Asia

Ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina has vowed to return ⁠to Bangladesh this year, brushing ⁠aside a death sentence handed down ⁠in absentia and denouncing the ruling as “illegal, unconstitutional and politically motivated”. Hasina, 78, who fled to India after a student-led uprising ousted her government in August 2024, said in an interview with Indian broadcaster NDTV that she was undeterred by the risk ‌and would overcome “every obstacle and every conspiracy” to return home. “I want to...

People in the Philippines are flocking to install solar power on rooftops and escape the burden of soaring electricity prices, making it the world’s biggest spender on solar panels since the war in Iran started. Top power distributor Meralco has raised prices by 10 per cent since the Middle East conflict began in late February. Now, a median household spends around 12 per cent of monthly ‌income on electricity, assuming it consumes 200 kilowatt-hours – around the monthly average for three...

Earlier this year, a screenshot of a domestic airfare went viral in the Philippines for all the wrong reasons. The flight was from Manila to Batanes, the country’s remote northern tip. The price: 27,000 pesos (US$440) – enough to fly to Taipei or Hanoi, check into a decent hotel and still have money for dinner. That disconnect sits awkwardly alongside Manila’s latest effort to rev up domestic travel. On Friday, the Department of Tourism launched “Discover More to Love”, a campaign of discounted...

Vietnam is increasingly using broadly written laws to arrest activists, dissidents and others that authorities consider a threat to the Communist Party’s rule, according to a new analysis released on Monday by a human rights group. The 88 Project, which focuses on rights issues in Vietnam, documented 56 such arrests last year, the third consecutive year of increases and double the number in 2022. The report included only arrests where the defendant could be identified by name and the case...

Energy exploration has picked up sharply in Australia, driven ⁠by growing Asian gas demand, technological advances and an improved investment climate, with the Iran war ⁠underscoring the urgency to develop supply after years of sluggish spending. Quarterly oil and gas exploration spending in Australia, the world’s No 2 liquefied natural gas producer, hit a 10-year high of A$471 million (US$324 million) in the March quarter, government data released in June showed. Energy investment sentiment has...

Victor Lee is not the kind of man to leave behind his family without a reason, but the 34-year-old Filipino has done the sums and decided where life must take him next: Lithuania. His wife does not want him to go. She will be left to care for their child, with a video call standing in for a husband, while Lee hauls cargo through the seaports of the Baltic. His paperwork is nearly done. He has finished his training as a heavy transport operator. He is going. “It’s getting harder and harder to...

Turkish police on Sunday detained at least 50 people, including a journalist, during a Gay Pride event in Istanbul that went ahead despite a ban by local authorities and the lockdown of the city’s main gathering point, organisers said. Police stepped up security around Istanbul’s famed Taksim Square, erecting iron barriers, while local officials banned demonstrations in key rallying areas, including the Asian-side district of Kadikoy. The governor’s office also restricted subway transport in...

In his greatest test since taking the helm of the Workers’ Party (WP) in 2018, secretary general Pritam Singh has survived by a landslide a vote of no confidence within his party, inside sources have confirmed. The Aljunied MP, who leads Singapore’s most prominent opposition party, faced a special conference on Sunday morning called by 25 cadre members who were pushing for him to step down for breaching the WP’s constitution. Sources confirmed that about 79 per cent of the 107 cadres present...

The family of a 17-year-old Thai ⁠girl whose body ⁠was found in a suitcase ⁠in Pattaya said they were devastated by her death, for which an Australian man has been arrested and charged with murder. Thai police said they arrested an Australian man in his 40s at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport ‌early on Saturday in connection with the killing in Pattaya, about 150km (93 miles) east of Bangkok. The suspect, identified as Simon Peter Carman, faces charges of murder, concealment of a body, moving or...

It has been 25 years since Indonesia’s Liberal Islam Network (Jaringan Islam Liberal or JIL) was established in March 2001, just three years after Reformasi. The intellectual network has been in disarray for much of the past decade, reflecting the current state of Indonesia’s broader liberal and progressive Islamic movement. The old guard, represented by the establishments within Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, faces elite co-option as they seek access to state resources while also...

