What is China’s DeepSeek AI that beats OpenAI against all odds?
A new and largely unknown Chinese AI system called DeepSeek has rocked the tech industry and global markets.
Tech shares plunged and chip maker Nvidia suffered falls of nearly 17 per cent on Monday, as President Donald Trump warned DeepSeek’s emergence was a “wake up call” for existing AI giants.
Nvidia’s drop in share price was the biggest ever one-day loss in market value on Wall Street, of about 589 billion dollars.
Just a week after its launch, DeepSeek has quickly become the most downloaded free app in the US.
It claims that its large language AI model was made at a fraction of the cost of its rivals, including OpenAI, which uses more expensive Nvidia chips to train its systems on vast swathes of data.
The announcement has raised significant doubts over the future of US firms’ dominance in AI, prompting the sharp falls for Nvidia, as well as tech giants including Microsoft, Meta and Google parent Alphabet, which are all pouring billions into the technology.
The S&P 500 dropped 1.5 per cent, dragged down in large part by the fall from Nvidia.
DeepSeek’s claims also affected tech stocks elsewhere, with Dutch chip making company ASML falling 7 per cent and Japan’s Softbank dropping 8.3 per cent.
The FTSE 100 appeared resilient on Tuesday morning, rising 0.21% in early trading.
Analysts said the announcement from DeepSeek is especially significant because it indicates that Chinese firms have innovated faster despite the US putting controls on exports of Nvidia’s most powerful chips to the country.
The news marks a sharp change in fortunes for established AI companies, whose stocks have soared in value in recent years amid hopes they would reshape the world economy and deliver huge profits.
Mr Trump said he was not concerned about the breakthrough, adding that the emergence of DeepSeek could be “a positive” and a “wake-up call” for the US.
“If you could do it cheaper, if you could do it (for) less (and) get to the same end result, I think that’s a good thing for us,” he told reporters on board Air Force One.
Mr Trump also said he wanted to bring in trade tariffs that are “much bigger” than the 2.5% that some reports had suggested were favoured by incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
“I have it in my mind what it’s going to be but I won’t be setting it yet, but it’ll be enough to protect our country,” Mr Trump told reporters on Monday night.
Chinese startup DeepSeek is shaking up the global AI landscape with its latest models, claiming performance comparable to or exceeding industry-leading US models at a fraction of the cost.
DeepSeek’s recent paper revealed that training its DeepSeek-V3 model required less than $6 million in computing power using Nvidia H800 chips. This figure stands in stark contrast to the billions being poured into AI development by some US companies, prompting market speculation and impacting share prices of major players like Nvidia.
Further fueling the disruption, DeepSeek’s AI Assistant, powered by DeepSeek-V3, has climbed to the top spot among free applications on Apple’s US App Store, surpassing even the popular ChatGPT.
This achievement underscores the model’s capabilities and user appeal, adding weight to DeepSeek’s claims of superior performance and cost-effectiveness. The company’s rapid ascent and disruptive potential are sending shockwaves through the AI industry, challenging the established order and forcing a reassessment of investment strategies.
The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 caused a scramble among Chinese tech firms, who rushed to create their own chatbots powered by artificial intelligence.
But after the release of the first Chinese ChatGPT equivalent, made by search engine giant Baidu, there was widespread disappointment in China at the gap in AI capabilities between U.S. and Chinese firms.
The quality and cost efficiency of DeepSeek‘s models have flipped this narrative on its head. The two models that have been showered with praise by Silicon Valley executives and U.S. tech company engineers alike, DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1, are on par with OpenAI and Meta’s most advanced models, the Chinese startup has said.
They are also cheaper to use. The DeepSeek-R1, released last week, is 20 to 50 times cheaper to use than OpenAI o1 model, depending on the task, according to a post on DeepSeek‘s official WeChat account.
But some have publicly expressed scepticism about DeepSeek‘s success story.
Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang said during an interview with CNBC on Thursday, without providing evidence, that DeepSeek has 50,000 Nvidia H100 chips, which he claimed would not be disclosed because that would violate Washington’s export controls that ban such advanced AI chips from being sold to Chinese companies. DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegation.
Bernstein analysts on Monday highlighted in a research note that DeepSeek‘s total training costs for its V3 model were unknown but were much higher than the $5.58 million the startup said was used for computing power. The analysts also said the training costs of the equally-acclaimed R1 model were not disclosed.
