Asia

Six orangutans including two nursing infants have been rescued from fires raging on Borneo island in the past week, Indonesian authorities and rescuers said on Thursday, bringing the total to 15 in a month. The apes were saved from plantations in deep rural West Kalimantan province, on the Indonesian part of the island, where they got stuck after fires cut off access to their forest home, according to the forestry ministry and the YIARI wildlife rehabilitation foundation. A large fire was...

A former Malaysian minister overseeing religious affairs will be charged with corruption next week, the country’s anti-corruption agency has said, as authorities close in on once-powerful figures believed to have stolen from the nation’s haj pilgrim fund. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) confirmed on Thursday that Jamil Khir Baharom – who served as religious affairs minister under disgraced former prime minister Najib Razak – would face three charges on Monday for misappropriation...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter and apparent successor is believed to have a younger sibling, South Korea’s spy agency has said, offering a more detailed view of the ruling family’s line of succession. Seoul’s spy agency previously said Kim was thought to have three children, but some uncertainty remained on the number of offspring as well as the order of their birth. The Kim dynasty is now in its third generation ruling the closed-off nation, and the current leader’s children would...

Indonesia’s wildfires are creeping towards Nusantara, the country’s new capital under construction on Borneo island, challenging its promise of becoming an eco-friendly “smart forest city”. The Southeast Asian nation is battling what officials call its most intense wildfire season in 11 years. Nearly 202,000 hectares (499,000 acres) of forest and peatland have been razed nationwide from January to June, according to Sipongi, the Indonesian forest ministry’s monitoring platform. Sipongi data...

Malaysia’s Umno has been drawn deeper into a royal row in Negeri Sembilan, after the president of the dominant Malay nationalist party denied attending a meeting reportedly linked to a bid to remove the state’s ruler. The controversy has put the new Umno-led state government under pressure barely six weeks after taking office, reviving the same royal crisis that helped bring down its predecessor and force a snap election in August. The episode is particularly sensitive for Umno, which has long...

China signalled a willingness to help set up a meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the South China Morning Post reported exclusively. Beijing is playing an “active” and “constructive” role in rebuilding US-North Korea diplomacy, the SCMP said on Thursday, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. A Trump-Kim meeting could potentially take place at the November Apec summit in Shenzhen, China, one person said. A US envoy visited the city and...

Hundreds of Thais, led by a veteran political activist, rallied outside the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok on Thursday in a rare public protest against a group of foreign nationals. The protest follows months of complaints about illegal landholding, disrespect towards local culture and proliferation of religious houses for Israelis, echoing those made by some locals in the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Israelis have been flocking to Thailand since the war on Gaza that followed the October 7 Hamas...

Every climate summit now runs on the same illusion: the next pledge will be the one that finally saves us. It will not. The money the rich world has promised the poor world is not coming at anything like the scale advertised, and pretending otherwise has become the main business of climate diplomacy. Barely nine weeks before the UN climate summit Cop31 opens in Antalya, Turkey, the honest task is not a bigger pledge. It is to make the finance that already exists reach the people drowning in the...

Indonesia is demanding that Netflix pay an estimated 75 billion rupiah (US$4.3 million) in royalties accumulated since its launch in the country or risk being shut down. The National Collective Management Organisation (LMKN), a government-supported agency overseeing the country’s royalty system, said the streaming platform had not paid music royalties since entering the Indonesian market 10 years ago, the Jakarta Globe reported. “The amount is estimated at around 75 billion rupiah, which Netflix...

While Singapore’s officials are among the highest-paid in the world, money alone cannot attract the brightest leaders to public service, lawmakers have said during a debate on the increase in ministerial salaries – a move supported by both opposition and ruling party MPs. The parliamentary discussion on Thursday, which saw MPs share their personal reflections on stepping into public office, followed an announced rise in ministerial salary, which Prime Minister Lawrence Wong insisted was...