For a growing number of Singaporeans, furnishing a new home has become reason enough to book a holiday. Not the sort involving beach clubs or Michelin-starred restaurants. Instead, these design-savvy travellers are flying to China armed with camera rolls full of sofa and cabinetry photos, meticulously curated Pinterest boards and floor plans marked with dimensions down to the centimetre, all in pursuit of custom-made furnishings for their homes. Blame it on our collective obsession with our...

The last time Pakistan’s navy operated a submarine in the Bay of Bengal, India sank it. That was 1971. Fifty-five years on, Islamabad is signalling its intent to go back. The vessel delivering that message, PNS Hangor, arrived in Karachi on June 11, the first of a class of eight attack submarines – four built in China, with the remainder to be constructed in Pakistan to develop its shipbuilding capacity. PNS Hangor is named after an earlier Daphne-class submarine that sank the Indian frigate INS...

Chadchart Sittipunt cruised back into Bangkok’s governor’s office late on Sunday after residents overwhelmingly backed him for a second term running the Southeast Asian megacity, despite its unresolved problems of floods, traffic and pollution. In an election contest that had become a procession by late Sunday, exit polls put Chadchart on between 53 and 75 per cent of the vote, as early live counts in district after district showed the former transport minister with virtually unassailable leads...

A recent apology by the Dutch prime minister to the Netherlands’ Malukan community for systemic mistreatment by the state has met with mixed responses; some welcomed the remorse while others demanded concrete action over symbolic words. On June 21, Rob Jetten formally apologised to members of the 75,000-strong Malukan community for the state’s mistreatment of the first generation of Malukans who arrived in Europe 75 years ago from the Maluku Islands in Indonesia, historically known as the Spice...

Stand on the pedestrian crossing outside McDonald’s in Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur, and you will understand something about how travel works in the 21st century. To the office workers and taxi drivers streaming past, it is just another junction in Malaysia’s biggest city. Yet Chinese tourists will often stop at the side of the intersection, phones raised, capturing a sight only RedNote taught them to see. This is the new geography of Malaysian tourism: shaped less by guidebooks or travel agents...

Australia said on Saturday it would double the maximum penalty it can impose on tech firms found to have failed to uphold a groundbreaking social media ban for children, as evidence mounts that the ban has had little effect on teen use. The government will also strengthen the information-gathering powers of its internet regulator, the eSafety Commissioner, allowing it to compel social media companies ‌to provide evidence of what they have done to stop under-16s from getting an account. Under the...

The late arrival of India’s monsoon season and below-average rainfall have caused problems ranging from planting delays for farmers to water restrictions for construction sites in its largest business hub, Mumbai. Water shortages have been reported around the country due to the late start of the rainy season, which typically begins in June but has grown erratic in recent years. Climate experts said El Nino, a warming of the Pacific that affects weather around the globe, combined with an already...

Malaysia’s southern Johor state was braced for a bruising 14-day election campaign on Saturday after 172 candidates were cleared to contest a poll pitting Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s federal allies against each other in one of the country’s most economically important battlegrounds. The state, which borders Singapore, goes to the polls on July 11, with 2.72 million voters eligible to choose representatives for 56 seats. Analysts said the contest would test both the reach of federal partners...

Indonesian police have arrested dozens of protesters following a rally against President Prabowo Subianto’s policies in the country’s second-largest city, a rights group said on Saturday. Around 100 people gathered near a government building in Surabaya on Friday, journalists on the scene estimated, to protest a fuel price increase and Prabowo’s flagship free meals scheme. Some demonstrators hurled rocks towards police and set fire to rubbish in the middle of the road, prompting officers to...

For Dr Thein Swee Lay, the only Malaysian scientist to have won the Breakthrough Prize, cracking a code in gene therapy was easier than hunting down an authentic version of her hometown popiah (spring rolls) in the US, where she has been based for years. “I have not come across a Malaysian restaurant that sells good popiah. I miss it,” Thein told This Week in Asia in an exclusive interview, fondly reminiscing about her childhood in Malaysia’s coastal town of Kuantan. The seventh of nine...

