Asia

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that India has offered to reduce its tariffs on American goods to zero, even as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was making public shows of solidarity with Chinese and Russian leaders in the face of trade pressure from Washington. While calling the US relationship with India “one-sided”, Trump wrote on social media: “They have now offered to cut their Tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago.” The Indian Embassy in...

Crime drama Countdown on Amazon Prime Video has drawn criticism for its perceived inaccurate portrayal of Singapore and its citizens in an episode last month. In the 47-minute show, two American detectives question “Singaporean” Kieran Teo, played by American actor Brian Yang, at his office in Los Angeles after a murder takes place on company property. The fictional company is called Beruang Holdings, with the characters revealing it is 60 per cent owned by Singapore’s ruling People’s Action...

A correction order under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) has been issued to US comedian Sammy Obeid after a row over his cancelled Singapore show. “Mr Obeid’s account of protracted back-and-forth interactions with the government is inaccurate,” the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) said on Monday. “In his posts, he claims that the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) requested edits, told him to ‘completely remove’ portions of his...

Japan and South Korea sweltered this year through the hottest summers since records began, their weather agencies said on Monday. Temperatures the world over have soared in recent years as climate change creates ever more erratic weather patterns. Japan’s average temperature between June and August “was 2.36 degrees Celsius above the standard value, which marked the hottest summer since records began in 1898”, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The agency did not disclose what the new...

India’s stronger-than-expected economic growth of 7.8 per cent in the April–June quarter has been hailed by leaders as a resounding retort to US President Donald Trump’s claim that the country’s economy is “dead”, even as experts warn that retaliatory tariffs from Washington could weigh on the outlook. Bilateral ties have plummeted recently after Trump enacted a 50 per cent import tariff on India last week, doubling a 25 per cent import tariff as a penalty for New Delhi’s purchase of sanctioned...

South Korea’s retail investors are losing faith in Tesla’s stock, ramping up their selling last month amid growing disillusionment with the electric carmaker and rising interest in cryptocurrencies. Individual investors in South Korea sold a net US$657 million of Tesla stock in August, the largest outflow since at least early 2023, according to Bloomberg calculations of depository data. Investors have instead favoured even more volatile bets such as Bitmine Immersion Technologies, seen as a...

Government measures to deter foreign buyers from purchasing residential properties are by no means the preserve of Asian economies. In February 2024, Canada extended a nationwide ban on most foreign buyers until 2027 in an effort to curb speculation and improve affordability. In the US, a growing number of states, including Texas and Florida, have passed laws barring nationals from several countries, notably China and Russia, from acquiring land and property. Yet in the most liveable cities in...

As Vietnam celebrates the 80th anniversary of its declaration of independence from colonial rule this week, French cultural influence remains ubiquitous, but not many people in the Southeast Asian nation are aware of its prevalence. A massive military parade will herald on Tuesday the independence proclaimed by revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh on September 2, 1945, which was meant to end nearly a century of French rule but instead started a decade-long war until the defeated French eventually...

Shares of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix slid on Monday after the Trump administration decided to make it harder for the world’s largest memory chipmakers to ship critical equipment to their giant Chinese operations. The surprise ruling deals a potential blow to their production in the world’s largest semiconductor market. While both South Korean companies have memory plants in their home market, China accounts for a major slice of their global output. Samsung sank more than 2 per cent, while...

Prime Minister Ishiba's announcement of a $68 billion investment in India over the next decade came months after Trump disparaged India as a “dead economy.”

Hundreds of students gathered in major Indonesian cities on Monday, defying fears of a crackdown on protests after deadly riots over the weekend left eight dead in the worst violence in the Southeast Asian nation in over two decades. Protests began a week ago against the government’s spending priorities, such as enhanced perks for lawmakers, and escalated into rioting and looting after a police vehicle hit and killed a motorcycle taxi driver. The homes of political party members, including the...

Far from placing limits on the military, accountability, open public debate, and civil participation are a strategic necessity.

New Zealand will loosen its ban on foreigners buying houses, opening the door for wealthy investors to purchase luxury properties as part of a push to revive its sluggish economy. The coalition government on Monday said it would allow holders of so-called golden visas to buy houses worth at least NZ$5 million (US$3 million), carving out an exemption to restrictions that have largely kept overseas buyers out of the market since 2018. The change will not take effect until the end of the year, when...

