Asia

A Japanese study has found that the locked zone in the Nankai Trough is not permanent but changes over time, further complicating the task of predicting megaquakes along the fault line. A locked zone is where tectonic plates merge, allowing stress to build up until it is released in an earthquake. In the case of the 900km (560-mile) long Nankai Trough off Japan’s Pacific coast, it is where the Philippine plate meets the Eurasian plate. The Philippine plate is slipping under the Eurasian plate at...

China’s durian imports rose 47 per cent, year on year, in the first half of 2026, with Thailand and Malaysia posting particularly strong gains, according to customs data, as Southeast Asian exporters offloaded a glut of the fruit that had sparked a price drop. Thailand exported nearly US$3.79 billion worth of the pungent spiky fruit shipped to China in the first half of 2026, the Chinese customs data showed, taking an 81 per cent share of the market. Thai shipments reached US$2.56 billion in the...

Thai authorities said on Thursday they are searching for the people responsible for an attack in the country’s troubled deep south region that killed five soldiers and injured several civilians. About 10 attackers opened fire and threw pipe bombs at soldiers at a security checkpoint near a residential area in Narathiwat province on Wednesday evening before fleeing, according to the regional Internal Security Operations Command. Six civilians were injured during the attack, including a...

Japan’s largest convenience store operator has issued a warning to its 7-Eleven franchisees nationwide that unauthorised resale of merchandise featuring popular anime and game characters may be rampant, multiple sources close to the matter said on Thursday. Some owners and employees have been caught setting aside merchandise before its release or buying up large quantities to sell on resale sites. Such activity is seen as a betrayal of consumer trust and likely to call into question the...

The Philippines’ push to establish a cross-border grid with Indonesia highlights the growing urgency of securing energy supplies amid soaring electricity costs, marking another step towards a long-delayed regional power network. Analysts hail the move as crucial for addressing domestic energy woes and unlocking mutual interests between neighbours, though they also point to geographical and supply-chain challenges. Manila’s Department of Energy said last month that efforts were under way to...

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has rebuffed a threat by eight US lawmakers to suspend military training funds unless Kuala Lumpur reverses its long-standing restrictions on Israeli nationals. Muslim-majority Malaysia has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has long been one of Southeast Asia’s most vocal supporters of Palestinian statehood. Anwar said Malaysia was exercising its sovereign right to control entry and rejected the lawmakers’ assertion that his government was violating...

Labour unions are rallying across South Korea after Samsung Electronics caved in to protests and agreed to hand out bonuses of more than US$400,000 to some of its employees. Just this week, assembly-line workers at Hyundai Motor staged a three-day partial strike as they seek up to 30 per cent of consolidated profit to be set aside for bonuses. Meanwhile, unions at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and telecoms operator LG Uplus want payouts equivalent to at least 30 per cent of operating profit, while...

Public support for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi appears to be fraying, with two new opinion polls suggesting voters are losing patience with a leader who won a sweeping mandate in February but has since spent political capital on conservative causes instead of tackling cost-of-living pressures. Analysts said the problem was not simply that Takaichi’s honeymoon period was ending, but that she had used her commanding position to push through legislation dear to the most conservative...

South Korean prosecutors have charged Korean-American professor Morse Tan for criminal defamation over false claims targeting President Lee Jae Myung. The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office reportedly indicted Tan without detention on Thursday on multiple defamation charges. Tan, who served as the US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice under the first Donald Trump administration, is accused of spreading false allegations during a press conference in Washington last year. He...

A South Korean court’s conviction of Seoul’s mayor for illegal polling payments threatens to put an end to his presidential ambitions just weeks after he won a historic fifth term. Oh Se-hoon, the 65-year-old conservative who has led South Korea’s capital on and off for nearly two decades, was fined 10 million won (US$6,800) on Wednesday for violating the Political Funds Act ahead of the mayoral by-election in 2021. Under South Korean law, any elected official fined more than 1 million won for...

