Asia

South Korea flight-tested on Thursday its first domestically developed hypersonic weapon, designed to fly at least five times the speed of sound and evade missile defence systems, bringing Seoul closer to what it says could be game-changing weapons capabilities. There was no immediate response from North Korea, which last week tested its own hypersonic missile that landed in the waters near Japan. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung attended the test, saying it was a major step in strengthening...

A Philippine bill expanding the country’s espionage law to cover peacetime activities is raising concerns among journalists and legal experts, who warn that its broad provisions could stifle free expression and restrict public scrutiny of national issues. The House of Representatives approved the measure on September 17, paving the way for a broader definition of espionage than under the current law, which dates to 1941 and focuses on wartime spying. The Senate is considering a similar...

A second visit by one of the top US naval officers to India this year has raised expectations that the two countries can insulate their growing military ties from trade tensions. US Admiral Samuel J. Paparo, who leads the US Pacific Command, is scheduled to leave India on Thursday after spending six days meeting with senior Indian defence officials and others. The talks, which follow Paparo’s visit to India in February, come as Washington weighs further tariff pressure on India over its...

The Philippines is “resigned” to managing its long-standing dispute with Beijing in the South China Sea and avoiding dangerous escalations, President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr said on Thursday. At the Forbes Global CEO Conference in Singapore, Marcos said: “I don’t know if we can find a resolution to the problem, but we are resigned to just being able to manage the problem, so that we do not have mistakes, we do not have misinterpretations. “My greatest fear is that some seaman, some soldier, just...

South Korea said on Thursday it would recall its ambassador to Ukraine in response to a deepening diplomatic row over the transfer of North Korean prisoners of war to Seoul. The two countries have been at loggerheads since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month disclosed the prisoner transfer, sparking anger in Seoul, which said it had placed their families in North Korea at risk. The recall also comes days after a media report alleged more than 176,000 tonnes of fuel, mostly diesel,...

Fast Retailing, the parent company of Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo, has defied the ongoing political tensions between Beijing and Tokyo and soft consumer sentiment in China to log a rebound in sales and profits on the Chinese mainland. The Japanese firm said the 2026 financial year, which ended in August, had been a period in which its mainland China business had “made steady progress, with encouraging steps indicating a return to growth”, according to its annual report released on...

US President Donald Trump pressed Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during last month’s summit to end a deep freeze in relations with Japan’s Sanae Takaichi, the South China Morning Post reported. Trump raised Japan’s grievances over Chinese restrictions imposed following Takaichi’s comment in November that the Japanese military might intervene in the event of conflict in the Taiwan Strait, according to Thursday’s report, which cited people familiar with the discussions. Beijing regards Taiwan as...

Chew Kin Wah spent seven seasons gracing Malaysian television screens as “Kee Tat” in the hit sitcom Kopitiam in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Now 61, the Malaysian actor is still working, albeit more selectively, taking projects when the right offers land on his table. “There is no thought of retiring when you are doing something you enjoy,” he told This Week in Asia, adding: “Money helps. Never fight with money.” For Chew, working beyond 60 is a choice. But for many Malaysians, the question...

A care scandal has erupted in Thailand after a nursing home was exposed for confining old and sick residents in beds covered by iron cages with barely a foot of space above their heads. Images of bedridden patients at the Sothornchai Nursing Home in Kanchanaburi, western Thailand, have shocked Thais since they were shared earlier this week on the television current affairs show Hone Krasae. Thailand is projected to be a super-ageing society in the coming years, with authorities warning of a care...

A legal challenge to the vice-presidency of Indonesia’s Gibran Rakabuming Raka could haunt his political future even though he has survived damning court findings on his educational qualifications. The Constitutional Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition to unseat the son of former president Joko Widodo, ruling that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing. But it also found no convincing evidence that Gibran’s overseas education met the minimum high-school qualification required for presidential...

