Asia

Singapore’s Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing is set to visit China from Tuesday to Thursday at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart Dong Jun and will speak at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum for the second consecutive year. His visit comes as defence analysts tell This Week in Asia that ties with Beijing are important for the city state’s balancing strategy with Washington. Singapore and the United States are close strategic partners with deep defence cooperation. Singapore’s defence ministry...

Energy ministers and executives met in Bangkok on Monday to discuss the prolonged price increase for liquefied natural gas (LNG) triggered by the Iran war, with Southeast Asia’s growth ambitions and climate goals on the line as the cost of powering economies shifting to artificial intelligence soars. On the first day of Gastech 2026, one of the world’s largest energy conferences, policymakers implored pragmatism over net-zero targets and closer cooperation to ensure affordable LNG supplies,...

Uzbekistan’s recent confirmation that China’s J-10CE fighters have entered into service in its air force ended months of speculation. It is the latest of three developments that include Pakistan’s use of J-10CEs in combat last year and Bangladesh’s draft procurement paper for the Chinese aircraft. Read separately, each looks like a win for the J-10CE. Taken together, however, they show something narrower: the Chinese aircraft is gaining export traction without yet winning a clean contest against...

Malaysia’s Negeri Sembilan royal crisis escalated on Monday after the state’s customary council said six men behind the latest attempt to remove ruler Tuanku Muhriz Munawir could be regarded as having committed grave disloyalty to the monarch. The ruling deepens a months-long struggle over Malaysia’s only elective monarchy, where a rival group of traditional chiefs has sought to depose Muhriz and install another royal in his place. The dispute helped bring down the previous state government and...

A Malaysian teenager was on Monday found not guilty of murdering his 16-year-old schoolmate last year, after a high court ruled that he had been of unsound mind when he attacked the victim in their school, in a case that left the country reeling in shock and horror. The boy, who was 15 at the time of the attack last October, was arrested at his high school in Selangor state on the same morning that he had repeatedly stabbed Yap Shing Xuen in the school’s toilet. The victim, who was a year from...

Singapore’s openness to chemical castration for sex offenders has cast light on the ethical questions surrounding the treatment, with the discussion centred on whether it would fill any gap left by existing legislation. Experts point to how safeguards would be set regarding who receives the treatment, the duration of the process and if resulting medical consequences would be proportional to the offence. The debate comes after Senior Minister and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam’s written...

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto abruptly removed Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa on Monday after just over a year in the job, turning to veteran ministry technocrat Suahasil Nazara as his government grapples with mounting fiscal pressure and questions over economic policy coordination. Suahasil, who had served as deputy finance minister since 2019, becomes Prabowo’s third finance minister in less than two years, following Purbaya and his internationally respected predecessor Sri...

Anthropic’s discovery of an AI-powered election manipulation platform targeting Malaysia offers a glimpse into how the technology can exploit a country’s political vulnerabilities for sophisticated influence operations. The operation’s use of millions of voter records, fake social media accounts, a synthetic news site and fabricated dossiers pointed to a deeper risk, analysts said: weak data safeguards and entrenched ethnic and religious fault lines could allow political actors to target voters...

The Himalayas are approaching a tipping point as glaciers melt faster than a decade ago, threatening water security as the region approaches “peak water” by mid-century, according to a study released this month. The findings come after the collapse of a Himalayan glacier in late August along the ‌Nepal-Tibet border, which caused cascading landslides and flash floods in the valleys below. At least 1,300 people have been confirmed dead and more than 5,300 are missing across Nepal and China’s Tibet...

Every spring, mason Mohammad Ghulam Sarwar boards a train to Indian Kashmir, seeking higher wages despite the risk of being targeted by militants in the disputed Himalayan region. Sarwar, 25, is one of an estimated half a million migrant workers who stream into the Himalayan region each year, forming the backbone of an economy increasingly reliant on labour from some of India’s poorest states. The dependence has endured despite decades of insurgency and a series of militant attacks that have...

