Asia

Malaysians have reacted with sarcasm and disbelief to an Indonesian official’s claim that his country provides the region’s oxygen, as toxic smoke from forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan chokes neighbouring nations. Syahganda Nainggolan, head of Indonesia’s government communications agency, prompted the backlash after invoking his country’s forests when questioned on Saturday about the severe smog that has forced school closures and triggered health warnings across Malaysia and...

With his reformist credentials battered by coalition compromises and a looming general election, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has used his 2027 budget to launch a fresh wave of anti-corruption measures. But as his government nears its four-year mark, analysts warn that restoring public confidence will require more than additional funding and tighter legislative oversight. The measures, announced when Anwar presented Malaysia’s 2027 budget on Friday, include 1.1 billion ringgit (US$269...

Singapore again ranked as the world’s most polluted city on Monday, according to Swiss-based air quality monitor IQAir, as the fires on Borneo and Sumatra islands – intensified by a turbocharged El Nino weather phenomenon – keep emitting toxic haze. The city state has rolled out subsidies for haze-related medical treatment and schools were closed in parts of neighbouring Malaysia, as both countries grapple with persistently unhealthy air quality due to fires in nearby Indonesia. The fires have...

A Melbourne man whose Islamic community centre has been linked by prosecutors in the United Arab Emirates to the co-pilot who allegedly attacked the captain of a Flydubai jet has hit out at “false accusations”. The Omani co-pilot, now in custody in the UAE, had drawn inspiration from al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 suicide attacks, and carried out his attempt “with the aim of causing the greatest possible loss of life”, according to the Emirati prosecutor’s findings published by state media last...

Share in Genting plunged by the most in 28 years after the leisure group controlled by Malaysian billionaire Lim Kok Thay announced plans to raise about 1.25 billion ringgit (US$306 million) through a renounceable rights issue. The stock fell as much as 17 per cent to 1.56 ringgit, the biggest decline since 1998. The issue price would be fixed at a discount ranging between 25 and 30 per cent, Genting said in a bourse filing on Friday, adding that proceeds raised would be used to repay its...

AirAsia co-founder Tony Fernandes met with officials from Malaysia’s finance ministry two weeks ago to discuss potential government support for Southeast Asia’s largest low-cost airline, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The talks reflect growing government concerns about the financial health of the country’s largest domestic carrier following a spike in jet fuel prices, the people said. Discussions centred on the prospect of the government backing AirAsia’s fundraising...

Indonesian authorities and conservation workers have successfully moved eight ⁠orangutans to a safe ⁠location after the endangered ⁠primates’ homes were destroyed by wildfires in the forests of Borneo. The Southeast Asian nation is battling its most intense wildfires in 11 years, mainly on Sumatra and Borneo islands, and the ‌government has warned the blazes could continue until November, aggravated by the El Nino weather pattern. Three mother-child pairs and two adolescent male orangutans were...

A South Korean container ship has returned from a trial voyage through the Arctic, testing an alternative route opened by melting sea ice as conflict in the Middle East disrupts global shipping. The PanStar Acro made the round trip to Europe in less time than the conventional route through the Suez Canal, officials said. The initiative has drawn concerns that increased traffic could accelerate Arctic ice loss. The Arctic route could also expose operators to sanctions-related risks because it...

North Korea on Monday fired multiple ballistic missiles off its east coast, Seoul’s military said, after weeks of mounting friction over a landmine explosion along the countries’ heavily fortified border. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed in a statement that it had detected several ballistic missiles launched from the Pyongyang area, adding that its military “has stepped up surveillance and vigilance against possible additional launches”. One of the missiles flew more than 900km (559...

On a recent Friday night in a Bangkok dive bar, a group of young Myanmar exiles sang softly along to a mournful ballad played on an acoustic guitar. None among the crowd had any plans to leave, either for their homeland or home for bed. They fled war, a broken economy and forced conscription into a military that seized power in the 2021 coup. While their future in Thailand is uncertain, their ties to home are kept alive by the hard currency they send back each month to parents and siblings left...