Grab Singapore has apologised after a new promotional series formatted like popular Chinese microdramas raised concerns over personal boundaries and passenger safety in the city state. Titled I Fell In Love With My Grab Driver, the video campaign stars local actress-model Regina Lim as Emily, a widow stretched thin by the demands of her children and mother. The campaign’s trailer, released on Friday, shows Emily meeting Grab driver Henry – played by Singaporean actor-singer Glenn Yong – when he...

Four Chinese nationals, including a woman, claimed trial at the Sessions Court in Balik Pulau, Malaysia’s Penang state, on Thursday to charges of kidnapping a Singaporean man. The accused: Liu Ting Jun, 46; Huang Jin, 39; Wang Hao Yu, 32; and Guan Siqi, 24, pleaded not guilty after the charge was read to them in Mandarin before Sessions Court Judge Ahzal Fariz Ahmad Khairuddin. According to the charge sheet, the four are alleged to have acted jointly to abduct and wrongfully confine 72-year-old...

The Philippines has deployed coastguard, military and civilian vessels in a race to find survivors on a smouldering passenger-and-cargo ferry off the western island of Palawan, after ‌a fire on board killed at least five people and left more than 80 missing. Drone footage released by the coastguard showed the blackened ferry surrounded by clear blue-green waters, with the vessel still generating smoke hours after the fire broke out on Wednesday night. Coastguard spokeswoman Commodore Noemie...

The Philippines’ military modernisation road map is set for delays over budget constraints, with critics calling out what they say is President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr’s “lip service” approach and questioning his commitment to the ambitious project. In 2024, Marcos approved a revised 1.9 trillion Philippine pesos (US$30 billion) plan to acquire newer military assets until 2034, aiming to enhance the capability of the military to project power in parts of the South China Sea that Manila considers...

Russia has rebuffed a strongly worded complaint from Japan over a statue in the city of Khabarovsk depicting a Soviet soldier smashing an imperial-era border marker bearing the Japanese emperor’s emblem, with analysts predicting bilateral relations will stay chilly. The 15-metre granite monument, commemorating the Soviet Union’s victory over Japan in 1945, shows a soldier using the butt of his rifle to shatter the border post – a replica of the markers once installed along the 50th parallel on...

Indonesia is facing ⁠a surge in emissions from wildfires burning through parched stretches of forest and peatland on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, with carbon dioxide readings currently the highest in the world, data has shown. Fire emissions from Indonesia from September 1 to September 7 reached 19.7 million metric tons, overtaking Russia this week and making up more than a third of the global total, according to Fire Emissions Watch, a portal developed by the European Union’s Copernicus...

Singapore’s DBS Bank is being sued for an estimated S$1.298 billion (US$1.03 billion) in damages linked to the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal, Southeast Asia’s largest lender DBS Group has said. The claimants include the liquidators of four companies: BlackRock Commodities (Global), Platinum Global ‌Luxury Services, Affinity Equity International Partners and TKIL Global Investments. The liquidators confirmed in an emailed statement that they ‌had filed and served a damages claim of more than...

The death toll from measles in Bangladesh topped 1,000 children since March, health officials said on Wednesday, admitting that failures in a vaccination drive could have fuelled the outbreak. The South Asian nation of 170 million has recorded 1,002 deaths and 187,484 infections among children, making this year’s outbreak the country’s deadliest in decades, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS). Measles is highly contagious, spreading through coughs and sneezes, and has...

Malaysia’s ruling Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition has doubled down on its pledge to stamp out corruption, as all eyes turn to the country’s Pardons Board, which is reportedly set to discuss the possible release of disgraced former leader Najib Razak at a meeting this week. The Pardons Board, chaired by the country’s king, is expected to meet on Friday to discuss potentially granting Najib clemency from his ongoing jail sentence for corruption linked to the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal,...

When leaders of the Brics group of emerging economies meet in New Delhi on September 12-13, India will confront an awkward paradox: the grouping has never been bigger or harder to make coherent. What informally began as a four-member bloc comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2006 has expanded into a grouping spanning Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. Its members include major energy exporters, manufacturing powers, emerging economies and countries with sharply different...