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Thursday said Malaysia would do “whatever is possible” to strengthen cooperation with Myanmar and fully reintegrate the diplomatically isolated nation into the Asean fold. The pledge came during an unusually high-profile official welcome for Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing, despite Malaysia’s position that such engagement does not amount to recognition of his government. Min Aung Hlaing inspected a guard of honour in Putrajaya before holding private talks with...

North Korea’s Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of ‌leader Kim Jong-un, denounced on Thursday South Korea’s plans to provide medical equipment aid to Pyongyang, calling it a “political provocation” and violation of its sovereignty. In a statement carried by state media KCNA, Kim criticised Seoul for publicising its efforts to obtain United Nations sanctions exemptions for a medical aid package, saying Seoul had “insulted” North Korea by referring to shortages of medicines and medical equipment...

A newly opened China-backed air force training centre in Laos could unsettle Vietnam, even as it aims to modernise Vientiane’s military and balance defence ties among Beijing, Moscow and Hanoi, observers say. China’s National Defence Ministry said last Tuesday that the joint support and training facility at Ban Keun Airport in the Laotian capital would strengthen the expertise of local air force pilots and was “not directed against any third party”. “The establishment and operation of the two...

Australia may have vast tracts of land and political will to support the growth of the artificial intelligence industry, but the development of data centres to power the technology is proving more challenging. Last month, property developer Goodman Group withdrew its application for a 90-megawatt data centre in Lane Cove, on Sydney’s lower north shore, after months of opposition from residents about the potential impact on their electricity and water supplies, noise pollution and other...

Foreign workers building the vast new US consulate compound in Milan signed agreements at a Milan hotel Wednesday securing payouts averaging €45,000 (US$50,400) each for alleged labour abuses while working for an American construction company. More than 60 labourers, mostly from India, signed the deals Wednesday to receive their share of a €31 million (nearly US$35 million) settlement agreed last month with Alabama-based Caddell Construction. The signings began Tuesday. Prosecutors say it is the...

As households across Southeast Asia face rising prices, higher borrowing costs and insecure jobs, analysts say governments should do more to protect a middle class that drives consumer spending but can fall between the cracks of social protection systems designed primarily for poorer households. The issue has come into sharper focus in the Philippines, where the Asian Development Bank Institute urged the government in September to provide targeted support for the middle class to protect its...

Elon Musk accused unnamed rivals of blocking SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband network in India, an apparent swipe at billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Bharti Mittal. SpaceX has been awaiting approval from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to offer Starlink service in India, where companies controlled by Ambani’s Reliance Industries and Mittal’s Bharti Airtel have spent years building formidable positions in telecoms. “Unfortunately, we are being blocked by certain oligarchs in...

Japan is expected to float the idea of acquiring a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines in revised security documents to be released later this year, with analysts suggesting that Tokyo’s initial aim is to promote discussion of the issue and overcome the public’s concerns. Analysts acknowledge there will inevitably be pushback from some sectors of society in the only nation to have suffered a nuclear attack, but say there is a growing recognition that regional rivalries are worsening and Japan...

Singapore’s air pollution worsened to the highest in the world as haze from Indonesia wildfires blankets the region days before the city state’s annual Formula One weekend. Air quality levels in Singapore were in the “very unhealthy” range as of Wednesday afternoon, according to data from IQAir. Nearby Kuala Lumpur, which was earlier in the top spot, ranked as the second-most polluted city globally. In the Malaysian state of Johor, about 140km (87 miles) northwest of Singapore, some 200 schools,...

Despite Malaysia’s insistence that its long-standing non-alignment policy extends to cyberspace, analysts say the country’s reliance on American and Chinese technology could make such a stance difficult to sustain amid the rivalry between the two superpowers. Defence Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin said on Monday that Malaysia would “always remain neutral” in cyberspace, arguing that cyber threats could come from non-state actors and should not be viewed solely through the lens of geopolitical...