As the class of 2026 join the race to find jobs, unemployed college graduates in Singapore are taking a last-ditch shot at getting ahead via temporary government-funded gigs that earn them half the median first pay cheque. The government’s Graduate Industry Traineeships, known as GRIT, offer a stopgap for graduates to gain industry-relevant experience with government agencies or private businesses, earning between S$1,800 to S$2,400 (US$1,400 to US$1,850) per month. The lowest end of that range...

As Asean foreign ministers prepare to meet in Manila from July 21-22, a quiet but significant shift is under way in the bloc’s approach to Myanmar. Although the Association of Southeast Asian Nations remains formally committed to the “five-point consensus”, several member states appear to be reconsidering the collective pressure strategy adopted since the 2021 coup. Rather than abandoning the consensus outright, they argue that more direct engagement with Naypyidaw may be necessary to encourage...

You hear “The Hulk” before you see him: Chadchart Sittipunt’s voice carries as he canvasses for a second term as Bangkok governor in the tight, twisting alleys of a working-class canalside community. The nickname, affectionately bestowed upon him by Thai internet users for his muscular frame and passion for running, suits the 60-year-old well. He has been out hustling for votes daily ahead of Sunday’s election, which he appears all but certain to win. Meeting residents in poor communities,...

Jane Lyu flew to Malaysia on Tuesday to visit a city that she had never heard of until recently. The 32-year-old engineer from Guangxi, southern China, first spotted it on Weibo. Now, standing outside the pink-domed Putra Mosque in Putrajaya, she explains through a translation app how the country’s administrative capital, a planned city barely three decades old, ended up as the first stop on her Malaysian itinerary. Lyu, who arrived as part of a company trip that began in Singapore, is one of...

A potentially dangerous haze season looms for Southeast Asia, as rising energy and fertiliser costs threaten to weaken fire-prevention efforts just as extreme weather patterns raise the risk of forest and land blazes. Analysts warn that agricultural companies facing pressure from higher production costs may cut corners on sustainable land-clearing practices, including by using fire instead of machinery. The warning comes as the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) issued a rare...

Monday’s school shooting in the Philippines that killed three students and injured dozens has highlighted the decades-long problem of gun proliferation in the country, easy access to weapons despite theoretically strict laws – and Filipinos’ fascination with firearms. One shocking issue that emerged after videos of the shooting were posted online was the quantity of bullets fired and the teenaged shooters’ seeming familiarity with weapons. Officers recovered 21 fired cartridge cases, seven lead...

Southeast Asia is among the most vulnerable regions grappling with growing risks from heatwaves and high humidity, while the period of extreme weather has more than doubled globally over the past five decades. The duration of extreme weather has increased worldwide to an average of 23 days per year from 10 in the 1970s, according to a report by non-profit news organisation Climate Central. Parts of Southeast Asia, South America and coastal West Africa are among the regions that now experience at...

When Japan quietly deployed members of its elite airborne brigade for parachute drills in the Philippines’ northernmost province earlier this month, the exercise was not vigorously publicised by officials on either side. The drills on Batan Island, in the Batanes province, formed part of Kamandag – a countrywide mission jointly hosted by Philippine and US marines that ran until Wednesday. Involving some 2,000 troops, the exercise was designed to improve readiness, interoperability and...

Only half of Malaysian women who were married or in a sexual relationship polled in a nationwide survey said they could refuse sex with their spouse or partner, with those who gave in saying they believed it was their marital duty or that they were guided by their faith. The survey, commissioned by Muslim women’s advocacy group SIS Forum and released on Thursday, polled 1,004 women above 18 years old, the Malay Mail newspaper reported. They were categorised into three marital statuses: 61 per...

Singapore’s cooling strategy, pioneered by founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, has come in for praise in Europe, which is sweltering under a deadly heatwave. Even Tesla founder and world’s first trillionaire Elon Musk has weighed in, calling the late statesman “a genius”. Record-breaking temperatures in countries including Britain, France and Germany have killed dozens, overwhelmed hospitals and led to the closure of schools and cultural sites. Mercury in Paris hit a June record of 40.9...