Asia

In May, Japanese fisherman Tadasuke Nakamura noticed he had an abnormally large haul of bluefin tuna in his set net off the Pacific coast of Hakodate, on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. Hundreds of the prized sushi fish crowded the net, but he had to let many of them go. Japan has an annual catch quota and if ‌Nakamura had kept the haul he would have had no quota left for the colder months when bluefin tuna are fattier, tastier and fetch a higher price. “It’s truly upsetting to have to...

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has broken his silence on China’s sanctions against his defence chief, in remarks seen as a closing of ranks that could complicate diplomacy between Manila and Beijing in the near term. Observers say the president’s public backing of outspoken Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro amounts to a “good cop, bad cop” approach that signals Manila’s resolve and may strengthen defence cooperation with its allies. Speaking to reporters in Vancouver over the...

Joab Jorge runs Dream Latte Cafe, a speciality coffee shop and small-batch roastery, with his mother Ces out of their old ancestral home in Pilar, a town in Bataan province some 180km (112 miles) northwest of Manila. Rising electricity costs and frequent blackouts have put a strain on the business, which has already had to raise prices by 10 per cent to cover higher costs for goods and imported coffee beans since the energy crisis triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in February. The...

A Google executive has told an Australian inquiry that a YouTube video falsely claiming a wounded survivor of an antisemitic massacre in Sydney was a crisis actor bloodied with make-up had met the platform’s standards and would remain online. Google Australia manager Rachel Lord was testifying on Tuesday at a government inquiry into the spread of antisemitism in Australia, including an attack by two gunmen on a Sydney Hanukkah celebration in December that left 15 people dead. Lord was questioned...

As soaring temperatures fuel demand for cooling in Europe, Thailand is pitching itself as a source of relief, promoting rainy-season holidays while exporting more air conditioners. With tourism and outbound shipments two of the Southeast Asian economy’s biggest drivers, Europe’s heatwaves are creating opportunities on both fronts. The Tourism Authority of Thailand has launched a campaign encouraging European travellers to swap scorching summer temperatures for the nation’s milder rainy season,...

Indonesian authorities are widening their investigation into a case of suspected identity and research fraud at an overseas medical conference, which has exposed gaps in academic oversight and revived concerns about abuses in the nation’s system of publication-driven promotion for academia. The Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology has set up a team to examine papers previously published by the alleged perpetrators, saying action would be taken if they were found to have used...

Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke says success in Johor’s state polls will be measured by how many seats can be clawed away from Barisan Nasional (BN), imploring voters to seek a better power balance if they want a surer footing with Singapore, the economic powerhouse across the causeway that has soaked up its workers and industry. Loke leads the Chinese-majority Democratic Action Party (DAP), a small but punchy partner in Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition...

South Korea may have lost Canada’s multibillion-dollar submarine order, but analysts say its close-run contest with Germany has handed Seoul a different prize: proof that it can challenge one of the world’s traditional undersea warfare powers on a stage watched closely by defence buyers. Canada chose Germany’s Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) as the preferred bidder for a programme worth about US$40 billion to build up to 12 diesel-electric submarines, along with long-term maintenance and...

Singapore and Indonesia’s latest push to trade low-carbon electricity could become more than a bilateral energy deal, with analysts saying it might offer Southeast Asia a practical test case for a regional power grid that has long struggled to move from ambition to implementation. The cooperation, centred on electricity-import deals and cross-border interconnector projects, is also expected to strengthen Singapore’s energy security and help the city state reach its sustainability goals, while...

India will supply Indonesia with long-range missiles, an Indian official said on Tuesday as their leaders agreed to deepen ties in defence, critical minerals and other areas. President Prabowo Subianto is hosting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Jakarta during a three-day state visit, with a deal on the BrahMos missile system topping the agenda. An agreement for “cooperation on BrahMos system” was struck during the visit, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said in a post on...

