Asia

Nearly 200 nations have struck hard-fought agreements at a UN biodiversity summit, but the outcome was accompanied by disappointment over missed opportunities to address humanity’s destructive toll on nature. Delegates cheered on Friday as crucial texts were approved in overtime but the celebrations were tempered by acrimonious debates and regret over limited progress on some of the most contentious issues. The Cop17 summit in Armenia sought to revive a landmark commitment to halt and reverse...

In the Land of the Rising Sun, Bangladesh looks forward to a new dawn. The hope that comes with Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s visit to Japan goes beyond the deals signed or the financial support expected. It shows a country that has emerged from authoritarian rule and wants to turn its new political voice into bigger economic chances and freedom of choice. For a government chosen by the people, foreign policy must answer one question: how does it make life better for the people who gave it...

Malaysia’s Melaka state began its election campaign on Saturday after 79 candidates were cleared to contest a poll testing whether Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s governing partners can turn an opportunistic alliance with his Islamist opponents into a platform for national power. The coastal state south of Kuala Lumpur heads to the polls on November 14, handing the United Malays National Organisation (Umno) and the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) another opening to deepen cooperation after...

The United States, South Korea and Japan reaffirmed their commitment to the “complete denuclearisation” of North Korea on Saturday, as Pyongyang continues to reject disarmament ahead of possible talks with Washington. Speculation is mounting over a potential meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at next month’s Apec summit in China, with Trump making repeated overtures to Pyongyang for nuclear talks. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, South Korean Foreign...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended an exhibition devoted to drones and called for rapidly expanding the country’s drone technology, state media reported on Friday, as his military escalates threats against South Korea and the United States. Acquiring advanced drones is a top priority for Kim, who now wants to strengthen conventional and nuclear capabilities to counter what he calls US-led security threats. It is unclear how far North Korea’s drone programme has progressed. Experts say...

A village that sent hundreds of men to one of imperial Japan’s most notorious wartime units is being demolished to make way for a runway at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. Unit 731 carried out lethal experiments on captives, many of them Chinese, to develop biological weapons during the second world war. Around 300 of its roughly 3,000 personnel came from Kamo, a neighbourhood in Shibayama town, Chiba prefecture, east of the capital. Its founder and commander, Lieutenant General Shiro...

Nafeesa Azman has applied for hundreds of jobs over the past two months, yet the 24-year-old Malaysian marketing graduate is yet to find a permanent role that pays what she needs or uses the skills she spent years, and a good deal of money, developing. Natthanicha Intawong, a final-year media arts student in Bangkok, describes the terror many of her peers feel as they prepare to enter a jobs market that artificial intelligence is already beginning to scythe through. For Joshua Nai, a Singaporean...

China has broken up a major transnational drug trafficking network in cooperation with Indonesia and Malaysia, seizing around 1.2 tonnes of liquid methamphetamine, China’s Ministry of Public Security said on Friday. The operation was carried out on October 21 by Indonesia’s National Narcotics Agency (BNN), which raided and shut down a large-scale drug processing and purification facility in Aceh, Indonesia, and arrested 11 people, with help from China’s National Narcotics Control Commission...

Australia’s preparations for a possible conflict with China reflect “a relatively superficial understanding”, argues prominent economist John Edwards. Europe, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia and India, he notes, are not preparing for such a conflict. Why should Australia? Edwards, a former senior economic adviser to former Labor prime minister Paul Keating, makes the observation in a Lowy Institute paper released in October and in a newspaper interview. Instead, he sees US-China rivalry as a...

Transnational drug syndicates in the Philippines continue to thrive despite decades of crackdowns targeting street-level dealers, with analysts warning that regional suppliers, financiers and trafficking networks have largely eluded enforcement efforts. Former drug officials and security analysts say the country’s drug trade remains closely connected to a wider regional supply chain, with criminal groups relying on local partners, maritime routes and established distribution networks to move...