Two top executives at Japanese nuclear plant operator Chubu Electric Power would step down following a quake data-tampering scandal, the company said in a statement on Monday. President Kingo Hayashi and Chairman Satoru Katsuno would be replaced, the statement said, and the firm would withdraw applications to restart the Nos 3 and 4 reactors at Chubu’s Hamaoka nuclear plant. Japan is moving to revive nuclear power 15 years after an enormous earthquake and tsunami sent reactors at the Fukushima...

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s 36-year-old gender minister nominee stepped down before gaining confirmation of her position amid a public backlash over her suitability for the job in the latest negative fallout from the president’s cabinet reshuffle. Yong Hye-in, a lawmaker of the minor Basic Income Party, pulled out of consideration for the position on Sunday after controversy erupted over her insistence that she would not give up her parliamentary seat while serving in the...

A former Malaysian religious affairs minister pleaded not guilty on Monday to three charges involving more than 860 million ringgit (US$211 million) in transactions linked to the country’s state-run haj savings fund and a Saudi property group. Jamil Khir Baharom, 65, served as minister in the Prime Minister’s Department overseeing religious affairs from 2009 until 2018, when the government of former prime minister Najib Razak lost power. His prosecution is the latest legal action to follow a...

While Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr was pitching the Luzon Economic Corridor to a 600-strong delegation of foreign investors and officials last week, protesters outside were clashing with police, accusing the US-backed initiative of exploiting the country’s resources. The backlash mirrored opposition against the Pax Silica AI supply chain drive – a separate proposal but again, American-led. It underscored mounting tension over the ambitious corridor, since expanded from a transport...

A little cheer rose for 79-year-old Hwang Sun-hee after she managed to place an online order at a training session in South Korea, which has one of the world’s starkest digital divides for seniors. Age gaps in digital literacy are a global concern, yet the gulf has widened massively in the hyper-connected and fast-ageing country, prompting national campaigns to bridge it. “You can’t do anything without smartphone apps or a kiosk machine ... It’s too much for old folks,” Hwang said at a senior...

North Korea said on Monday it conducted a joint live-fire drill involving missiles, artillery and drones that it claimed showed “huge destructive power”. The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Saturday’s drill was meant to get familiar with the procedure for the operation of the integrated firepower control system. South Korea’s military earlier said it detected short-range ballistic missile launches from North Korea’s eastern coastal Wonsan area on Saturday morning. After observing...

Three people were killed and 15 others wounded as gunfire erupted hours before the polls opened on Monday in a semi-autonomous Muslim region of the Philippines set to choose its first elected parliament. The vote is the culmination of an on-off peace process that began in the late 1990s and established the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in the country’s far south. Cotabato police chief Jibin Bongcayao said the shooting took place just before midnight as members of rival...

A report that eight Indonesians were allegedly tricked into fighting for Moscow in its war on Ukraine may be just the tip of the iceberg, analysts warn, cautioning that Southeast Asia’s existing scam networks could already be a hunting ground for Russian fraudsters. Ukraine’s intelligence agency revealed on August 27 that the Indonesians had been lured with promises of well-paid civilian jobs. Jakarta has confirmed it is aware of the case. The agency said Indonesia had become the “latest...

Richardson Mojica is no stranger to thoughts of ending it all. The 40-year-old university professor and mental health advocate was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder and depression in his early 20s. He finds fulfilment in his job, yet suicidal ideation has always lingered. “We call it passively suicidal – you don’t want to live, but you don’t want to stop everything,” he said, revealing that he had survived a self-inflicted attempt on his life months ago. Survival is a...

Voters in an autonomous southern Philippine region will cast their ballots on Monday in the region’s first parliamentary elections, seen as a crucial step in the quest for self-determination and lasting peace after decades of insurgency and violence. The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or BARMM, covers five provinces, three cities and 63 villages across eight special geographic area clusters. It has nearly 2.4 million voters, with election officials aiming for an 80 per cent...

