Asia

Japan plans to look into popular animal cafes, where visitors can interact with anything from cats to capybaras, following concerns about hygiene and the creatures’ welfare, authorities said on Thursday. Japan has hundreds of the cafes where campaigners say animals are sometimes kept in cramped spaces, and that their popularity encourages the capture and illegal trade of rare wildlife. A fact-finding survey will begin as early as next month, starting with obtaining basic information such as the...

The Philippines’ push for military modernisation is being squeezed by a ballooning pension bill for its troops as fears mount over its ability to finance newer ships, aircraft and other defence assets. The Department of National Defence has proposed spending 142.95 billion pesos (US$2.3 billion) on military and uniformed personnel (MUP) pensions in 2027, out of a total proposed defence budget of 324.6 billion pesos. The planned pension budget is 7 per cent higher than the 133.91 billion pesos...

The body of an unidentified person was found inside the wheel well of an aircraft at Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport Terminal 2 (KLIA2) on Thursday (Aug 27). The body, whose gender has yet to be determined, was discovered at about 6.55am in the wheel well of a flight from Tokyo, Japan, which landed at about 6.30am. It is learnt that the body, clad in jeans and a white shirt, was found by engineering personnel who were tasked with opening the aircraft’s wheel well. The personnel...

North Korea’s foreign ministry on Thursday denounced a US decision to approve the sale of missiles and related equipment to South Korea, vowing to respond “strongly and immediately” to hostile acts in various areas, state media Korean Central News Agency reported. The remarks come as US President Donald Trump renewed overtures to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, expressing interest ⁠in another meeting and saying this month that Kim had responded to his outreach. Analysts say Pyongyang ‌had shown...

Malaysia’s former prime minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob pleaded not guilty in a Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court on Thursday to failing to declare millions of ringgit in local and foreign currencies and gold bars. The 66-year-old is the second ex-leader to face criminal charges since Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim took office in 2022, pledging to root out entrenched corruption. Ismail Sabri’s charge under Section 36(2) of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Act comes more than a year after he...

The lonely journey of a bull elephant trying to return to its jungle home has captured the hearts of Malaysians over the past week, putting a spotlight on the plight of wildlife struggling against deforestation and rapidly expanding human activity. The elephant – dubbed “Sulong” by Malaysians keenly following social media updates on his weeks-long journey – was first spotted by motorists on August 17, walking slowly along the busy East-West Highway in an apparent attempt to reach the...

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is looking to push back national elections until the second half of next year, people familiar with the matter said, as state poll defeats and soured partnerships reveal his political vulnerability. That time frame would mark a significant delay. Just months ago, the 79-year-old leader was said to be mulling a snap election as soon as this October, perceiving his greatest risk at the time to be rising fuel prices. But two humbling state election losses...

South Korea’s police said on Thursday they were seeking indictments of seven transport ministry officials over the 2024 Jeju Air crash that killed all but two of the 181 people on board. The Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air skidded off the runway at Muan International Airport in southern South Korea after its landing gear failed to deploy, slamming into a concrete structure and bursting into flames. Authorities have found traces of bird strike in the plane’s engines and the plane’s two black...

Singapore’s new rules for messaging platforms mark a significant shift in the country’s fight against scams, placing greater responsibility on digital services to help stop fraudsters before they reach potential victims, as the government seeks stronger penalties for non-compliance. Analysts said the requirements could reduce the number of people exposed to scams and offer a potential model for other Southeast Asian countries, while cautioning that sophisticated fraudsters could adapt and seek...

Sumo chiefs are planning measures to beat Japan’s increasingly punishing summer heat, including avoiding venues that do not have air conditioning and lightening the load on weary wrestlers. Japan sweltered through its hottest summer on record last year and parts of the country have hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in recent days. Hakata ward in the southwestern city of Fukuoka on Wednesday saw the temperature hit 40.4 degrees, caused by hot, moist air from a typhoon flowing into...