India’s wildly popular digital payments system, which began as a way for people to send money instantly by phone, could help the country turn one of its biggest domestic technology successes into a tool of diplomacy, analysts say. That opportunity is coming into focus in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, where officials are studying whether India’s low-cost digital systems can be adapted to their own needs. The talks centre on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India’s instant...

Malaysia’s former economy minister Rafizi Ramli and his breakaway party, Bersama, are unlikely to emerge as a credible third force in the country’s political landscape, but they could still siphon votes away from the reformist Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition led by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Bersama’s first electoral test, in Johor on Saturday, will be watched less for the number of seats it wins than for the votes it might peel away from PH in multi-cornered contests, where analysts warn...

Sri Lanka launched an investigation on Tuesday into its deadliest prison riot in years, as the death toll from clashes between rival drug gangs rose to 27. Armed police and commandos were not sent into the prison but were deployed to guard the perimeter of Negombo prison, as authorities tightened security following the clashes on Monday that also wounded more than 100. Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara told parliament on Tuesday that a criminal investigation had begun alongside a...

Last week, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi led a business delegation to New Delhi for the 16th India-Japan annual summit. During last year’s summit in Tokyo, Takaichi’s predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi outlined the Japan-India Joint Vision for the next decade – during which period India may see up to 10 trillion yen (US$62 billion) in investment from Japan. Some of Japan’s most notable investments in India have been in the financial sector. Japanese...

South Korea’s Incheon International Airport achieved a historic milestone in global aviation by recording 1 billion cumulative passengers in the shortest period among the world’s major hub airports, the airport operator said on Tuesday. According to Incheon International Airport Corp (IIAC), the airport crossed the 1 billion passenger mark just 25 years and three months after its opening in March 2001, outpacing all historic rival global hubs. Germany’s Munich Airport required 33 years and 10...

Vietnam has introduced a raft of incentives to encourage couples to have more children as the Southeast Asian nation seeks to reverse a fast-declining fertility rate. Gone is the country’s long-standing two-child policy, scrapped last year. In its place is a new population law, which took effect on July 1, offering a suite of sweeteners designed to nudge Vietnamese couples towards larger families. These include seven months of maternity leave for second children, subsidised prenatal and newborn...

A video showing a Chinese tourist berating hotel staff in Malaysia for not flying China’s flag has gone viral after viewers pointed out the flags belonged to the nations competing in the Fifa World Cup finals. The man, who was reportedly in Kuala Lumpur on business, confronted a staff member at his hotel’s breakfast restaurant after noticing flags from dozens of countries but not China’s. In the clip, he can be seen interrogating a visibly confused worker for an explanation before telling her:...

No further action was necessary by Singapore’s parliament against Workers’ Party (WP) politicians Sylvia Lim and Faisal Manap over their lying under oath, as the case fell outside a legal time bar, Leader of the House Indranee Rajah said on Tuesday. “Had the timelines been different, I would have proposed a different course of action,” she told parliament while delivering a ministerial statement on a “determination” of the Committee of Privileges’ (COP) findings on Lim and Faisal. Lim is a...

We have selected seven stories from the SCMP’s coverage of Asia over the past week that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. US touts regional ‘balance’ in missile sale to Singapore. What does it mean? Washington has recently approved a proposed US$22.3 million sale of additional Hellfire missiles to Singapore, with the US State Department declaring that the transfer and associated arms...

Japan is facing mounting calls to decide whether its long-frozen development aid to Myanmar should stay that way, as rights advocates warn that any resumption could ease pressure on a regime accused of widespread abuses. The decision is a delicate one for Tokyo, which has tried to retain influence in Myanmar without appearing to legitimise the junta that seized power in 2021 – all while watching China deepen its own engagement with the country. Human Rights Watch has urged Japan to resist...

Singapore is the world’s most expensive city for luxury spending for a fourth consecutive year, as prices on items such as watches and jewellery surge around the globe. Zurich climbed to second place, edging out London, while Monaco entered the top three for the first time since the survey began in 2020, according to an annual report by Swiss wealth manager Julius Baer Group. Hong Kong and London rounded out the top five. Zurich’s three-place rise was propelled by the strengthening of the Swiss...