Winston Churchill famously praised the resilience of the British people during the Blitz, describing the nightly bombings of London as a “cruel, wanton, indiscriminate” attempt by Adolf Hitler to break the spirit of a tough “island race”. He was not wrong about the toughness and courage of his fellow citizens. But as one of the United Kingdom’s greatest leaders and historical writers, he created a false impression of the uniqueness of the British wartime experience. Strategic bombing alone,...

For 10 days, Nepali hydropower worker Sanjay Sah survived in darkness inside a flooded tunnel, drinking muddy water and losing all sense of time as he desperately prayed for rescue. When a disaster response team finally pulled him to safety on September 4, Sah’s first question showed how deeply the ordeal had disoriented him. “When I was rescued I first asked, how many days has it been?” Sah, aged 30, said in an interview, while on his way back home in Saptari district on Sunday. “He said that...

Bangladesh’s tilt towards China has added a new dimension to security and trade in South Asia, signalling what observers see as Dhaka’s desire to be a strategic actor in the region and ease its overreliance on India. The hedging policy comes after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government in 2024 amid a student-led uprising. Under an interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, and then the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) after it came to power in February, the country’s...

For 65 years, even as India and Pakistan fought wars, severed diplomatic ties and traded nuclear threats, one agreement held: the Indus Waters Treaty, which governs the river system sustaining roughly 300 million people across the subcontinent. That was until April last year, when New Delhi suspended the pact in the aftermath of a deadly militant attack on tourists in Kashmir that it blamed on Islamabad. Now, an international tribunal has ruled that it should have done no such thing – handing...

Indonesian rescuers say about 130 passengers and crew are missing after a ferry carrying more than 240 people sank in bad weather in the Java Sea on Sunday. At least 107 people were rescued and the bodies of six passengers were recovered as the search operation expanded in waters around the vessel’s last known position. The ferry was travelling from Surabaya in East Java to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan province, officials said. The vessel’s captain had earlier reported rough seas with waves...

Some of my earliest memories of Bengaluru, where I spent my summer holidays, are of looking up in wonder at the towering canopy of trees in Cubbon Park. Even in the height of summer, Bengaluru could be cool enough to require a light jacket. Today, the iconic Cubbon Park, the pride of the city I now call home, is under threat. So is Lalbagh Botanical Garden, another of the city’s iconic green spaces, with roots stretching back more than 250 years. On a Sunday morning in Bengaluru last month,...

Bessie* left the Philippines for Malaysia more than a decade ago to care for other people’s children. She stayed to look after their parents instead. Certified as a carer, she now freelances around Kuala Lumpur’s Klang Valley, earning up to 25 ringgit (US$6) an hour for round-the-clock shifts, with clients providing her meals, transport and housing. “My former employer was very understanding and offered to release me earlier so I could earn a higher salary as a caregiver,” the 50-year-old...

The political impasse in Malaysia’s government has regressed to a game of chicken, experts say, with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and the former ruling Umno party trading barbs and dares as pressure grows for snap polls with more than a year left to term. Relations between Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition and erstwhile rivals Umno have hit its lowest point since the two sides cut a deal to form a unity government in 2022, after a series of recent state polls that saw PH all but decimated...

Rescuers retrieved more remains from a passenger ferry in the Philippines that was gutted by fire, bringing the death toll on Saturday to 76 with 13 missing. Forty-three people survived the fire on Wednesday night among the 132 on board. The ferry sailed from the capital, Manila, and was off the village of Turda some 39km (24 miles) from its destination, the Port of Coron, when the fire was reported on Wednesday evening. The cause of the blaze has not been determined but a survivor said it may...

Coffee bars. Water parks. Retail therapy. ⁠North Korea – a country few would associate with leisure or pleasure – is experiencing an ⁠unlikely outbreak of fun. Leader Kim Jong-un, himself no stranger to indulgence, is orchestrating new ways for his citizens to spend ⁠their wealth. North Korea’s imports of massage equipment have surged 40-fold over the past decade, according to Chinese customs data. Treadmill shipments jumped over 600 per cent. Pianos and even bumper cars are pouring in, too. The...