In April 1955, amid the Cold War, 304 representatives across 29 Asian and African nations convened in Bandung, Indonesia, to discuss the principles of a more complex future world order. Among them were India, China and host Indonesia. While India would go on to champion the non-aligned movement at the 1961 Belgrade Conference, Mao Zedong’s China and Sukarno’s Indonesia were more sceptical of the colonial, Western order. Then the more US-sympathetic Suharto seized power in Indonesia in 1966....

A married Singapore minister’s sudden resignation amid revelations he had exchanged inappropriate messages with a woman has rocked the city state’s establishment circles, with a groundswell of sentiment calling for him to be retained. Amid online petitions and calls to keep former minister-in-charge of Muslim affairs Faishal Ibrahim following his resignation on Monday, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong shed further light on the controversy, suggesting the matter was more serious than previously...

Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio suffered a serious setback in her impeachment trial this week after the Senate allowed prosecutors to examine key financial records in an unexplained wealth case against her. Analysts said the Senate impeachment court’s ruling could give prosecutors a clearer route to show she amassed ill-gotten wealth and pull down her popularity ratings in time for the 2028 presidential election, thus raising the stakes for Duterte-Carpio as she fights not only to...

Malaysia would not be intimidated into changing its decades-old policy of not allowing Israeli nationals into the country, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Wednesday. Anwar said Malaysia was also not in contravention of any international laws for having such a policy in place. “I would like to respond to the United States lawmakers, some of them at least, who stated categorically that Malaysia is in contravention of international laws and was disrespectful of the rights of nations. “This is...

India’s student-led “cockroach” protests, which began as anger over alleged entrance exam leaks, are now becoming a broader test of whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government can contain young Indians’ frustration over education, jobs and accountability. The fast-growing movement gained political momentum on Tuesday when opposition leader Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were forcibly removed after a gathering with about 100 fellow lawmakers outside...

Japanese cities are experiencing “cruelly hot days”, a new meteorological term devised this year to warn people of intense heat above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), with emergency officials describing the soaring temperatures on Wednesday as “a disaster”. Heatstroke alerts were issued across almost the whole country and emergency officials said at least 14 people had died from heat-related causes in the past week. Three central cities logged scorching temperatures on Tuesday above the new...

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong stepped up the pace of renewal of his Cabinet on Wednesday by confirming two acting ministers and reinstating a former minister who was defeated in 2020 but won in last year’s poll. Coordinating Minister for National Security K Shanmugam was promoted to senior minister, joining the ranks of former leader Lee Hsien Loong. Shanmugam, a senior counsel, entered politics in 1988 and has helmed the home affairs ministry since 2015. Shanmugam is the first senior...

The United States has turned to a career Middle East diplomat for its next ambassador to Malaysia, a sharp change in tone after an earlier nominee known for his “alpha male” bravado, pro-Israel posts and culture-war commentary drew protests in the Muslim-majority country. US President Donald Trump nominated Joshua Harris for the Kuala Lumpur posting after his previous nomination of Australian-born conservative commentator Nick Adams lapsed in the Senate. The White House sent Harris’s nomination...

At the remote, mountainous frontier where the mighty Mekong carves the border between Myanmar and Laos, planners have sketched the outline of a mega dam. It would be the largest hydropower project ever built on the river’s mainstream outside China, but analysts suspect the study into it may matter more than the dam itself. A 34-month joint feasibility study for the 2,790-megawatt project was agreed on July 4 during Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing’s state visit to Vientiane. Officials from both...

The owner of a South Korean Michelin-starred restaurant is facing one year in jail for garnishing a palate-cleansing sorbet with black ants “to add a sour taste”, local media said. Seoul prosecutors requested the prison term for the anonymous owner of the unnamed eatery at a Monday court hearing for violating food safety regulations, the reports said. Under South Korean law, only 10 insect species are approved for human consumption, including grasshoppers and brown mealworm larvae. But the...