In recent weeks, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has frequently taken to the streets – joining protest marches, staging sit-ins at police stations and confronting authorities over alleged abuses of power and corruption. Often trading the formal attire traditionally worn by India’s political elite for a T-shirt and jeans, Gandhi’s high-visibility participation in grass-roots demonstrations has drawn wide attention as he seeks to place himself at the forefront of a growing movement of...

South Korea will file criminal complaints against students caught cheating on a national university entrance exam with smart glasses and toughen penalties for their use, a government official has said. Sales of smart glasses – which allow the wearer to shoot photos and videos and interact with an AI assistant among other abilities – are growing worldwide. But so is a backlash around the gadgets, including concerns over people being filmed without consent and their use by exam cheats. South...

Indonesia is looking beyond Singapore for petrol supplies as it seeks to reduce its dependence on a single source, but analysts say diversifying imports will do little to address the country’s fuel production shortfall without faster refinery modernisation and investment in alternative fuels. Indonesia has long sourced petroleum products from Singapore, including RON 90 petrol, which has a minimum octane rating of 90 and is marketed domestically as Pertalite. Singapore’s geographic proximity,...

Recent school attacks across Malaysia have shone a light on a troubling trend of teenagers joining an online subculture that glamorises real-life killers, according to a prominent security analyst. Three violent incidents in Malaysian schools – in Kuching on October 21, Banting in July and Bandar Utama in October last year – could be linked to the True Crime Community (TCC), said Munira Mustaffa, founder of Kuala Lumpur-based security consulting firm Chasseur Group. In the Kuching case, the...

Malaysia received its first South Korean-made light combat jet on Friday under a nearly 4 billion ringgit (US$990 million) procurement, in what analysts describe as welcome relief for an ageing air force still years away from replacing its frontline fighters. The FA-50M Block 20 jet arrived at the air force base in Labuan, off Borneo, with a second expected in Kuantan on the peninsula’s east coast next Monday. They are the first of 18 aircraft ordered from Korea Aerospace Industries under a deal...

Pollution from smoke emitted by months of wildfires across Indonesia caused an estimated 3,560 deaths in the vast Southeast Asian archipelago in September, according to a new study. The same month, about 57.8 million people in Indonesia were inhaling unhealthy to hazardous air, said the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Helsinki-based think tank. “Worsening air quality due to forest and land fires in Indonesia pushed the estimated death toll to 3,560 cases in September 2026,...

Seven members have been selected for a specialist panel that will assess companies identified by the Singapore government over potential links to transboundary haze, the Ministry of Law (MinLaw) and National Environment Agency (NEA) said on Friday. Three are investigation firms: Control Risks Group, FTI Consulting (Singapore) and Kroll Singapore. The remaining four are law firms or legal advisers: Dentons Rodyk & Davidson, Toby Landau, King’s Counsel of Duxton Hill Chambers, TSMP Law Corporation...

The number of Malaysians detained overseas for drug-related offences increased to 1,588 as of September this year, according to Deputy Foreign Minister Lukanisman Awang Sauni. Lukanisman said the five countries with the highest numbers of Malaysians detained were Indonesia (381), China (380), Singapore (310), Thailand (102) and Japan (72). He said increasingly sophisticated drug-smuggling methods had contributed to the frequent arrests of Malaysians overseas. “A total of 1,181 Malaysians were...

Australian mushroom murderer Erin Patterson lost a bid to overturn her convictions and had a harsher sentence imposed on Friday, failing to prove she was wrongfully jailed for killing three people with a poisoned lunch. Patterson was found guilty last year of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt, deliberately lacing their beef Wellington meal with highly toxic death cap mushrooms. The 52-year-old maintained her triple murder convictions were a “miscarriage of justice”, urging the...

While many parents still question whether to give their children access to artificial intelligence, Malaysian tech worker Pravin Ganesan has embraced it to solve a very practical problem: helping his eight-year-old daughter with homework he sometimes struggles to explain. Pravin, 42, taught her a few basic prompts and checked the answers closely, finding that generative AI is particularly good at breaking down difficult concepts into child-friendly terms. “It has helped her learn and understand...