A family court has granted a man a personal protection order (PPO) against his wife, who had abused him emotionally or psychologically with text messages about him having sex with his sister. The court found that the sending of fake images and videos of the husband and his sister engaging in sexual acts, generated by artificial intelligence, amounted to family violence. The man had sought the PPO alleging that his wife had inflicted emotional or psychological abuse on him by accusing him of...

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship free nutritious meals programme is facing renewed scrutiny after yet another wave of mass food poisoning that affected more than 2,000 students, raising questions about why safeguards on paper fail to translate to food safety on the ground. A series of illnesses were reported in Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi in the past week. The latest was on Tuesday in Rembang, Central Java, where 200 students of an Islamic school showed symptoms of food poisoning...

Schools in the capital of Indonesia’s South Sumatra province switched to remote learning on Wednesday as worsening haze from forest and peatland fires pushed air pollution to unhealthy levels, adding to disruptions that had already affected more than 1.4 million students across the country, officials said. Indonesia has been plagued by forest and land fires for decades but an intensifying El Nino pattern and a prolonged dry season made the impact of the fires especially dire this year. Toxic...

South Korea is inching closer to a potentially risky military role in the Strait of Hormuz after sending a fact-finding team to the Middle East, with Seoul weighing US pressure to contribute against the threat of Iranian retaliation. The mission underscores the dilemma Seoul faces over supporting a major security ally and avoiding being dragged into a conflict it did not start. Observers argue that any deployment should be delayed, limited and conducted through a broader coalition rather than...

A gunman shot and killed a kindergarten teacher on Wednesday inside a school building in eastern Thailand, where 44 children and three other teachers were evacuated safely, authorities said. The shooting took place around 11am inside a building at the Nongplalai Municipal Kindergarten in Chonburi province, about 150km (93 miles) southeast of the capital Bangkok. All 44 students were unharmed and evacuated along with the other teachers after the shooting, according to the Chonburi provincial...

Dissent voiced in an ongoing inquiry into Australia’s most ambitious nuclear submarine pact has laid bare growing uncertainty over US commitment, amid questions about the clarity of Canberra’s explanation of the Aukus deal to citizens. Under the trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, Canberra will get eight nuclear-powered submarines at an estimated cost of up to A$368 billion (US$266 billion). Three used Virginia-class nuclear submarines will...

Malaysian politicians have slammed a Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) party leader for claiming that those who join the Islamist party would “certainly” go to heaven. Among them, Amanah vice-president Mahfuz Omar, said in a social media post on Tuesday: “PAS’ office is not an immigration counter for the afterlife, where you get a ‘heaven’ stamp upon showing your membership certificate and ballot vote.” During the PAS assembly over the weekend, secretary general Takiyuddin Hassan said party...

Nagoya in central Japan said on Wednesday that it has decided to provide emergency relief across the city where at least 41 people sustained minor injuries after a linear rain band formed, pounding the Tokai region with record rainfall the previous day. Many commuters and students were stranded for the night in Nagoya after transport was paralysed due to the rain. Around 1,600 people had taken shelter at evacuation centres as of 7pm on Tuesday and 200 vehicles had been damaged by the rain as of...

A second pilot has been arrested in the ongoing investigation of a drug trafficking case involving a Malaysia Airlines pilot arrested in Indonesia for allegedly smuggling drugs worth 45 million ringgit (US$11 million). Bukit Aman Narcotics Crime Investigation Department (NCID) director Commissioner Hussein Omar Khan said the latest arrest was made two days ago and that the suspect was believed to be in charge of handling the proceeds of the drug sales. “He was caught in the Klang Valley area and...

Thai authorities said on Wednesday they are investigating a Bangkok clinic where a Nigerian-born British businessman and influencer underwent a penis enlargement procedure that led to his death. A coroner in London last month ruled that the March 6 death of Igho Ubiribo, 43, in the Thai capital was caused by the hyaluronic acid injection he received hours earlier. The case has reignited debate about medical tourism, with Thailand a leading destination for visitors from abroad seeking healthcare,...