Chinese President Xi Jinping has met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi three times in the past three years. Indian pilgrims are back at Kailash, the Tibetan mountain sacred to Hindus and Buddhists. Air China has restarted flights to New Delhi. But can trust grow between two armies that meet only in a crisis? And why does the Pentagon now talk to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) more easily than India’s army does? In September, Xi made his first visit to India in nearly seven years; Beijing...

Pakistan’s president declared a state of emergency and suspended the provincial government of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan on Sunday, the president’s office said, following allegations it had failed to tackle Islamist militancy. The constitution allows the federal ‌government to take over some or all provincial government functions during an emergency. The provincial governor will take charge with an advisory council, Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told a news conference in Islamabad,...

The leaders of India’s youth-led online “cockroach” movement were released on Sunday, their lawyer said, a day after they were detained to thwart a major protest against the chief election commissioner. The leaders pledged on Sunday to continue their campaign against the election commissioner, hours after they were released. Thousands of protesters were detained before Saturday’s planned demonstration in New Delhi, according to the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which called on supporters to keep...

Roziah Jelali has a tip or two on catching a turtle poacher: carrying a pair of binoculars and having patience in spades are key to doing the job well. The 36-year-old Malaysian volunteer ranger once spent three months in Sabah tracking a man whom she suspected of illegally capturing protected turtles. Once thriving off the azure seas of Omadal Island in the Malaysian state, many turtles had been hunted down, killed and sold for their meat, according to conservation experts. Recounting the 2023...

The denuclearisation of North Korea has become an “increasingly improbable” goal and the United States and its allies should move beyond it to devote their diplomatic efforts to talks on arms limitations and crisis communication, the director of the US-based North Korean analysis website 38 North said. Recalling the 20 years since North Korea carried out its first nuclear test on October 9, 2006, Jenny Town said in a written interview that “a pivotal moment” in Pyongyang’s weapons development...

A Thai government proposal to charge export duties on durians, a major cash crop, could raise prices for the fruit in China – its primary market – along with the quality, analysts said. Thailand’s draft bill to establish a fund for research and “sustainable” development of the durian sector would include the collection of fees, the government’s public relations department said last month. Southeast Asian media outlets and agricultural publications have tipped the export duty to be as high as 2...

On Facebook, public hospitals in Malaysia’s Bornean states have been rolling out “Selamat Datang” [welcome] banner posts to embrace medical staff reporting for duty. Tawau Hospital on Sabah’s east coast recently published a group photograph welcoming newly arrived medical officers. Kinabatangan Hospital posted similar banners hailing arrivals across various departments, while in neighbouring Sarawak, Kapit Hospital accompanied its greeting with a portrait of a newly arrived doctor. But behind...

The dust has yet to settle in Malaysia’s Negeri Sembilan, where a royal row has led to the fall of a state government and left the public wondering who, exactly, is in charge. Observers warn that the months-long constitutional crisis could create ripple effects well beyond the state’s borders, testing the entire nation’s systems of monarchy and government. The dispute centres on which of two men: the incumbent, Tuanku Muhriz Tuanku Munawir, or his intended replacement, Tunku Nadzaruddin Tuanku...

On June 12, two of the world’s most capable artificial intelligence models went dark. An American export directive barred foreigners from using Anthropic’s two flagship AI models, and because the company could not check every user’s nationality, it switched them off. Access returned on July 1 but the warning is clear: India’s AI future can be switched off from Washington. In September, Beijing came calling. At the Brics summit in New Delhi, Chinese President Xi Jinping promised China would “be a...

Two men died and more than a dozen others were injured Saturday when floats overturned during annual festivals in Osaka Prefecture. In Izumisano, a 51-year-old man became trapped beneath a float that overturned while he was riding it with other participants, police said. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital, while seven others were injured. A float at a different event in Izumiotsu also toppled, killing a 48-year-old man who was among those trapped underneath, according to the prefectural...