Thailand’s government said on Thursday it had revoked the citizenship of a prominent head rabbi who was a naturalised Thai, as the country tightens enforcement of its immigration laws. Rabbi Yosef Chaim Kantor’s Thai citizenship was stripped over his repeated use of his US passport after naturalisation in 2013, according to an interior ministry statement. The order was signed by Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who is also interior minister. Thai law prohibits naturalised citizens from...

Singapore’s decision to send its top diplomat to Indonesia on a surprise visit, following days of terse exchanges over a regional haze, underscores a bid to defuse growing tensions and seek a direct channel to President Prabowo Subianto. Analysts say Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan’s trip reflected his country’s preference for measured diplomacy amid rising nationalistic rhetoric in Indonesia, with the city state also mindful of containing any “negative fallout” as Jakarta grapples with...

The former prime minister who helped bring down Anwar Ibrahim’s political alliance six years ago has now agreed to back his government in parliament, in a surprise deal struck just before the passage of Malaysia’s 2027 budget at its first voting stage on Thursday. Muhyiddin Yassin, who governed Malaysia from 2020 to 2021, joined 12 other opposition and independent lawmakers in pledging support for Anwar’s administration, hours before parliament approved the government’s 459.8 billion ringgit...

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s re-election should provide continuity for the country’s trade push into Southeast Asia, analysts say, as Vietnam and Indonesia pursue preferential trade agreements with Mercosur, the South American bloc in which Brazil is the largest economy. But better access to Brazil and other Mercosur markets is far from assured, with trade experts pointing to difficult negotiations over tariffs and agricultural access, as well as political differences within...

Japan wants a more united and proactive Southeast Asia as it sees Asean as a bulwark against an intensifying great-power rivalry, analysts say, while uncertainty over Washington’s long-term Indo-Pacific strategy has deepened Tokyo’s concerns about the region’s future. Japanese Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi on Wednesday urged Southeast Asian nations to strengthen their collective response to emerging security threats, warning of a “rapidly deteriorating” security environment and shifts in the...

Smoke from this year’s Indonesian forest and peatland fires has inflicted an estimated 8 billion ringgit (US$1.97 billion) in welfare losses on Malaysia, contributing to an estimated 1,700 deaths and severely disrupting manufacturing, according to a report commissioned by the country’s leading industrial group. The study, “The 2026 Fire Season and Transboundary Haze in Malaysia”, was conducted for the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM), as reported by the Malay Mail. Drawing on...

A flurry of meat seizures across Thailand and Vietnam has raised fears of animal-borne diseases devastating regional livestock populations and unsafe food ending up on consumers’ plates. Driven by rising energy and logistics costs, unscrupulous suppliers have targeted restaurants and wet markets desperate to protect margins by sourcing cheap, unregulated cuts – even those past their expiry date or tainted with disease. On October 21, police in Vietnam’s southern province of Dong Nai dismantled a...

A South Korean special prosecutor on Thursday demanded the death penalty for ousted president Yoon Suk-yeol, ahead of an appeal court verdict on rebellion charges over his brief imposition of martial law in December 2024. The Seoul High Court has yet to set a date for a verdict on Yoon’s appeal of a life sentence handed down in February by the Seoul Central District Court. The court found that he illegally mobilised troops and police to seize the legislature, arrest political opponents and...

Indonesia’s communications minister has urged calm after a former Singaporean nominated member of parliament (NMP) suggested the city state could disrupt its neighbour’s internet access, arguing that any outage would cripple connectivity on both sides. Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid said the government and public “need not be irritated” by comments from ex-NMP Calvin Cheng. In Singapore, NMPs are appointed to bring non-partisan perspectives to the legislature; they do...

Two friends claimed trial to a charge of animal cruelty at the Sessions Court in the Malaysian state of Penang for allegedly dragging a dog tied to a motorcycle last month. Lee Beng Hooi and Yeoh Keat Chye, both 62, pleaded not guilty to the charge read before judge Irwan Suainbon on Thursday. They were jointly charged with dragging a female black dog on an iron chain along the road using a motorcycle, causing the animal unnecessary pain and suffering. The offence allegedly occurred along a back...