A man ⁠scaled the 140-metre-high (460 ⁠foot) tower of ⁠a cantilever bridge in the Australian city of Melbourne on Tuesday and painted a giant cartoon bird on it, disrupting morning commuter traffic. The man demanded ‌a peanut butter sandwich be delivered by drone before he would come down, causing a stand-off with police and closing a lane on the Bolte Bridge. “A man has scaled the bridge and remains in a restricted area ⁠on the eastern tower. He is refusing to follow police direction ‌and come...

At Carousell’s Singapore office, a red tunnel greets employees with the company’s mission to “make second-hand the first choice” – a slogan its leaders say is moving closer to reality as the platform for buying and selling used goods recorded its first positive adjusted operating profit. The Singapore-headquartered company, last valued at US$1.1 billion in 2021, said on Tuesday it had achieved positive Ebitda – earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation – for the first time,...

New Zealand’s flood-prone homes are outperforming the rest of the country’s moribund housing market, as buyers chase lower prices and shrug off climate risks. Properties facing the highest flood risk have gained 26.1 per cent in value since January 2020, compared with 19.8 per cent for homes with no exposure, property consultancy Cotality said in Wellington on Tuesday. Discounts of as much as NZ$100,000 (US$60,000) on some houses were proving too tempting for cost-conscious consumers, it...

Lynas Rare Earths said on Tuesday it had signed a partnership deal with South Korea’s JS Link to develop a magnet factory in Malaysia. The Australian rare-earths producer will also supply materials to JS Link’s magnet factory in South Korea and the planned factory in Malaysia until January 2038. The partnership follows a magnet manufacturing deal between the two companies ⁠last year. Under the latest deal, JS Link will establish a magnet factory in ‌Kuantan, Malaysia, with an operating capacity...

Kim Jong-un stood on a cliff top and watched his navy come of age. As the North Korean leader looked on, 10 cruise missiles tore off the deck of the Kang Kon in rapid succession in a display of naval power Pyongyang could once only dream of staging. Analysts say the weapons test on Friday was no accident of timing – coming just days before Russia and China would begin their Joint Sea 2026 maritime exercise off Qingdao – and North Korea wanted to make sure everyone was watching. “North Korea is...

Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio did not attend the opening of her impeachment trial on Monday, leaving her lawyers to fight charges that, if upheld, could remove her from office, permanently bar her from politics and reshape the 2028 presidential race. Legal experts told This Week in Asia they expected Duterte-Carpio to be difficult, though not impossible, to convict despite the gravity of the charges because prosecutors would need at least 16 senators – two-thirds of the chamber –...

A 20-year-old Indonesian woman was stabbed to death in her flat in Hamamatsu, central Japan, police said on Monday as they investigate whether a man who was fatally hit by a train nearby was involved in the case. The woman, identified as Keiko Altaira Hanafi, was found stabbed and in a critical condition by a police officer at around 11.40am in the flat where she lived with her parents. She was later confirmed dead at a hospital. According to the police, a neighbour made an emergency call after...

India and Japan have agreed to jointly develop technology that makes Indian warships harder to detect, in a move that analysts say takes their defence partnership to a new level and reflects growing unease in both capitals over how far they can rely on Washington. The project involves fitting Indian warships with Japan’s Unified Complex Radio Antenna (Unicorn) system, which lowers a vessel’s radar profile by combining multiple antennas into a single, compact structure and reducing the exposed...

Indonesia and Singapore vowed on Monday that the Strait of Malacca, a critical oil transit chokepoint in the region, will remain “accessible” even as Iran imposes fees on ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz. Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto discussed the matter with Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in Jakarta as Southeast Asia reels from the effects of oil prices pushed sky-high by the Middle East war. The Strait of Malacca, surrounded by Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and...