Asia

Yutaka Kato* knew there would be risks when he reported suspected misconduct by his employer to Japanese authorities. What he did not expect, he said, was a 47.88 million yen (US$300,000) damages claim from that employer – the Japanese subsidiary of US-listed medical device manufacturer STAAR Surgical – along with the prospect of years in court and the uncertainty of whether he would ever return to work. Kato is among a growing number of whistle-blowers in Japan who say laws meant to protect...

North Korea’s defence minister has been dismissed as part of a reshuffle of the country’s military leadership, state media reported Sunday. The “structural reorganisation plans” were decided during a meeting on Saturday led by Kim Jong-un, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. No Kwang-chol was not only dismissed as defence minister but also demoted in the ruling party leadership to “first vice-director of the Munitions Industry Department”, KCNA said. Kim Song-gi, director of the General...

Three weeks ago, I watched with horror the car crash of Cambridge professor Jason Arday’s public unravelling. You know the story: allegations about plagiarism; then more accusations, headlines and people announcing they had always felt “something was off”. It was less an investigation than a very British public audit involving spreadsheets, screenshots and the enthusiasm normally reserved for catching misbehaving MPs – except far more obsessive. Even after Arday’s death and his family’s request...

Nepali army rescuers broke through to a hydropower tunnel on Saturday and began pumping air and sending a camera inside, raising hopes of reaching workers trapped since devastating floods struck the site three days earlier. Nepal’s government says more than 100 workers may still be alive and trapped inside tunnels at hydropower projects, with rescue efforts focused on the Trishuli 3A and 3B sites. Those trapped are among 933 hydropower workers missing since a wall of mud and debris swept down on...

A total of 39kg (85 lbs) of bread was recently dumped along a roadside in a national park in western Japan, prompting police to investigate who discarded it and why. The loaves were left near crash barriers in Daisen-Oki National Park in Tottori Prefecture between August 14 and 20. The incident has prompted the spread of fake images and videos attempting to link the dumping to a sharp increase in bear encounters in Japan over the past year. “When I first heard of the reports, my head was full of...

Singapore state investor Temasek, the ⁠majority shareholder of Singapore Airlines , on Saturday backed the airline’s investment in Air India, as scrutiny grows over its stake in the loss-making Indian carrier. Air India’s request for about US$1.5 billion in fresh equity from owners Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines was ‌first reported by Reuters this week. Singapore Airlines owns 25.1 per cent of India’s second-largest airline, with the rest owned by Tata. News of the funding request prompted...

Vietnam is seeking to end executions for drug trafficking under a draft revision to its Penal Code, a notable shift in a country with one of Southeast Asia’s toughest anti-drug regimes. The proposal, presented to lawmakers last week, would remove trafficking from Vietnam’s list of capital crimes. Last year, Hanoi kept the offence on the list during an earlier round of death penalty reforms. If passed, the revised law would leave capital punishment for four crimes: treason, murder, terrorism and...

A woman in her fifties has been fined for repeatedly banging on her ceiling with a backscratcher and contacting her upstairs neighbour over noise, with a South Korean court ruling that her actions amounted to stalking. The Chuncheon District Court fined the 55-year-old woman, identified only as A, 2 million won (US$1,400) for violating the Act on Punishment of Crimes of Stalking, according to legal sources on Saturday. The court also ordered her to complete 40 hours of a treatment programme for...

Seven words, spoken almost in passing on a recent afternoon in Srinagar, have set off a diplomatic tremor across South Asia. “This is an important part of India,” Sergio Gor told reporters on August 19, during the first visit by a US ambassador to Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in six years. Within hours, Pakistan had summoned the top American diplomat in Islamabad, Natalie Baker, to deliver a formal protest. Kashmir, a disputed Himalayan region claimed in full by both India and Pakistan,...

More than 1,000 luxury items and 80 real estate properties forfeited in Singapore’s S$3 billion (US$2.4 billion) money laundering case would go under the hammer from September 7, audit firm Deloitte said on Saturday. The properties will be auctioned by SRI, Edmund Tie & Company and Knight Frank, while auction house Hotlotz will handle the luxury goods, comprising jewellery, watches and handbags. Some selected properties will also be offered for sale through an expression of interest process run...

