Asia

The Mecca security pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan stipulates that an armed attack against one shall count as an attack against all three. Yet the real message is directed at the United States: if being an American ally offers no immunity against attack, there is little point in waiting for Washington to honour its security guarantees. That there has been no official White House statement casts some doubt on whether Donald Trump is really “very happy to see that Saudi Arabia,...

Singapore’s plan to merge several islands off its southwest coast into a new hub for industry, defence and “new power generation infrastructure” has stirred speculation over whether the site could one day host a nuclear power plant. The city state is studying advanced nuclear technologies, including small modular reactors (SMRs), as part of its long-term planning for a net-zero power system, but the government has not decided whether to deploy nuclear energy, let alone where any future plant...

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has urged the country’s filmmakers to think more freely, even as recent censorship battles show how tightly the state still controls what can reach the screen. Anwar said an industry forced to repeatedly seek official approval for individual scenes could not become more creative or competitive, calling for fewer restrictions on filmmakers at a time when Malaysian productions were outperforming Hollywood titles at home. But his remarks came less than six...

A man who hid behind some plants to film a couple having extramarital sex at a rooftop garden in Singapore later used the video to threaten the woman while asking for sex and cash. When the police began investigating, the offender asked the woman to drop the case, even approaching her sister at a supermarket. Despite this ongoing investigation, the man targeted another couple having sex in a parked car and took a photograph of them before confronting them. On Tuesday, Mohammad Sharulnaim Miswan,...

The Philippines has cut its official poverty rate to below 10 per cent for the first time, a milestone officials hailed as proof that millions of Filipinos are climbing the economic ladder. Yet for families like Vhan Castro’s, there is a big difference between being officially counted as middle class and actually feeling financially secure. The 34-year-old earns an average of 40,000 pesos (US$650) a month for his family of four through a patchwork of side hustles – from renting out a van for...

South Korea is preparing to overhaul the rules governing technical qualification exams after five candidates were caught using AI-powered smart glasses to cheat in just over two months. The five cases, reported between May and June, were disclosed in data submitted to the Human Resources Development Service of Korea by opposition politician Kim So-hee, according to a report by The Korea Herald on Monday. In two of the cases – in Gwangju and Daegu – the candidates were caught because examiners...

A coalition may call itself a commitment. It still has to say what that commitment is. The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to send a letter to dozens of countries, pressing them to choose sides in the US-China artificial intelligence race. Those that join Beijing’s proposed AI cooperation framework would be excluded from the US-led AI coalition. “To be part of everything is to be part of nothing,” the draft says. An American official summarised the message more bluntly: countries...

The Philippines plans to expand its unmanned ⁠capabilities, including through development ⁠and acquisition of drones as part ⁠of efforts to modernise its military, its defence chief said on Tuesday. US defence ally the Philippines also planned to acquire additional guided-missile corvettes and other major defence assets to strengthen its external defence capabilities, Defence Secretary Gilberto ‌Teodoro told a budget hearing in the lower house of Congress. The Philippines has shifted its...

South Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor and the union representing its workers have reached a tentative deal on wages and bonuses, both sides said on Tuesday after a rare full-day strike. Around 40,000 employees of a roughly 73,000-strong domestic workforce at the country’s largest carmaker walked off the job on Friday, according to union figures, in the first such action for a decade. The union said on Monday that it had returned to talks with the company and had postponed shorter strikes planned...

We have selected seven stories from the SCMP’s coverage of Asia over the past week that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Islamic university sacks professor who claimed Malays could fly A Malaysian Islamic university has formally distanced itself from an academic whose viral claims about ancient Malay civilisation – including that Malays could fly and taught the Chinese “flying kung fu” –...

As massive forest and land fires burn across parts of Indonesia, sending haze towards neighbouring Malaysia, President Prabowo Subianto has vowed firm action against big corporations found responsible – reviving a long-running test of whether Jakarta can punish those behind the blazes and finally break the cycle. “We will go after them if they are proven guilty. We will penalise them according to the law,” Prabowo told reporters in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan, on Saturday. He flew first to...

The Japan Monkey Centre, a primate zoo in central Japan known for its winter tradition of monkeys warming themselves by bonfires, will close from mid-October to renovate ageing facilities before reopening in several years. Home to about 700 monkeys of around 50 species, the facility in Inuyama, Aichi prefecture, will open only on weekends and holidays from September, and close its gates from October 19. During the closure, it plans to use social media to post updates on the monkeys and hold...

Residents of Section 9 in Kota Damansara thought they knew what was coming to the vacant land opposite their homes. The site, beside a community forest in the Malaysian township, was expected to become a high street retail development. Instead, they learned that Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) had received an application for two three-storey data centre blocks – part of the vast physical infrastructure now being built across Southeast Asia to support cloud computing and artificial...

From switching ingredients to staggering price increases, Philippine companies are rethinking strategies to cover rising costs without losing customers squeezed by inflation and a weak peso. The Philippines is now grappling with the second-weakest growth and fastest inflation among Southeast Asia’s economies after a corruption scandal weighed on confidence and the Iran war stoked consumer prices. The peso, Asia’s third-worst-performing currency this year, is also making imports more...

The number of theft cases in homes jumped by about 25 per cent in the first half of 2026, even as Singapore’s overall physical crime situation remained stable. There were 459 thefts in dwelling cases at residential premises in the first six months of the year, up 25.1 per cent from 367 cases over the same period in 2025, according to the Singapore police’s midyear crime brief for 2026. Theft in dwelling cases across all types of premises rose just slightly, by 0.6 per cent, from 726 cases in the...

South Korea and the US agreed to maintain close coordination on efforts to revive dialogue with North Korea, days after Pyongyang rebuffed President Donald Trump’s overtures and launched a barrage of short-range ballistic missiles. South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a phone call late on Monday that Seoul would work to ensure that Trump’s recent messages lead to renewed US-North Korea discussions and peace on the Korean peninsula, Seoul’s Foreign...

Music made by artificial intelligence will be banned from Australia’s top charts under new guidelines aimed at protecting “the human nature of artistry”, an industry body said on Tuesday. Under new rules in force from Friday, music must be “substantially human made” to be eligible for the charts, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said. “Wholly AI-generated tracks will not be eligible for the ARIA Charts,” the group said. It said its charts would exclude songs that use AI “to...

Two outlandish claims that gained large audiences online in Japan recently have “shocked” misinformation experts, who say conspiracy-style narratives are feeding on disaster anxiety, fading wartime memory and an online information ecosystem that rewards outrage and suspicion. In the aftermath of the July 28 earthquake in Kumamoto prefecture in southern Japan, a social media user claimed that seismic data from the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience showed the...

Tukaram Mundhe is an Indian bureaucrat on a mission. As a state food safety commissioner, the 51-year-old has raided food businesses in the country’s commercial capital Mumbai in an unprecedented crackdown on poor hygiene and unsafe food that has captivated the public nationwide. Mundhe has led the suspension of food permits of four Domino’s and one Pizza Hut outlet in recent weeks, and has also targeted cricket clubs, hotels and well-known restaurants in over 3,000 raids since he took over as...

South Korea said on Monday that the United States had cancelled a large joint amphibious landing exercise scheduled for next month due to constraints on force availability caused by the war with Iran. The biennial Ssangyong drills involve marine forces from South Korea and the US and are designed to strengthen combined operations, typically involving warships, aircraft and ground forces rehearsing amphibious landings. The cancellation follows US President Donald Trump’s order last week to scale...

Singapore’s latest pro-family push has been welcomed by some parents for tackling the costs of raising children, but others say lower fees and more leave are unlikely on their own to overcome deeper worries over time, careers, housing and lifestyle. During the annual National Day Rally on Sunday night, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced a raft of measures to make having children more appealing in the city state. These include increasing childcare leave based on the number of children a...

Indonesia has given Malaysian agencies ⁠official permission ⁠to enter its ⁠airspace to conduct cloud seeding operations, Malaysia’s environment minister has said, part of both countries’ efforts to combat the haze blanketing the region. Indonesia has been stepping ‌up efforts to slow the spread of haze caused by forest and land fires across several provinces, which this month led to dozens of school closures, including in neighbouring Malaysia. Malaysia’s national disaster management agency and...

In global commercial real estate investment markets, data centres are all the rage. While stock markets continue to suffer bouts of volatility as sentiment oscillates between concerns artificial intelligence (AI) will fall short of expectations and fears it will prove more disruptive than many think, the fundamentals of data centres are exceptionally strong. According to JLL, global data centre occupancy was 97 per cent at the end of last year while 77 per cent of all capacity under construction...

Malaysian politician Mukhriz Mahathir has triggered a social media storm after declaring in a video that he “hates Americans, all of them”, over Washington’s support for Israel – echoing the fierce anti-US rhetoric long associated with his father, former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. “I hate Americans. I despise Israelis, but I hate Americans, all of them,” Mukhriz said in the video, posted on Saturday. “It matters not if they’re Republican or Democrat, pro-Israel or pro-Palestine. None of it...

A Malaysian Islamic university has formally distanced itself from an academic whose viral claims about ancient Malay civilisation – including that Malays could fly and taught the Chinese “flying kung fu” – have drawn ridicule from historians. In a statement on Sunday, the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) said Solehah Yaacob, a former linguistics professor, had been terminated from academic service on April 27 and was no longer entitled to claim any affiliation with the...

New ⁠Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Monday his party would introduce a bill in parliament that seeks to ban children under 16 from using social media, proposing fines of up to 10 per cent of a ‌platform’s global revenue for non-compliance. The bill would require social media platforms to take reasonable steps to verify users’ ages, including by using existing account information, facial technology and digital identity documents. “We simply cannot accept the harm being done to a...

A twist of fate put a guitar in Nene Royal’s hands. Aged seven, she wanted to join the computer science club at her school in Phuket, Thailand, but it was already full. “The only place left was in the music club, and the teacher handed me a guitar,” she told This Week in Asia. “The moment I started playing, something clicked.” Now just 16, the self-taught rocker has a shot at global stardom on the world’s most watched talent show, America’s Got Talent. “I learned by watching YouTube videos,...

The Philippines is positioning itself as Latin America’s bridge to Southeast Asia, testing whether shared history and culture can translate into hard trade figures as Asean and the Mercosur bloc look beyond their traditional partners. Manila’s Foreign Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro made the pitch during visits to Brazil and Chile from August 10 to 13. “Upon this human foundation, commercial bridges thrive: the Philippines stands as the premier strategic gateway for Latin American firms expanding...

Australia’s shortage of air traffic controllers is showing signs of nearing a breaking point after the country’s busiest airport recorded at least four near misses in the past month. Since late July, incidents at Sydney Airport included a passenger jet aborting its take-off because there was a plane in its path. In a separate close call, an aircraft that was taxiing had to slam on the brakes to avoid colliding with another jet. Short-staffed control towers have long been a problem globally, but...

Residents of Malaysian villages near the Thailand border were left shaken this weekend after hearing loud booms and seeing flashes of light across the frontier, as Thai authorities confirmed more than 50 coordinated attacks on Saturday night. The blasts, heard in Kampung Lubok Gong and Kampung Tersang in Malaysia’s Kelantan state, coincided with a wave of near-simultaneous attacks across 21 districts in Thailand’s Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces beginning around 8pm local time on...