Chinese investors could face significant disruption if Indonesia imposes a moratorium on new nickel smelters to curb global overproduction and protect local industries across its vast minerals sector, analysts said. Indonesia was weighing a halt to the construction of smelters that produce semi-finished nickel products amid a global supply glut that had driven down commodity prices, state news agency Antara reported, citing energy and mineral resources minister Bahlil Lahadalia. Semi-finished...

As dawn breaks on Mataking Island off Sabah’s east coast, a tiny green turtle crawls across the sand, driven by instinct towards the surf before disappearing into the ocean on a journey that could cover thousands of kilometres. Where it goes is impossible to know, but with a huge dose of luck on its epic travels, it may return to the same Malaysian beach decades later to lay eggs of its own. The hatchling is one of tens of thousands that emerge from Sabah’s beaches each year, as the species...

Thirty-eight people suffered minor injuries on Saturday when part of a ceiling collapsed at a building in South Korea’s southeastern city of Daegu, fire authorities said. According to local authorities and fire officials, the incident occurred at around 10.16am on the second floor of a four-storey building in Gwaneum-dong. At the time, a vendor was selling kitchenware and other goods to elderly customers when a section of the ceiling’s finishing material fell down. All 66 people inside evacuated...

Dressed in his trademark white shirt and traditional Sundanese headcloth, West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi stood near the barren slopes of Mount Wayang. Announcing a new initiative to pay hundreds of local farmers to replant its forests and shield the region from flooding, he delivered a line perfectly pitched for the cameras tracking his every step. “I am a leader who does not want obedience caused by poverty,” he declared on September 26. “I want obedience caused by prosperity.” It is this...

Australia has no need to buy fuel from Russia and said that purchases from there would remain barred so that the country did not benefit from the invasion of Ukraine. “We don’t need or want Russian fuel in Australia,” Chris Bowen, Australia’s minister for climate change and energy, said on Saturday at a press conference in western Sydney. “We do not want Vladimir Putin to benefit from this war in the Middle East. What the United States does is a matter for them, but we won’t be changing our...

Growing up in a Malay family in Singapore, Hafeez Hassan feared dogs. He never expected to mourn one like a sibling. “Maybe that is what I have been grieving all along … The experience of loving something that I was taught I was not supposed to love,” he said. Even as an adult, walking his former partner’s husky Pieces in public made Hafeez anxious that a relative might see him, or that he might be judged for being close to an animal whose saliva and waste are regarded as ritually impure by many...

Malaysia is facing renewed pressure to clamp down on its companies over their alleged links to forest fires abroad, as recurring haze from Indonesia continues to disrupt schools and daily life despite years of regional efforts to tackle the problem. On Thursday, Malaysia ordered schools to close across several states, including Johor, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan, Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and the Rompin district in Pahang, while sporting events scheduled for the weekend were cancelled. The latest...

A craft beer producer in central Japan is hoping that its U-shaped “wobbly” glass will encourage people to drink water along with their beer, in a bid to prevent excessive alcohol consumption and dehydration. The “Wobbly Beer Glass by Yona Yona Ale”, produced by Yoho Brewing based in Nagano prefecture, has been on sale since August amid growing awareness of the need for responsible drinking. The idea is that the glass, divided into two sections, will tilt if a balance between beer and water is...

Police detained more than 2,000 protesters and the founder of the “cockroach” youth movement in Delhi on Saturday as security forces locked down parts of the capital to thwart a demonstration demanding the resignation of India’s election chief. Thousands of police and paramilitary personnel were deployed across the city, mobile internet services were suspended in the central business district, and dozens of metro stations and markets were shut as authorities moved to stop a rally organised by...

Kurt Campbell is a veteran US diplomat and strategist who has played a leading role in shaping Washington’s approach to China and the Indo-Pacific for more than a decade. He served as the White House coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs from 2021 to 2024 and as US deputy secretary of state from 2024 to 2025. Previously, he served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2009 to 2013 and was a key architect of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia”. Often...