Singaporean police raided the local office of iron ore trader Radiant World last week and questioned some of the firm’s employees, according to people familiar with the matter, part of an investigation into the company’s transactions after some counterparties raised concerns about allegedly falsified documents. Several major commodity traders have cut ties with the company amid concerns that it provided invoices or other documents to its banks that were not valid. The Singapore police said that...

Billions of yen from a higher departure tax that Japan plans to use to support tourism are being channelled into projects that critics say offer limited direct benefit to travellers, including measures to prevent bear attacks and eradicate an invasive beetle. The Japanese government expects to raise 130 billion yen (US$817.7 million) in the 2026 financial year from the International Tourist Tax, after increasing the levy last year on anyone leaving the country through an airport or seaport. The...

In 1984, Ha Tae-jun, then 24, spotted a notice recruiting for a special unit at the Military Manpower Administration office in central Seoul’s Yongsan district. The notice was scrawled on the wall in marker, with little explanation. Ha applied, and his life was changed forever – training as a South Korean operative for covert missions into North Korea. “About a month after submitting background check documents, they said I’d passed and told me to meet at a cafe near my house,” said Ha, now 66...

On a farm up in the hills of South Korea’s Jeju Island, investigators this week uncovered what a mother had spent three months fearing they would not find: the body of her daughter. Jang Mi-ran, 37, vanished without a trace in May. Police records would later show her case had been quietly closed without anyone ever verifying if she was alive. It was the second such discovery in a matter of days. The first was the skeletal remains of a man in his sixties, found on Saturday after his family warned...

International relations has long measured power through familiar instruments: military capability, territory, energy, capital and control of trade. The digital revolution added information to that equation. Artificial intelligence (AI) is taking the transformation further by turning information into a strategic capability that can shape economies, governments and societies. For the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), the central question is no longer whether Southeast Asia will...

Asian workers and families already facing years-long waits for US visas could be pushed deeper into uncertainty by a global pause on immigrant visa appointments, as President Donald Trump’s administration tightens legal immigration through new screening and higher costs, experts warn. The US State Department on Tuesday said it had launched a global training initiative for consular officers at all US embassies and consulates, and that immigrant visa appointments would be adjusted to accommodate...

Forty years ago, the Stockholm Document turned the political promise of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act into a more practical system of confidence-building. Amid the Cold War, Europe’s East and West did not disarm, abandon deterrence or begin to trust one another. Instead, they agreed that military competition could be made safer through prior notification, observation, information exchange and verification. The lesson was modest but durable: adversaries do not need trust to reduce uncertainty. That...

For years, South Asian students – particularly from India – treated an overseas undergraduate degree as the default springboard to an international career. That assumption is now changing. Students across the region are still drawn to prestigious Western institutions, but tightening visa restrictions, rising costs and uncertain post-graduation job markets in countries like the United States are prompting families to rethink their options. Experts say more are choosing to complete their first...

Few have spent as much time in the waters surrounding Singapore’s southwestern islands as fisherman Hamzah Mohamad, 71. The former resident of Pulau Sudong has been fishing, primarily by setting up bubu – wire fish traps in Malay – in the rocky coral reefs surrounding Sudong, Bukom and Semakau for more than half a century. He knows the underwater reefs by heart, what the wind changes mean for visibility and which fish species are in season. But the seascape he has long known may be set for...

Facing a far larger Chinese military presence at sea, the Philippines is looking to drones not as a substitute for warships and aircraft but as a relatively low-cost way to make its forces harder to find, suppress and outmanoeuvre, analysts have said. The administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has focused on expanding the military’s drone fleet as part of its external defence strategy. Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jnr told lawmakers on Tuesday that Manila also needed to secure...