DeepSeek is a Hangzhou-based startup whose controlling shareholder is Liang Wenfeng, co-founder of quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer, based on Chinese corporate records.
Liang’s fund announced in March 2023 on its official WeChat account that it was “starting again”, going beyond trading to concentrate resources on creating a “new and independent research group, to explore the essence of AGI” (Artificial General Intelligence). DeepSeek was created later that year.
ChatGPT makers OpenAI define AGI as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks.
It is unclear how much High-Flyer has invested in DeepSeek. High-Flyer has an office located in the same building as DeepSeek, and it also owns patents related to chip clusters used to train AI models, according to Chinese corporate records.
High-Flyer’s AI unit said on its official WeChat account in July 2022 that it owns and operates a cluster of 10,000 A100 chips.
Additional reporting by agencies
India’s Modi set to be one of first world leaders to visit Trump
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is set to be one of the first foreign leaders to visit new American president Donald Trump.
The two leaders had a phone call on Monday where they underscored their commitment to a “mutually beneficial and trusted partnership”, with Mr Trump stressing the importance of India buying more American security equipment.
In what the White House called a “productive call”, the leaders exchanged thoughts on expanding their cooperation on a slew of global issues, including security in the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, and Europe.
They also spoke about the issue of immigration and moving towards a fair bilateral trade relationship. The US is India’s largest trading partner and India enjoyed a surplus of $32bn on their shared trade of around $118bn in 2023-24.
Mr Trump later told reporters that Mr Modi could visit the US sometime in February. “I had a long talk with him this morning. He is going to be coming to the White House, over next month, probably February. We have a very good relationship with India,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“Delighted to speak with my dear friend president Donald Trump,” the Indian prime minister posted on X. “We are committed to a mutually beneficial and trusted partnership. We will work together for the welfare of our people and towards global peace, prosperity and security.”
Mr Trump had warm relations with Mr Modi during his first term as US president, but called India a “very big abuser” on trade during his election campaign and vowed to impose tariffs on global imports to correct their perceived imbalance.
Mr Trump has also threatened the Brics bloc, of which India is a founding member, with steep tariffs if they move to create a new currency rivalling the dollar.
In Monday’s phone call, the new president “emphasised the importance of India increasing its procurement of American-made security equipment and moving towards a fair bilateral trading relationship,” the White House said in a statement.
India, seen as a strategic partner for the US in countering the rise of China, said Mr Modi and Mr Trump discussed technology, trade, investment, energy and defence, and “agreed to remain in touch and meet soon at an early mutually convenient date”.
The White House said the two leaders reiterated their commitment to the Quad grouping that brings together the US and India with Australia and Japan.
India is set to host the Quad leaders later this year.
Tanvi Madan, an India expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told Reuters: “Trade and immigration issues are clearly on the Trump administration’s agenda when it comes to India.
“Its impact will depend in part on India’s response to Trump’s asks, but also how the broader debate on those issues plays out in Washington.”
Ms Madan said India would be hoping for a change in Washington’s posture towards its close ties with Russia, but for the time being would have to contend with US sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine war.
Mr Trump told reporters Mr Modi “will do what’s right” when it comes to taking back Indian migrants who are in the US illegally.
In a meeting with India’s foreign minister last week, Mr Trump’s secretary of state Marco Rubio emphasised a desire to “address concerns related to irregular migration”.
Mr Trump has pledged to crack down on illegal immigration and Bloomberg News reported last week that India and the US have identified some 18,000 Indian migrants who are in the US illegally.
Mr Trump has said he is open to legal migration of skilled workers and India is known for its massive pool of IT professionals who account for the bulk of the skilled worker H-1B visas issued by the US.
“We want Indian talent and Indian skills to have the maximum opportunity at the global level,” foreign minister S Jaishankar said after attending Mr Trump’s inauguration this month.
“At the same time, we’re also very firmly opposed to illegal mobility and illegal migration. So, with every country, and the US is no exception, we have always taken the view that if any of our citizens are here illegally, and if we are sure that they are our citizens, we have always been open to their legitimate return to India.”
The US readouts this week and last made no mention of Washington’s accusations of Indian involvement in a foiled murder plot against a Sikh separatist in the US, an awkward factor in relations in the latter part of Joe Biden’s administration.
Additional reporting by agencies