Mukti Patel has huddled with family and friends at her parents’ Richmond, Virginia, home since her dad, sister and two other relatives went missing in the catastrophic flash floods along the Nepal-China border. She knows the hotel they were staying in was swept away. But as she shared memories of them on Friday, she caught herself. “I shouldn’t talk in past tense yet,” she said. “We don’t know anything.” As rescuers continued pulling survivors from the mud, family members of some of the more...

Seven Yemeni men were arrested in Malaysia after they allegedly performed dangerous stunts while travelling in two vehicles along Jalan Sungai Besi early on Friday. Kuala Lumpur Traffic Investigation and Enforcement Department chief Mohd Zamzuri Mohd Isa said the incident, which occurred at about 12.30am, came to light after a video of the incident went viral on social media. He said preliminary investigations found that both vehicles were travelling along Jalan Sungai Besi towards Jalan Bukit...

The Philippines spent years dismantling Chinese-linked gambling compounds in dramatic, headline-grabbing raids. But all the while, and with far less scrutiny, South Korean syndicates were building a parallel industry worth billions of US dollars – one that a spate of recent arrests suggests is still very much intact. The most recent involved a 29-year-old Korean woman named Kim Young-sun, who authorities allege ran a network of 23 illegal online betting websites out of offices in Pasay and...

When Kripa Vaidyanathan’s 27-year-old niece died in an Alaska car crash in 2024, her family in Chennai, India, felt shell-shocked. They questioned why this tragedy would befall them when they had such “immense faith in God”. Vaidyanathan, a yoga instructor, helped her grieving sister get face time with a high-profile guru whom she hoped would help. “But he told her this was the work of karma and she should use this opportunity to connect with her inner nature,” she said. “I understand how karma...

The Tokyo metropolitan government has unveiled a plan to use an underground facility near Tokyo Station as a shelter for residents and tourists in the event of a ballistic missile attack. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike told a press conference earlier this month that a survey would begin in the current financial year through March in preparation for revamping Yaesu car park, which is located about two to 11 metres (six to 36 feet) underground. The alterations are expected to include setting up...

In the rush to build an AI future, semiconductors are the silicon rock stars that soak up all the applause. Yet behind the curtain, an unglamorous stagehand is doing much of the heavy lifting. Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are the copper-laced panels inside every mobile phone, car key fob, digital camera and data-centre server rack on Earth. Without them, even the most advanced AI chip would be useless, unable to process even a single line of code. This year alone, more than 1 million square...

Artificial intelligence (AI) poses risks that do not respect national borders, from cyberattacks and misinformation to system malfunction and potentially dangerous misuse. In a geopolitically charged world, does greater incompatibility between countries make AI safer? UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres offered a clear answer at the inaugural UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance: “When countries align on how to test systems, measure risk and assign responsibility, safety travels with the...

Rescuers pulled out survivors caked in dark brown mud and helicopters lifted stranded people to safety, as Nepal and China raced to respond to catastrophic flash floods that killed 676 people and left nearly 3,000 missing. The rescue efforts included a team that rappelled into a severely damaged checkpoint area on the Chinese side of the border between the two countries. Rescuers were on high alert for more flooding from a new lake that formed high up in the Himalayan mountains after the initial...

The new presidential administration law grants its head – Saida Mirziyoyeva – sweeping new powers, and immunity.

Mongolia wanted to see “a shift from talk to action” at COP17. The results were mixed. 

Cook’s leadership perfected Apple’s production – but Chinese workers paid the price.

In criticizing Kazakhstan's Latinization effort, Russian media is not defending the Russian language or the Cyrillic alphabet, but the symbolic, ideological, and geopolitical hierarchy of the Russian world. 

The planned Indian deployment of the BrahMos missile on all of its naval warships has destabilizing implications for the region.

Does receiving a Chinese education sway Asia’s leaders and, by extension, foreign policy?

After roughly 10 months in power, the differences between Takaichi and Abe are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. 

Thousands of miles from Afghanistan, prescriptions are being written by Afghans for the country’s future – a future without Taliban rule. 

The Kuril Islands dispute is not just a territorial dispute between Russia and Japan but reflects the larger complexity of geopolitical dynamics in the Indo-Pacific Region.

In many Asian countries, letting an AI-generated error slip through could mean not only reputational harm but legal and political persecution

Although Japanese leaders have been publicly quiet, this incident highlights several points of concern that have existed since the second Trump administration.  

Male “anti-fan” livestreamers invaded a boy-band training event -- and targeted the largely female fan base.