A huge wall of mud ⁠and rock collapsed into a river on the Himalayan border of Nepal and China’s Tibet on Wednesday, triggering catastrophic flooding on the Nepali side that killed scores of people and left hundreds of tourists missing. In a still-unfolding disaster, verified videos showed dozens of people swept away at the border, with authorities on both sides fearing far higher casualties and massive destruction. Houses, roads and power projects were washed away in Nepal, while officials in...

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s commercial ⁠hub, is proposing ⁠to gradually restrict ⁠petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles from its downtown area from mid-2027, as part of a planned low-emission zone (LEZ), according to state-run Thanh Nien newspaper. Under the proposal, the ‌city would pilot the LEZ from July 2027 in its core downtown area and the new Thu Thiem urban area, covering roughly 930 hectares (2,300 acres), Thanh Nien reported, citing city authorities. From early 2029, the LEZ will expand...

Indonesia and Malaysia have agreed to share the skies amid a haze crisis that has closed nearly 600 Malaysian schools and erased much of the Kuala Lumpur skyline from view. The Petronas Twin Towers, usually visible for miles around, have been swallowed by a grey shroud as wildfires that continue to rage across Indonesia’s Sumatra and Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. Authorities from both countries are coordinating operations along their shared Bornean border, with Malaysia’s environment...

Australian police said on Wednesday they were on the hunt for thieves who made off with hundreds of thousands of oysters. The molluscs have an estimated total value of A$350,000 (US$250,000) and were lifted from an oyster farm near the town of Taree, north of Sydney, New South Wales police said. Over 300 bags, containing 400,000 oysters, were stolen. Police are urging the public to come forward with any information they might have about the theft, which they said happened “earlier this year” but...

At least 14 infants were killed ‌in a fire at a state-run hospital in Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad on Wednesday, the prime minister said, with local media blaming the tragedy on a fault in the air conditioning system. The blaze started around 7am at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, on the third floor of the hospital’s ⁠mother and child health ward, said broadcaster Geo TV, which put the death toll ‌at 15. Islamabad chief commissioner Sohail Ashraf said on social media that rescue...

South Korea said on Wednesday it had scrambled fighter jets in response to Russian military aircraft entering its air defence zone, the second such incursion in weeks. The relationship between the countries has worsened since South Korea joined Western sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and since Moscow built stronger ties with North Korea. Seoul’s defence ministry said multiple Russian aircraft had entered and then left its air defence identification zone over the East Sea, also...

Malaysian police are investigating a killing near Kuala Lumpur as murder after a man rammed by a car died following an armed brawl in broad daylight that was caught on camera – footage that has stirred fresh alarm over brazen street violence in the country. The fight, in which several men were filmed slashing at one another, broke out at around 2pm on Tuesday in the Taman Alam Megah neighbourhood of Shah Alam, police said. One local man has been arrested in connection with the case. Shah Alam...

“I want to survive.” That was uppermost in Senior Seaman Michael Coccon Johen’s mind while he was drifting in the South China Sea, hours after a free-fall parachute training exercise went wrong. Johen, 27, was one of six Malaysian navy special forces personnel who landed in the sea on August 12 after missing their designated landing site at Pulau Layang-Layang, off Sabah’s coast. It happened during the drill’s second jump at 4.30pm, when a sudden change in weather severely affected...

A roller coaster malfunction at a major theme park on the outskirts of Malaysia’s capital city injured 10 people on Saturday, the operator confirmed after coming under fire for what critics called a prolonged silence over the incident. Authorities said on Monday that the riders had suffered minor injuries after the ride abruptly stopped, leaving them stranded. The incident sparked a flurry of complaints across Malaysian social media, with numerous posts sharing videos purportedly showing the...

Singaporean online commentator Amos Yee Pang Sang on Wednesday received four fresh charges linked to posts he made about race and children. This brings his total number of charges to seven, including three for allegedly dodging national service. According to charge sheets, the 27-year-old allegedly promoted feelings of disharmony between racial and religious groups in Singapore in two blog posts in April. In the posts, he allegedly discussed racial discrimination, commented on crimes and...