Asia

A little cheer rose for 79-year-old Hwang Sun-hee after she managed to place an online order at a training session in South Korea, which has one of the world’s starkest digital divides for seniors. Age gaps in digital literacy are a global concern, yet the gulf has widened massively in the hyper-connected and fast-ageing country, prompting national campaigns to bridge it. “You can’t do anything without smartphone apps or a kiosk machine ... It’s too much for old folks,” Hwang said at a senior...

North Korea said on Monday it conducted a joint live-fire drill involving missiles, artillery and drones that it claimed showed “huge destructive power”. The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Saturday’s drill was meant to get familiar with the procedure for the operation of the integrated firepower control system. South Korea’s military earlier said it detected short-range ballistic missile launches from North Korea’s eastern coastal Wonsan area on Saturday morning. After observing...

Three people were killed and 15 others wounded as gunfire erupted hours before the polls opened on Monday in a semi-autonomous Muslim region of the Philippines set to choose its first elected parliament. The vote is the culmination of an on-off peace process that began in the late 1990s and established the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in the country’s far south. Cotabato police chief Jibin Bongcayao said the shooting took place just before midnight as members of rival...

A report that eight Indonesians were allegedly tricked into fighting for Moscow in its war on Ukraine may be just the tip of the iceberg, analysts warn, cautioning that Southeast Asia’s existing scam networks could already be a hunting ground for Russian fraudsters. Ukraine’s intelligence agency revealed on August 27 that the Indonesians had been lured with promises of well-paid civilian jobs. Jakarta has confirmed it is aware of the case. The agency said Indonesia had become the “latest...

Richardson Mojica is no stranger to thoughts of ending it all. The 40-year-old university professor and mental health advocate was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder and depression in his early 20s. He finds fulfilment in his job, yet suicidal ideation has always lingered. “We call it passively suicidal – you don’t want to live, but you don’t want to stop everything,” he said, revealing that he had survived a self-inflicted attempt on his life months ago. Survival is a...

Voters in an autonomous southern Philippine region will cast their ballots on Monday in the region’s first parliamentary elections, seen as a crucial step in the quest for self-determination and lasting peace after decades of insurgency and violence. The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or BARMM, covers five provinces, three cities and 63 villages across eight special geographic area clusters. It has nearly 2.4 million voters, with election officials aiming for an 80 per cent...

Winston Churchill famously praised the resilience of the British people during the Blitz, describing the nightly bombings of London as a “cruel, wanton, indiscriminate” attempt by Adolf Hitler to break the spirit of a tough “island race”. He was not wrong about the toughness and courage of his fellow citizens. But as one of the United Kingdom’s greatest leaders and historical writers, he created a false impression of the uniqueness of the British wartime experience. Strategic bombing alone,...

For 10 days, Nepali hydropower worker Sanjay Sah survived in darkness inside a flooded tunnel, drinking muddy water and losing all sense of time as he desperately prayed for rescue. When a disaster response team finally pulled him to safety on September 4, Sah’s first question showed how deeply the ordeal had disoriented him. “When I was rescued I first asked, how many days has it been?” Sah, aged 30, said in an interview, while on his way back home in Saptari district on Sunday. “He said that...

Bangladesh’s tilt towards China has added a new dimension to security and trade in South Asia, signalling what observers see as Dhaka’s desire to be a strategic actor in the region and ease its overreliance on India. The hedging policy comes after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government in 2024 amid a student-led uprising. Under an interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, and then the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) after it came to power in February, the country’s...

For 65 years, even as India and Pakistan fought wars, severed diplomatic ties and traded nuclear threats, one agreement held: the Indus Waters Treaty, which governs the river system sustaining roughly 300 million people across the subcontinent. That was until April last year, when New Delhi suspended the pact in the aftermath of a deadly militant attack on tourists in Kashmir that it blamed on Islamabad. Now, an international tribunal has ruled that it should have done no such thing – handing...

Indonesian rescuers say about 130 passengers and crew are missing after a ferry carrying more than 240 people sank in bad weather in the Java Sea on Sunday. At least 107 people were rescued and the bodies of six passengers were recovered as the search operation expanded in waters around the vessel’s last known position. The ferry was travelling from Surabaya in East Java to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan province, officials said. The vessel’s captain had earlier reported rough seas with waves...

Some of my earliest memories of Bengaluru, where I spent my summer holidays, are of looking up in wonder at the towering canopy of trees in Cubbon Park. Even in the height of summer, Bengaluru could be cool enough to require a light jacket. Today, the iconic Cubbon Park, the pride of the city I now call home, is under threat. So is Lalbagh Botanical Garden, another of the city’s iconic green spaces, with roots stretching back more than 250 years. On a Sunday morning in Bengaluru last month,...

Bessie* left the Philippines for Malaysia more than a decade ago to care for other people’s children. She stayed to look after their parents instead. Certified as a carer, she now freelances around Kuala Lumpur’s Klang Valley, earning up to 25 ringgit (US$6) an hour for round-the-clock shifts, with clients providing her meals, transport and housing. “My former employer was very understanding and offered to release me earlier so I could earn a higher salary as a caregiver,” the 50-year-old...

The political impasse in Malaysia’s government has regressed to a game of chicken, experts say, with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and the former ruling Umno party trading barbs and dares as pressure grows for snap polls with more than a year left to term. Relations between Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition and erstwhile rivals Umno have hit its lowest point since the two sides cut a deal to form a unity government in 2022, after a series of recent state polls that saw PH all but decimated...

Rescuers retrieved more remains from a passenger ferry in the Philippines that was gutted by fire, bringing the death toll on Saturday to 76 with 13 missing. Forty-three people survived the fire on Wednesday night among the 132 on board. The ferry sailed from the capital, Manila, and was off the village of Turda some 39km (24 miles) from its destination, the Port of Coron, when the fire was reported on Wednesday evening. The cause of the blaze has not been determined but a survivor said it may...

Coffee bars. Water parks. Retail therapy. ⁠North Korea – a country few would associate with leisure or pleasure – is experiencing an ⁠unlikely outbreak of fun. Leader Kim Jong-un, himself no stranger to indulgence, is orchestrating new ways for his citizens to spend ⁠their wealth. North Korea’s imports of massage equipment have surged 40-fold over the past decade, according to Chinese customs data. Treadmill shipments jumped over 600 per cent. Pianos and even bumper cars are pouring in, too. The...

Farmer Pema Dema had never even heard of hazelnuts when she was first recruited to begin growing them on her land in Bhutan’s Thimphu region. “I wondered what sort of a nut it was,” the 58-year-old said with a laugh, looking out over the deep valley and terraced rice fields that unfold below her farm. Now she has more than 140 hazelnut trees on the steep slope overlooking her home, and incorporates them into Bhutan’s traditional salted suja tea when guests visit. Pema is one of thousands of...

Irma smells the fire before she sees it: a column of thick, yellow-tinged smoke rising above the tree line near her small wooden home. She pulls on heavy rubber boots, checks her equipment and drives straight into the impenetrable smog emanating from wildfires devouring the peatland and ancient forests of Borneo. “I am terrified that the flames will reach residential areas. It is extremely dangerous,” the 39-year-old mother told This Week in Asia, moments before disappearing into the murk that...

A two-hour commute for a 14km (8.7-mile) journey. For Julius Dalay and millions of other Filipinos, this is just how public transport works in Manila: a mishmash of jeepneys, trains and buses that commuters are left to figure out for themselves. Dalay, an environmental planner, is resigned to the chaos. Reaching his destination usually involves hailing a jeepney, then cramming into a packed train and enduring a slow bus crawl along the capital’s main thoroughfares. “You either wait the jeepney...

North Korea fired several short-range ballistic missiles ⁠from the Wonsan area towards the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said on Saturday. The missiles were launched at around 5.20am and flew about 250 km (155 miles), the JCS said in a statement, ‌adding that South Korean and US authorities were conducting a detailed analysis of their specifications. South Korean and US intelligence authorities had tracked and shared information on the launches from the...

Dr Asma Zafirah doesn’t need satellite images to know when Kalimantan is burning. She sees it in the watery eyes and laboured breaths of the patients at her clinic in Sarawak, and the children who are kept home from school to protect them from the toxic air. Southeast Asia’s transboundary haze crisis was meant to have been brought under control six years ago. But Borneo is once again belching out dangerous emissions, as fires in the peatlands and forests of Kalimantan – Indonesia’s section of...

As Singapore considers joining a China-led body on artificial intelligence, analysts say membership would give the city state a bigger say in global governance matters related to the technology but may invite an unfriendly response from Washington. Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo revealed in parliament earlier this week that Singapore had received an invitation to join the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (Waico). Singapore would consider the...

Philippine rescuers recovered ⁠30 bodies from a burned-out ferry on Friday, raising the death toll from the blaze to 35, authorities said. Firefighters found the remains after they gained access to the vessel for the first time, having extinguished a fire that had hampered search and rescue efforts since Wednesday night. Responders in protective suits were seen carrying black body bags from a small boat onto a coastguard vessel, video footage released by the coastguard showed. Thick smoke and...

President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr is set to be the first Philippine leader to join the Brics Summit in New Delhi this weekend – presenting him with the perfect “low-risk opportunity” to engage the grouping as Manila continues to diversify its ties, analysts say. “The president seeks to ensure that our modern partnerships remain open, resilient and capable of delivering prosperity to our people,” Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Analyn Ratonel said in a press briefing on...

Former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol was acquitted on Friday in a case related to a marine’s drowning death in a rare reprieve in one of the criminal cases brought against him following his ousting for imposing martial law. The independent counsel’s indictment had alleged Yoon deliberately appointed former defence minister Lee Jong-Sup as his ambassador to Australia to help him leave the country and evade a criminal investigation into the death of Corporal Chae Su-geun, who drowned during...

Chinese President Xi Jinping is heading to India for the first time since 2019 and finalising plans for a US trip as he works through his busiest month of international travel in years. Xi will attend the annual Brics summit in New Delhi over the weekend and meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Russia’s Vladimir Putin and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa are among other leaders going to the event, which gathers some of the world’s biggest energy producers and users. The India trip gives Xi...

Tokyo police arrested two American women for allegedly smuggling US$1 million worth of cannabis, with one suspect claiming she was motivated by a free trip to Japan, an official and media reports said on Friday. The pair, both 25, arrived at Tokyo’s Haneda airport from New York last Saturday with two suitcases in which “cannabis-like dried plants were secretly stored”, a police spokesman said. Japan has some of the world’s strictest drug laws and smuggling or possession of illegal narcotics can...

Malaysia’s once-dominant Umno party has given its clearest indication yet that it will break with the country’s current ruling alliance, after its president called on Friday for a general election to be held immediately. The call comes as the United Malays National Organisation deepens ties with opposition Islamist party the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), buoyed by recent state victories and growing talk of a new alignment to consolidate the Malay vote. “The time has come for the [national...

Indonesian authorities are working to repatriate five baby orangutans allegedly trafficked to India, where they were found motherless in a forest, Jakarta’s forestry ministry said on Friday. The critically endangered animals were found on Tuesday by rangers patrolling in the Balasore district of India’s eastern Odisha state. Authorities suspect the primates, known for their shaggy red fur, were trafficked into India, sparking a criminal investigation. The youngsters, estimated to be about...

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has come under intense social media scrutiny after photos resurfaced showing him wearing a high-value amulet created by a senior monk now at the centre of a fraud and sex scandal. The photos were taken in October 2023 while Anutin – then serving as deputy prime minister and interior minister – was leading a group of Bhumjaithai Party MPs to watch the hit horror-comedy The Undertaker, local outlet ThaiRath reported. Anutin publicly displayed the Thai...