Asia

Cambodia’s acting head of state, former prime minister Hun Sen, pardoned opposition leader Kem Sokha on Monday from a sentence of almost three decades for treason. Kem Sokha, who was convicted of trying to topple the former long-ruling leader’s government and sentenced to 27 years, “is pardoned”, Hun Sen posted on social media alongside a royal decree signed by him. Hun Sen, who ruled Cambodia for nearly four decades, stepped down as prime minister in 2023 and handed power to his eldest son, Hun...

India’s ruling Hindu-nationalist party has ordered detention centres for undocumented Bangladeshis and Rohingyas in West Bengal state, sparking fear among minorities that it could lead to arbitrary expulsions. The directive comes just days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won power in the eastern state for the first time since the country’s independence in 1947. The order calls on local authorities to set up “holding centres” for “apprehended foreigners” awaiting...

A suspected tear gas incident at Tokyo’s Ginza Six luxury shopping centre left 26 people feeling unwell on Monday, prompting a large emergency response in one of Japan’s most famous commercial districts. The incident took place around noon at the mall in Tokyo’s Chuo ward after police received an emergency call reporting an irritating smell and people coughing inside it, Japanese media reported. Nineteen of the 26 people affected were taken to hospital after complaining of symptoms including...

A new US immigration policy could force many green card applicants to leave the country and apply from abroad, disrupting families, careers and long-term settlement plans for Asian workers already facing years-long backlogs for visas. US Citizenship and Immigration Services said on May 22 that it would only grant “adjustment of status” – the process that allows prospective immigrants already in the US to apply for permanent residence without leaving the country – in “extraordinary...

Philippine rescuers were racing against time on Monday in a search for possible signs of life more than 24 hours after the collapse of a building under construction in the city of Angeles, with crews carefully removing rocks and surrounding debris by hand. The painstaking manual operation around 80 km (50 miles) north of the capital Manila underscored the difficulty of the rescue effort, ‌carried out under scorching heat, with authorities unable to rely on excavators and other machinery for fear...

In a cluster of villages in Pakistan’s largely ⁠rural Chakwal district, more than 100 Shiite Muslims have returned from the United Arab Emirates without jobs, luggage or access to the savings they spent years building abroad. They are among potentially thousands of Shi’ites deported from the UAE to Pakistan during the Iran war, raising alarm in Pakistan’s Shiite community and prompting Human Rights Watch to investigate. Journalists reviewed immigration documents, visa-status screenshots and...

The desperate search for seven villagers in Laos prospecting for gold who became trapped deep inside a flooded cave entered a sixth day on Monday, with the incident highlighting how surging prices have sparked a rush for the precious metal despite risks in unstable hillside mines. Thai cave rescue teams have joined the mission at the cave in central Xaysomboun province, posting harrowing images on social media of the conditions, which include crawling through a flooded, narrow tunnel leading to...

Former chairman of Seven & i Holdings Toshifumi Suzuki, credited for the global success of 7-Eleven convenience stores, had died at the age of 93, according to the company. Suzuki - known as the “father of the convenience store” in Japan - died due to heart failure on May 18, the company said in a statement on Monday. “We would like to express our deepest gratitude for the kindness shown to him during his lifetime and respectfully inform you of his passing,” the statement said. Suzuki is known...

A dispute over where churches and temples can operate in Malaysia’s richest state has become an awkward political test for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s ruling coalition, which came to power promising to protect the country’s multiracial and multi-faith society. The row centres on planning guidelines in Selangor, a wealthy and densely populated state surrounding Kuala Lumpur, that critics say could restrict non-Islamic places of worship in commercial areas, where many religious groups have long...

Around 20 people were injured at a luxury shopping complex in the Japanese capital of Tokyo on Monday after a man sprayed a substance inside, police and fire department officials said. Tokyo police spokesman Yusuke Koide said that a man sprayed a substance at an ATM on the ground floor of the building, while a local fire department official said “around 20 people were injured” after a report of a “smell”. The road in front of the mall – located in the touristy and upmarket shopping district of...