South Australia has become the first place in the world to ban fish-shaped plastic soy sauce packets. The ban took effect on Monday in the Australian state as part of efforts to cut pollution, reduce carbon emissions and protect marine life, the South Australian government said in a statement. “Each fish-shaped container is used for just seconds yet remains in the environment for years, causing harm and contributing to microplastic pollution,” the statement said. The ban targets pre-filled 30ml...

As public scrutiny intensifies over anomalous flood control projects in the Philippines, Filipinos have turned to social media spaces such as Reddit to expose the lavish lifestyles of the children of the contractors and public officials linked to the ongoing investigations. Social media accounts and online communities have emerged over the past week, reuploading and collecting videos and posts of certain individuals flaunting their lavish lifestyles, from riding private jets and expensive...

The opposition People's Party has pledged to support the formation of a government by any party willing to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar’s visit to Dhaka was successful in boosting ties between two nations that have long been at odds.

Eric Trump is expected to attend a shareholder meeting of Japanese bitcoin treasury company Metaplanet in Tokyo on Monday, as the US president’s family expands its crypto ventures internationally. Eric Trump, the second son of President Donald Trump, was named in March as an adviser to Metaplanet, which holds more than US$2 billion in bitcoin, and his attendance would follow an appearance last week at the Bitcoin Asia conference in Hong Kong. American Bitcoin, a miner of the cryptocurrency...

President Prabowo Subianto, who canceled a trip to China due to the unrest, has authorized "firm" action to stop a wave of looting.

Australian police charged a man on Monday after a car was driven into the gates of the Russian consulate in Sydney. New South Wales police said in a statement that officers responded shortly after 8am to reports of an unauthorised vehicle parked in the driveway of an address on Fullerton Street that corresponded with the location of the Russian consulate. Officers attempted to speak to the driver before he “drove his vehicle into the gates of the property”, police said. A 39-year-old man was...

Seoul’s neon-lit streets regularly draw throngs of young visitors, eager to soak up the city’s reputation as the global epicentre of K-pop, TikTok trends and high-speed living. But beneath the curated image of its most famous cosmopolitan metropolis, South Korea is wrestling with a more complex demographic reality: how to integrate the growing number of foreigners who now call the country home. Today, foreign nationals account for nearly 5 per cent of the population, or around 2.73 million...

Kent Cai, a Chinese entrepreneur based in the eastern province of Zhejiang, made a major life decision earlier this year by moving abroad to pursue a PhD. While this is not uncommon, his destination of choice might appear unusual – he did not, as many of his peers, relocate to the United States or Europe. He went to Malaysia. Upon arriving on campus in Kuala Lumpur to study the application of AI-driven tools in media production, Cai noticed he was not the only one to make such a move. He is, in...

South Korean actress Go Min-si has denied allegations of school bullying, saying that while she was a reckless pupil who enjoyed youthful misbehaviour, she was never a perpetrator of violence. Go posted a statement on her social media account addressing the controversy at the weekend. “For months I endured countless waves of anxiety while waiting for the investigation results. But I believe it is my duty to speak up now for those who have been waiting,” she wrote. Go, 30, acknowledged that she...

Like several of his predecessors, the Philippine leader is seeking to preempt opposition and manage rising public outrage over elite graft.

The number of books by U.S. authors released in China has drastically decreased in recent years, but this has happened in a subtle and indirect way.

Civil society groups have documented the environmental and social costs that are exacted across the lifecycle of “clean energy” technologies.

The success of China’s semiconductor exports hinges on its ability to not just fulfill but also to generate demand for chips across the Global South.

An interview with Paul D. Miller about his upcoming book “Choosing Defeat: The Twenty-Year Saga of How America Lost Afghanistan.”

War is just one press of a button away, and the likelihood of that happening – even if accidental – is not insignificant. The advancement of ballistic missile capabilities has opened up new battle spaces. Just as during the Cold War, today’s adversaries can hold each other’s populations hostage under the threat of nuclear war. As we mark 80 years since the second world war ended, it is becoming easier to fathom our world at war again. However, while it may be true the “long peace” was more an...

Across India, on any given evening, glowing phone screens flash with gaming apps promising instant riches. But those promises have for too many ended in debt, despair and even suicide, propelling the government to outlaw real-money gaming apps in a bid to stem a crisis officials describe as “spreading like drugs in society”. On August 20, India’s parliament passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, a sweeping piece of legislation that bans real-money gaming online. Hosting or...