When global index provider MSCI warned in January that Indonesia risked being demoted from emerging to frontier market status, it unleashed a wave of volatility, sell-offs and wild trading swings. Six months on, Jakarta’s investment chief argues the real story is not about whether the country can earn investors’ trust. “For Indonesia, this is not about short-term market status,” Investment Minister Rosan Roeslani told This Week in Asia in written replies to questions. “It is about building a...

The chief of the Indonesian agency overseeing President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship free meals programme said on Wednesday she had resigned, citing health reasons, the second leadership change at the beleaguered government body in just over a month. The ‌resignation of Nanik Sudaryati Deyang, who took over the National Nutrition Agency in June, comes after budget cuts and a criminal investigation into the free meals scheme, which has been dogged by logistical challenges, concerns about quality...

Indonesia’s long-stalled gas project in the North Natuna Sea is stirring back to life, with its new operator confirming that activities have resumed at a strategically sensitive field after years of commercial uncertainty and pressure from China. Prime Group, the Indonesian company that took over operatorship from Britain’s Harbour Energy, told This Week in Asia that “activities associated with the Tuna PSC have resumed in accordance with applicable regulatory requirements”. The PSC –...

An Australian woman has given birth to identical quadruplet girls after a pregnancy doctors described as incredibly rare. Jenitar Sau Na’amoana, who is 34 years old and already had four children, delivered the babies last week at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in Queensland state. “We are very excited to be able to care for this amazing little family, a big family now,” Dr Alexa Bendall, a maternal fetal medicine specialist who cared for Na’amoana, said in an interview released by the...

Pacific island nations are facing a security challenge in responding to China’s recent missile launch near Tuvalu and keeping their vision of a region as an “ocean of peace”, as analysts say the diverse nature of their ties with Beijing is complicating efforts towards a united response. On July 6, China said one of its navy’s nuclear submarines launched a “strategic missile” carrying a dummy warhead towards “relevant high seas of the Pacific Ocean”, describing the test as routine annual military...

Japan is turning to five lesser-used straits in Southeast Asia as insurance against the next maritime shock, with plans to create detailed nautical charts for ships to navigate through these waters and bring vital goods to its economy. Tokyo would work with Indonesia and the Philippines to chart their respective straits, the foreign ministry told the Yomiuri newspaper, as it stepped up efforts to mitigate disruption to global trade arising from the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. The...

The Solomon Islands, widely considered China’s closest security partner in the South Pacific, will soon sign a deal allowing the US Coast Guard to patrol its waters with local police aboard, Prime Minister Matthew Wale announced on a trip to Washington to strengthen bilateral ties. While the South Pacific nation has deepened its ties with China over the past few years, particularly following the signing of a secret security pact in 2022, Wale’s visit underscored efforts to strengthen maritime...

Asia’s oil buyers are facing the risk of a second maritime chokepoint being disrupted after Iran-aligned Houthi militants threatened to impose a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, even as shipments through the Strait of Hormuz remain severely disrupted by the US-Iran conflict. Analysts said any serious disruption in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait could leave Asia with fewer alternatives for Middle Eastern crude, threatening Saudi shipments and increasing the risk of oil prices rising above US$100 per...

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has appointed army chief Lieutenant General Antonio G. Nafarrete as the next head of the armed forces, placing a veteran of the country’s internal conflicts in charge before a sensitive election in the Muslim south and amid continued maritime tensions with China. The choice points to continuity in security policy and puts the Armed Forces of the Philippines under an officer whose career has been closely tied to Mindanao, which is preparing for its first...

Indonesia ⁠has further reduced its ⁠budget for President Prabowo Subianto’s ⁠signature free school meals programme to 229 trillion rupiah (US$12.81 billion) from 268 trillion rupiah and more cuts are possible, senior officials running the project said on Tuesday. The programme is Prabowo’s most important ‌and expensive election campaign pledge and has been central to wider concerns about Indonesia’s fiscal health. Originally, it was allotted 335 trillion rupiah in 2026 with a target by the end...