Asia

Thailand has moved to make weight-loss pens prescription-only, as a glut of the GLP-1 medicines – which mimic the hormones released once someone is full – floods the black market and influencers swarm TikTok to extol the quick wins of the simple injections. The Southeast Asian nation, which is never far behind wellness or aesthetic trends and has a notorious black market in counterfeit drugs, has seen the uptake of GLP-1 medicines skyrocket, doctors say, including the market-leading Ozempic...

Property agent Raymond Heng had suspected True Fitness was struggling, but he did not expect the gym he had visited for more than a decade to disappear overnight. The closure was not entirely surprising given the region’s fiercely competitive fitness industry, but its abruptness left Heng, 47, in disbelief after paying S$8,800 (US$6,900) for a lifetime membership in 2013. “I guessed that they might not have been doing that well since branches have been closing over the years, but I did not...

As Rodrigo Duterte’s crimes-against-humanity trial looms, an international tribunal faces the challenge of managing a sprawling prosecution case around the health of an 81-year-old former president of the Philippines, on top of shielding the proceedings from a highly charged media environment. Those pressures came into focus at an International Criminal Court (ICC) status conference on Wednesday, when Presiding Judge Joanna Korner urged prosecutors to trim their witness list and evidence ahead...

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has drawn a clear line against any US request for Seoul to join the war against Iran, explicitly ruling out the dispatch of troops or military assets that could involve his country in the conflict. The stance comes amid mounting public opposition to any military deployment and growing pressure from Washington for Seoul to contribute to efforts to secure freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Lee’s government faces the difficult task of balancing...

Indonesia welcomed its first aircraft carrier on Friday, a former Italian warship that the government says will strengthen the archipelago nation’s maritime security and disaster response capabilities. The 41-year-old former ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi, with capacity for short take-off and vertical landing aircraft and helicopters, was welcomed with a military ceremony upon its arrival at a naval base in North Jakarta’s Tanjung Priok seaport. Rome in March agreed to give the carrier, which was...

A 16-year-old student shot dead at least two fellow students and then killed himself at a school in the southern Philippines on Friday, provincial officials said. Eight others were injured, with four in critical condition. All the victims – Grade 9 students at Banga National High School – were aged 14 to 17, said Albert Palencia, mayor of Banga town in South Cotabato, where the shooting took place. The incident follows two fatal gun incidents since June at schools in the Philippines, where...

Heavy rains triggered flooding and landslides across northern Vietnam, killing three people and damaging thousands of homes as well as more than 22,000 hectares (54,000 acres) of crops. The northern region has experienced downpours since Monday, with some areas receiving as much as 653mm (26 inches) of rain, according to a statement on the government’s website. More than 16,000 houses have been inundated while rice and other crops have been damaged. National and provincial roads have been...

Two decades into an insurgency that has killed thousands in southern Thailand, a leader of the main Malay–Muslim separatist group has vowed to keep fighting until it achieves its goals. “This struggle will continue until the end of time,” Nikmatullah Seri, the spokesman for the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) peace negotiation delegation, said in a rare interview. “As long as our objectives remain unachieved, we will continue to fight.” Militants from BRN have fought for an independent Islamic...

Malaysia’s Pardons Board on Friday agreed to allow disgraced former prime minister Najib Razak to serve out the remainder of his jail term under house arrest. King Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar granted Najib a “conditional pardon”, where the former leader is required to settle his 50 million ringgit (US$12.3 million) fine before he can be transferred to his home to complete his sentence, due to end on August 23, 2028. “He must abide by these conditions, and should he fail to fulfil any of these...

Malaysia could struggle to preserve some domestic air links if low-cost carrier AirAsia is forced to scale back operations, analysts have warned, as rival airlines would have little commercial incentive to take over unprofitable routes. That reality could leave the government facing a stark choice: allow domestic flight services to shrink or step in with subsidies for essential routes, rather than assuming competitors will automatically fill any void left by the country’s largest budget...

