The 225-issue Nikkei stock average slipped below 63,000 on Friday for the first time in about a month on an intraday basis. The 225-issue Nikkei stock average temporarily plunged over 4,100 points Friday afternoon due to selling of issues related to semiconductors and artificial intelligence following overnight falls in their U.S. counterparts. At 1:41 p.m., the index of 225 major issues listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's Prime section stood at 62,704.60, down 4,130.94 points, or 6.18%, from Thursday's closing. It slipped below 63,000 for the first time in about a month on an intraday basis. In the Tokyo market, memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings and other key Nikkei component issues came under selling pressure. "We can't help thinking that the boom in generative AI-related stocks is about to end," an official of a bank-affiliated securities firm said.

The Japanese parliament has approved a bill to relax imperial succession rules, amid concerns over the dwindling size of the imperial family. The bill, passed by the upper house on Friday, allows the imperial family to adopt distant male relatives over the age of 15 and lets women keep their royal status after marrying outside the family. But it does not change the law barring women from ascending the throne despite wide public support for a female emperor, meaning Princess Aiko, the only child of the current emperor, is still not eligible to succeed the throne. The bill cleared the lower house last week, and will move through the final legal procedures before the changes take effect. Japan has the world's oldest continuous hereditary monarchy, with a lineage that's believed to span more than 2,600 years.

Australian Olympic cyclist Rohan Dennis has pleaded guilty to driving despite a five-year ban placed on him after a 2023 incident where he struck his wife with a car. Dennis, 36, appeared in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on Friday to face a charge of driving while disqualified after police pulled him over last month when he was behind the wheel with two children as passengers. Last year, Dennis received a suspended jail sentence after pleading guilty to one aggravated count of creating the likelihood of harm under a plea deal where prosecutors dropped two more serious charges. The court found he was not criminally responsible for Melissa Hoskins' death but had been reckless in his actions. During last year's case, the court heard that the couple - who got married in 2018 - had been arguing about kitchen renovations before Dennis got into his car to leave.

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Trump alleges'shocking vulnerabilities' in US election security ahead of midterms US President Donald Trump has delivered a primetime address in which he accused China of interfering in the 2020 election and alleged shocking vulnerabilities in American voting systems. Trump, who spoke from the White House on Thursday, has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud and foreign meddling in the 2020 election which he lost to Joe Biden. In the half-hour speech, delivered three months before the midterm elections, he said he had declassified hundreds of intelligence files which supported his claims that Beijing had tried to sway the election in Biden's favour. The US intelligence community has previously concluded China did not interfere in the 2020 election. Trump spoke in front of several members of his top team as he gave his address, but journalists were unable to put questions to the president.

More than 500 Rohingya vanished at sea - what happened? Two boats carrying an estimated 530 Rohingya asylum seekers left Myanmar's Rakhine state on 29 June, and have not been heard from since. The equivalent of a jumbo jet full of people has vanished. It is very likely that they both capsized. The monsoon has started, the seas are rough, and the boats - usually old fishing trawlers converted to carry as many people as possible - are barely sea-worthy with unreliable engines.

Australia'deeply frustrated' over Laos methanol poisoning charges The Australian government has said it is deeply frustrated and bitterly disappointed that Laos is not pursuing more serious charges in relation to the deaths of six backpackers who died after drinking methanol-laced alcohol in 2024. Australians Bianca Jones and Holly Morton-Bowles, both 19, were among six people who died at a hostel in Vang Vieng in November 2024. The statement comes after reports in Australian media that Laos would press charges that collectively carry penalties of up to one year in jail and a fine of A$1600 ($1100; £829) against those allegedly responsible. Australian Foreign Ministry Penny Wong said they have summoned Laos' ambassador to Canberra. Laos has yet to confirm any charges but the BBC understands authorities there will hold a press conference later on Friday.

The Philippines has condemned the dehumanising and racist portrayal of the country as a timid monkey strong-armed by the US and Japan to take Beijing on over the South China Sea . Last week, China Daily posted an AI-generated video featuring a monkey in a Filipino shirt. It screams as arms bearing the Japanese and US flags shove it onto a rickety karaoke stage set up in a boat. After it gets scolded for singing the wrong song, it pulls out a sheet reading South China Sea arbitration award. It is then flung into the sea and blasted by a water cannon.

Chipmaker Kioxia's market value halves from peak on AI selloff Kioxia overtook auto giant Toyota in market cap value in mid-June, but its ranking has since dropped to the fourth-largest Japanese company, as traders grow more critical over artificial intelligence. Japanese memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings' market capitalization halved in just a month since becoming the nation's most valuable company, on growing concerns the artificial intelligence-driven rally in the sector has gone too far. Kioxia shares tumbled as much as 16% in Tokyo's morning trading on Friday, down 52% from last month's peak and losing at least ¥30 trillion ($185 billion) in value. In mid-June, Kioxia overtook auto giant Toyota in market cap value after the stock rallied more than 600% from the start of the year, driven by exuberance about demand for memory and data storage amid an AI boom. Its ranking has since dropped to the fourth-largest Japanese company. "The chip sector is vulnerable to the silicon cycle, and we've seen this pattern many times before," said Yugo Tsuboi, chief strategist at Daiwa Securities.

Google Search AI poses'unacceptable risk' to kids, report finds A new report from a California-based nonprofit says the artificial intelligence features built in to Alphabet's Google Search pose an unacceptable risk" to children. The artificial intelligence features built in to Alphabet's Google Search pose an "unacceptable risk" to children, according to a new report from the Youth AI Safety Institute at Common Sense Media, a California-based nonprofit. The study found that on test accounts configured for minors, the ubiquitous search engine's AI features failed to detect suicide risks, said an eating disorder symptom was normal, and provided instructions for creating deepfakes, or sexually explicit fake content. The report added that unlike standalone chatbots, Google's AI tools are built directly into the default search experience on school and personal devices, currently offering administrators or parents no way to disable them. The report specifically evaluated AI Overviews, which generate automated answers above traditional search results, and AI Mode, a conversational feature that lets users chat back and forth with the search engine. Rather than matching searches to a list of external links, the new features use generative AI to answer complex questions directly on the search page -- a format critics say presents the automated summaries as if they are definitive answers.