A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative country. Siranudh Scott, a fourth-generation member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his older brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his thirties, later denied the allegations in a video...

Singapore train operator SMRT will be stepping up pest control measures at its stations and depots after a video circulating online showed a rat on one of its trains. In the video posted on social media on Saturday, a rat is seen scurrying around the cabin of a train as two people attempt to corner it. People are also seen lifting their legs to avoid it as it scurries past them. “SMRT is aware of a post online about a rat sighting on board one of our trains on the East-West Line,” said SMRT...

Three people ⁠were killed ⁠and one was ⁠injured in an accident during lifeboat maintenance work at a floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessel operated by Malaysian state energy ‌firm Petronas on Sunday, the firm said. Petronas, or Petroliam Nasional Berhad, said in a statement on Monday the incident occurred around 12.50pm at FSO Sepat off Terengganu state on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Three ‌workers were pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital, while the injured ‌staff member...

Each morning, people in Thailand wake up to the latest viral videos on social media of drunken punch-ups, thefts, scams or acts of public indecency committed by some foreign tourists. After months of warnings, Thailand on May 19 announced the cancellation of its 60-day visa-free entry rules for 93 countries and territories in a bid to curb crime, antisocial behaviour and abuse of the visa privilege by a portion of the tens of millions of tourists who have visited the kingdom annually. Visitors...

Singapore’s economy expanded faster than expected in the first quarter as the global artificial-intelligence boom lifted the nation’s manufacturing and services, offsetting the drag from higher crude prices. Gross domestic product grew a seasonally adjusted 1 per cent in the three months through March from the previous quarter, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) said on Monday. That is well above the government’s advance estimate of a 0.3 per cent contraction and the median forecast of a...

A photographer shooting the final day of the World Surf League (WSL) in New ⁠Zealand was injured by what organisers suspect was a sea lion or shark bite on Monday, forcing the event to be put on hold for several hours. The New Zealand Pro semi-final between Brazilian world champions Yago Dora and Italo Ferreira at Raglan was halted after the ‌in-water photographer suffered puncture wounds and needed medical attention, the WSL said. “This morning one of the water photography team suffered a...

Southeast Asia has been planning a unified electricity grid since 1997. Now, nearly 30 years later, its leaders are giving renewed impetus to the push to get energy flowing seamlessly across borders and seabeds. In Cebu earlier this month, leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations put the power grid’s development high on their summit agenda, aiming to better insulate the region against the next big energy shock. But as regional governments try to turn the decades-long dream of an...

A blast targeting a train carrying military personnel killed at least 24 people on Sunday in Pakistan’s turbulent southwestern province of Balochistan, a senior official said. Army servicemen and their relatives were among the victims of the attack in the provincial capital Quetta, with over 50 people wounded, the official told AFP. The attack, claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) militant group, was branded a “cowardly” act of terrorism by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Images...

Japan’s immigration authorities plan to crack down on visa overstayers and illegal foreign workers by monitoring social media and other platforms for information or leads. The initiative is part of the country’s efforts to reduce the number of overstayers at a time when Japan is taking in more foreign workers due to labour shortages. As early as next year, the Immigration Services Agency plans to use analytical tools to identify online information related to illegal work, including solicitations...

Population ageing is fast becoming a global phenomenon. Even regions currently enjoying youthful demographics will eventually undergo demographic transition – and this is increasingly relevant for developing countries too. Some Southeast Asian economies, Thailand and Vietnam among them, have already reached the intermediate stages of this transition. It has begun even in younger economies such as the Philippines, where the fertility rate has now fallen below replacement level. Conventional...