Waymo plans to launch its robotaxi service in Singapore in 2028, giving the US company its first foothold in Southeast Asia. Fully electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles were due to arrive in the city state in the coming months, ahead of preparations for a commercial launch, the company said on Friday. From 2027, trained autonomous specialists will manually drive the vehicles to help Waymo adapt its technology to Singapore’s road layouts, monsoon conditions and other local features. The service is...

For fishermen like Joey Marabe in the Philippine province of Zambales, the geopolitical contest playing out in the South China Sea can be measured in dwindling catches and shrinking incomes, as the presence of Chinese vessels around a contested shoal increasingly limits where they can work. “It’s a huge drop. Before, a lot of us who could go out to Scarborough Shoal used to bring home around 15,000 pesos (US$238) a week, a comfortable amount for our families,” said Marabe, a resident of Masinloc...

Australia’s major airlines have backed a proposal to close Sydney Airport’s control tower overnight to free up air traffic controllers, the latest step to address a persistent labour shortage that is disrupting flights and raising safety concerns. “It sounds like an opportunity we should absolutely explore,” said Stephen Beckett, chief executive officer of Airlines for Australia & New Zealand, the group that represents Qantas Airways, its low-cost carrier Jetstar, and Virgin Australia Holdings....

A Singaporean climber died on Nepal’s Mount Manaslu, the world’s eighth highest peak, expedition organisers said. Lau Wee Seng, 50, felt unwell as he was descending from Camp II at around 6,000 metres after an acclimatisation rotation, according to The Himalayan Times newspaper. “He passed away this morning; arrangements have been made to airlift his body,” Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions said on Thursday. The mountaineer had arrived in Samagaun on September 7 as part of a team aiming to scale...

Poland’s delivery of Black Hawk helicopters to the Philippines has given Warsaw a foothold in Manila’s defence market as it seeks to expand exports from its growing defence industry, with analysts saying drones, air defence and potentially co-production could pave the way for a broader partnership. Polish deputy foreign minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski said on Tuesday that Warsaw was keen to pursue further defence partnerships with the Philippines, as Poland has poured US$50 billion into...

The Himalayan disaster that tore through the China-Nepal border last month was a human calamity before it became a media story. A torrent of ice, rock, mud and debris swept through valleys, destroying key infrastructure, severing roads and communications, and leaving families desperate for news. In Gyirong county in the Tibet autonomous region, the disaster hit a major border crossing and created a rescue environment as physically difficult as any imaginable. The human toll extends beyond the...

A Malaysian woman has died while scuba diving after she was caught in strong currents in Bali, Indonesia. According to local media portal Bali News, the victim, Siti Nuraini Rusidi, 40, was on a diving trip with a divemaster, boat captain and several other divers when the incident occurred at 11.10am local time on Wednesday. The trip’s divemaster, Eugenius Franciso Ray, 33, had reportedly raised concerns over her health when he noticed her coughing when the group was at the first dive site at...

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has issued a withering rebuke to foreigners behaving badly in Thailand following a wave of scandals involving illegal businesses and landholdings including a cemetery, saying the cases have “gone too far” by breaching Thai law and hospitality. Facing mounting public backlash against illegal foreign ownership of swathes of the country enabled by endemic corruption, Anutin’s government has halved the visa-free entry period to 30 days for most countries and...

It is clear that US President Donald Trump is pushing hard for a fresh summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the coming months. To achieve that, he appears prepared to downgrade and jeopardise the US-South Korea alliance, as seen in his recent move to scale back joint military exercises. For Trump, this will be a purely bilateral exercise, with both Seoul and Beijing totally sidelined, let alone Moscow and Tokyo. Equally, there is now a general acceptance that the issue of...

India and Vietnam could turn their competition for “China plus one” investments into a complementary partnership, analysts say, combining New Delhi’s scale and technology capabilities with Hanoi’s manufacturing agility and links to East Asian supply chains. Such a shift could deepen both nations’ roles in global production networks across high-value industries – from electronics and pharmaceuticals to renewable energy – while giving companies reliable alternatives as they diversify supply chains...