Sri Lanka’s anti-corruption authority arrested former first lady Shiranthi Rajapaksa on Wednesday over allegations that her charity misused donations collected for a children’s hospital. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s government has revived long-dormant corruption investigations involving members of the once-powerful Rajapaksa family, which dominated Sri Lankan politics for nearly two decades. The 73-year-old wife of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa was arrested in Colombo and driven to...

Bhavya Gupta was a Grade 4 student when the 2012 horrific gang rape and murder of a medical college intern who was on a private bus in New Delhi, which sparked nationwide outrage and led to the execution of four attackers, prompted her teacher to mention the case in class to raise awareness about women’s safety. “My teacher gathered all the girls in the classroom and told us about it, and after that our school uniform changed from skirts to pants. I also remember adults around me talking about...

Monsoon floods in Thailand have killed 60 people since mid-September, officials said, as surging waters exact an increasing economic toll – destroying homes and crops, killing livestock and flooding factories. Bangkok buckled at the end of September as 300mm (11.8 inches) of rain – around one month’s worth – hit its creaking drainage system over just three days. The floodwaters have largely retreated from the capital, giving city officials crucial breathing space to clear the stinking,...

The recent arrests of 11 suspected terrorists by authorities in Indonesia underline how terrorism remains a persistent security challenge, with analysts warning that militant networks are communicating online through smaller and decentralised cells despite stronger enforcement. The Indonesian National Police’s counterterrorism force, Special Detachment 88 (Densus 88), said on Sunday that 11 suspected terrorists had been arrested in raids across West Java, Central Java, Central Sulawesi, South...

Scientists Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for solving a long-standing riddle of asymmetric “mirror image” molecules, a discovery hugely important for pharmaceutical manufacturing, the award-giving body said on Wednesday. Soai, 76, is Japanese, and Kagan, 95, is French, and their work built on a discovery by the 19th century French chemist Louis Pasteur. “This is the most exciting day in my life, I am very glad to share this prize with professor Henri Kagan,”...

A former Buddhist monk in Thailand was convicted on Wednesday of misusing donations to a highly praised hospice he established for people with HIV/Aids and given the maximum term of 50 years in prison. Alongkot Poonmook, formerly known as Phra Ratcha Wisutthiprachanat, was forced to leave the monkhood after he was arrested last year along with an associate, Seksan Sapsubbsakul, who served as a fundraiser for the project. The Central Criminal Court for Corruption and Misconduct Cases found both...

A 47-year-old man will be charged on Thursday over a series of perfume thefts at Changi Airport, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) said on Wednesday. The thefts date back to November last year and involved almost S$1,410 (US$1,102) worth of perfume, the police said in a news release. SPF said it was alerted to the first theft on November 5, 2025, after a retail assistant discovered that a box of perfume was missing from a shop’s display shelf. Closed-circuit television footage showed that the...

Malaysia’s Melaka will hold a state election on November 14 as the Umno-led Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition nears a pact with Islamist rivals, leaving Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s alliance facing another difficult contest after a string of recent defeats. The filing of nominations would begin on October 31 and early voting on November 10, Election Commission chairman Ramlan Harun said on Wednesday. A total of 687,897 registered voters are eligible to elect the state’s 28 assembly members, with...

Singapore occupies a “peculiarly sensitive existential point” as it seeks to retain strategic options amid a great power rivalry, Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan has said, doubling down on the city state’s stance of refusing to take sides. He also warned that the global landscape would remain unsettled if China and the United States failed to address their respective domestic issues. Speaking at the Milken Institute Asia Summit 2026 in Singapore on Wednesday, Balakrishnan identified...

A marooned three-metre-long (nine feet) shark in South Korea has drawn more than a million visitors to the coastal city of Busan, boosting local retail sales and triggering a trademark war, as authorities rush to stop opportunistic vendors from cashing in on the viral phenomenon. The shark, nicknamed “Bukangi” in reference to the park where it has become trapped, has become an internet darling and tourist sensation after non-stop local media coverage about multiple failed efforts to encourage it...