A nine-storey building under construction in a city north of the Philippine capital collapsed before dawn on Sunday, leaving at least one Malaysian tourist dead and at least 21 people, mostly workers, trapped in the rubble, officials said. Two were located alive but could not be immediately extricated. At least 24 workers either managed to dash out of the building, where they mostly slept on the ground floor, or were rescued after it crumbled to the ground around 2:30am in a crowded...

A US plan to build an “AI-native” industrial hub in the Philippines has highlighted the political sensitivities around Washington’s push to secure critical technology supply chains, after Manila rejected proposals for the zone to be governed by US laws or covered by diplomatic protections. Philippine officials said the planned economic security zone under Washington’s Pax Silica initiative would remain covered by local laws, clarifying that there would be “no special arrangement” for the...

Thailand’s navy has to watch two seas at once. To the east lies the Gulf of Thailand, with its busy shipping lanes, offshore energy interests and long coastal frontier with Cambodia. To the west is the Andaman Sea, a gateway to the Indian Ocean with its own trade routes, chokepoints and strategic pressures. That twin-sea geography has long given the Royal Thai Navy a role larger than its public profile might suggest. It also underpins the navy’s stated goal, laid out in a 2023 white paper, to...

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday called India a natural partner and invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington, turning the page at least rhetorically on friction despite new-found US warmth towards China. One week after joining US President Donald Trump on a state visit to Beijing, Rubio – visiting both Asian powers for the first time – flew to New Delhi and met Modi for more than an hour, inviting the premier to visit the White House soon. “The world’s oldest democracy in...

India’s state-run refiners raised retail prices again of diesel and petrol on Saturday to help processors cut losses on discounted sales and to control a spike in demand. Prices of both fuels rose by nearly one per cent, or less than 1 rupee, with petrol now sold at 99.51 rupees (US$1.0399) and diesel at 92.49 rupees per litre in New Delhi, according to the website of Indian Oil Corporation, the country’s largest fuel retailer. Prices vary across India due to local taxes. Smaller peers Bharat...

New Zealand intends to spend about NZ$1.6 billion (US$936 million) on drones, ship maintenance and naval upgrades to bolster the island nation’s maritime security at a time of increasing concern about supply routes. Defence Minister Chris Penk said on Saturday that the government would invest in two types of drones: one for the southwest Pacific to provide long-duration intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and the other a polar-capable vehicle that could operate from naval vessels in...

Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio has twice in recent weeks urged the country’s armed forces to defend its sovereignty, in a carefully calibrated attempt to sound more assertive on the South China Sea issue without directly challenging Beijing, according to analysts. While Duterte-Carpio did not name China, her repeated calls marked a tonal shift from her earlier approach, when she either avoided the issue or warned against letting it define Manila’s broader relationship with...

For many Indonesians who have built careers abroad, Nadiem Makarim once represented a particular kind of homecoming success story. The Brown and Harvard University-educated co-founder of Gojek had walked away from the start-up world to serve in government, bringing with him the aura of Indonesia’s technology boom and the promise that private-sector talent could help modernise the state. Now, with prosecutors seeking an 18-year prison sentence for the former education minister in a corruption...

A rare albino buffalo with flowing blond hair ⁠has become an unlikely ⁠celebrity in Bangladesh ahead of the ⁠Eid al-Adha festival, drawing crowds of curious visitors who say the animal bears a striking resemblance to US President Donald Trump. The nearly 700kg (1,540lbs) buffalo, raised at a farm in Narayanganj district near the ‌capital Dhaka, has been nicknamed “Donald Trump” because of the tuft of pale hair falling across its forehead – a feature many say mirrors the American leader’s...

When Xi Jinping and Donald Trump concluded their Beijing summit, the most consequential outcome – for China at least – may prove not material, but conceptual: the adoption of “constructive strategic stability” (CSS) as the guiding framework for managing their intensifying competition. For Southeast Asia, a region often caught in the rivalry between the two powers, understanding what this means will matter in the years ahead. The framework reflects a long-held Chinese strategic aspiration....