When Cindi suffered her first severe psychotic episode a decade ago, she could no longer tell where reality ended and her imagination began. “My reality and fantasy [were] all distorted. I had no idea what was real, what was not,” the 38-year-old, who asked to be identified only by her first name, told This Week in Asia. “It was so severe to the point that I couldn’t even recognise my own family members. My mother was there, my brother was there, but they didn’t feel like my mother or my...

Indonesia’s latest ferry disaster has exposed persistent weaknesses in maritime safety oversight, experts have said, with poor enforcement and inadequate supervision continuing to leave passengers vulnerable across the sprawling archipelago. The capsizing of the Virgo Transport 8 in the Java Sea on Sunday has intensified scrutiny of a system that analysts say too often comes under pressure only after deadly accidents, rather than preventing them. Six people have been confirmed dead and 129...

A diagnosed paedophile who sexually abused 11 girls over 33 years, with the acts ranging from molestation to rape, was sentenced by a Singapore court on Thursday to 21 years’ jail. The victims were as young as five, and included his daughter, granddaughters, nieces and students at an enrichment centre he ran with his wife. The judge noted that the jail term should not be crushing or amount to a life sentence for the 71-year-old man, who suffers from a rare blood cancer called myelofibrosis. At...

Authorities in Malaysia have seized several more Israel-bound shipments at one of the country’s biggest ports, according to people familiar with the matter, an apparently new level of scrutiny in a nation where anti-Israeli sentiment runs high. Three containers bound for Ashdod Port south of Tel Aviv were detained at Malaysia’s Tanjung Pelepas port in mid-August and to date had not been released as authorities investigate their contents, the people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be...

Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jnr has won a burst of online support among Filipinos who see him as one of Manila’s most outspoken senior officials against China, with some already asking whether it could give him enough political momentum to carry him into the 2028 elections. His latest boost came after a viral moment at the Seoul Defence Dialogue on September 8, where he read out a handwritten note reiterating Beijing’s rejection of the 2016 South China Sea arbitration ruling...

Russia is increasingly mobilising North Korean workers to build military drones for use against Ukraine in defiance of international sanctions, giving Pyongyang a key source of revenue to fund its unlawful weapons programmes, according to a report by the US and its allies. Up to 25,000 North Koreans were believed to be working in Russia’s drone industry, including at facilities in Alabuga, Tatarstan, where unmanned aerial vehicles were assembled, the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team said...

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has called for stricter regulations and sanctions against those who use slash and burn methods to clear land, as the country struggles to contain wildfires that have been raging for weeks. Indonesia is battling its most intense wildfires in 11 years, with “super El Nino” weather parching ‌the country’s forests and fields. The islands of Borneo and Sumatra have been the worst hit, with the hazardous haze causing a spike in respiratory illnesses. Transboundary...

Electronic payment providers need to be more diligent in vetting companies that use their platforms to protect people from fraud, the Philippine central bank said. The requirement came after Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas found thousands of illegal businesses on the payment platforms, including many online casinos masquerading as more ordinary companies like beauty salons and bakeries. “We want to protect consumers from online fraud, illegal activities and also from money launderers,” Deputy...

When transgender woman Kali Sidharth Medepalli began hormone replacement therapy in India, she expected to complete her medical transition and undergo surgery within a year. But just months after she began treatment earlier this year, India’s parliament amended the country’s transgender law, and the clinic where she was receiving care stopped her medicines. “Everything shut down,” the 23-year-old communications specialist and LGBTQ rights activist said in the southern city of Hyderabad. Kali...

Okinawa has handed a landslide victory to a conservative who accepts Tokyo’s plans for relocating a controversial US airbase – delivering a blow to 12 years of anti-base politics in Japan’s southernmost prefecture. Genta Koja’s victory on Sunday over two-term governor Denny Tamaki raised a question cutting to the heart of Okinawa’s post-war politics: is it finally starting to move on from the US military base issue? Koja, a 42-year-old conservative backed by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae...