Asia

A cluster of whale and whale shark strandings across Indonesia – five in the past three weeks alone – has raised questions over whether such incidents are becoming more frequent, with experts pointing to a mix of environmental shifts, human activity and improved reporting as possible explanations. On September 25, a whale shark became stranded and died on a beach in Aceh province, just days after a decomposed whale carcass was discovered in a mangrove in Riau province. Another whale was found...

A 20-year-old US marine was arrested on Sunday in Japan’s Okinawa prefecture on suspicion of robbing and murdering a local woman, police said. Davin Ballard stationed at the Futenma Airbase is suspected of killing Anna Yagi, 39, and taking her wallet and backpack in the early hours of Saturday at a hotel in Naha, according to the Okinawa prefectural police. The suspect has denied the charges, they added. Ballard was seen entering the hotel with Yagi, who was found dead on Saturday morning,...

Three male students have been detained by police in connection with the murder of a Form Four female student whose body was discovered at a school in Yong Peng, Malaysia’s Johor state, on Saturday. The victim, identified as 16-year-old Irene Sofiya Mohd Khairool Faisal, was found dead inside the school hall at around 5.30pm, Sinar Harian reported. Police arrested the three 16-year-old suspects, who attend the same school as the victim, just hours after the body was uncovered. On Sunday, one of...

For months, the air over West Kalimantan has been thick enough to taste. Now, some of the province’s residents are taking the government to court over it. Indonesia’s worst wildfire season in 11 years has been sending plumes of toxic haze drifting across borders to Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines since at least August. But nowhere has been worse hit than West Kalimantan, where more than 48,000 hectares (185 square miles) of land and forest have burned since the start of the year,...

Final-year students invited to recruiters’ apartments for help with their applications. Coffee dates with alumni who promise to explain how the company works. Inappropriate interview questions about boyfriends, marriage plans and sex lives. For young women in Japan, looking for a job has long entailed submitting themselves to the skewed power dynamics of the recruitment process. And before Thursday, no official legal safeguards existed to protect these jobseekers from such...

As floodwaters surged from Bangkok’s drains, Fon’s car sank faster than her hopes of escaping the floods unscathed. She had bought it less than a month earlier. “I woke up at 5am but it was too late,” the 24-year-old said, recalling her decision last weekend to wait until dawn to move her car to a nearby shopping centre. “My car was already submerged. I hadn’t even started making the payments and it’s gone.” Relentless rain paralysed Thailand’s capital this September, dumping a month’s worth of...

When one of my seniors from medical school was pregnant during her surgical residency, she planned the exact date of her C-section so she could complete her training on time. When I asked why she didn’t consider taking maternity leave to recuperate afterwards, she said she couldn’t bring herself to lag behind her peers. “I didn’t want motherhood to slow me down,” she said. In medicine, it is common for women to delay childbearing until after their early career years, often into their...

North Korea said on Saturday it test-fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile that it claimed has manoeuvrable flight capabilities designed to evade missile defences in South Korea and Japan. The latest test comes amid heightened tensions between the two Koreas over border landmine blasts. Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said her brother supervised the test of the missile, which she described as strategic, implying it was designed to deliver nuclear...

Five years ago, Sarah and her husband were optimistic about Japan’s economic future and were expanding their small businesses across several sectors. Today, that optimism has been replaced by concern over a sense of hostility towards two hard-working foreigners who feel they have contributed to the society that they have worked hard to fit into. New regulations that took effect on Thursday mean the two Britons, who have been in Japan for more than 10 years, now face significantly higher costs...

Like many films released during Chuseok, South Korea’s national mid-autumn harvest festival, The Assassin(s) shot right to the top, selling more than a million tickets in its first four days. But the box-office success of the film about the 1974 assassination attempt on former president and military leader Park Chung-hee was quickly overshadowed by calls to halt screenings, as well as a police complaint against the film’s director and producers. Park loyalists and conservative politicians are...

When the time came to renew his certificate of entitlement (COE), Andrew Tan hit the brakes on coughing up an eye-watering S$112,000 (US$87,400) to keep his car on Singapore’s roads for another 10 years. Instead, the 49-year-old business consultant decided in May to go without a car for the first time in two decades. High COE prices, rising running costs and the hassle of parking and congestion are prompting more Singaporeans to reconsider car ownership, as the land-scarce city state expands...

We have selected seven of the most interesting and important news stories covering global relations from the past few weeks. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Trump condemns ‘sick conspiracy’ against AI, says he is only guardrail needed US President Donald Trump downplayed growing concerns about artificial intelligence, claiming America already has guardrails to regulate the industry and warning that casting doubt on development only benefits...

A second attempt to guide a shark stranded in a canal in the South Korean port city of Busan back to the open sea ended without success on Friday, with the animal staying in the waterway into its third week. Rescuers, who had been using a net to try to coax it out, had to end the operation after a two-hour chase due to ‌the risk of their huge net getting caught on rocks. They now hope that the shark will eventually swim out to the open sea on its own, after leaving the net in place to limit how...

The Japanese government on Friday announced additional sanctions against Russia amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, targeting a so-called shadow fleet of vessels engaged in transporting sanctioned oil from Russia. Joining international efforts to crack down on sanctions evasion by the fleet, Japan has decided to impose restrictions on the provision of services to 35 vessels, according to the Foreign Ministry. The measures restrict the provision of services including insurance, maritime...

India’s opposition parties and the youth-led “cockroach” movement took to the streets on Friday, demanding action over alleged irregularities in voter rolls and calling for the resignation of the country’s chief election commissioner, as the combined pressure from the two groups poses a new challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The protests have brought the opposition closer to the youth movement that it has sought to engage with, according to analysts. While their convergence...

AirAsia co-founder Tony Fernandes has caused a stir online after taking aim at Singapore Airlines’ (SIA) in-flight meals, claiming the food served by the carrier lagged behind his own airline’s offerings. “Just flew with Singapore Airlines, couldn’t get AirAsia, service was great, internet amazing, food was poor, Santan is far far better and crew admitted. Great flight but we are not far off,” Fernandes wrote in a social media post on Thursday, referring to AirAsia’s in-flight dining brand. The...

Malaysia’s long-standing strategy of non-alignment amid US-China rivalry in the South China Sea could soon be tested, with the eastern state of Sabah sitting near a potential flashpoint involving Philippine territory. Observers pointed to comments by Malaysian Defence Minister Khaled Nordin, who last week voiced concern that a conflict or “unexpected incident” in the maritime region could spill over into Malaysia. Khaled, who singled out Sabah, added that Malaysia was looking to strengthen its...

Indonesia’s new police chief faces a difficult task to balance growing public demands for accountability and independence as the force seeks to repair its image following a series of scandals in recent years. Even as Suyudi Ario Seto, 53, replaced Listyo Sigit Prabowo on Thursday, the government is weighing recommendations to reform the powerful institution, including changes to its work culture and limits on police officers holding public positions outside the force. In addition to appointing...

One of the Malaysians unaccounted for following the devastating floods in Nepal has been confirmed safe and has returned to Malaysia, according to the group representing Malaysians missing in Nepal. Malaysia Solidarity: Families in Hope (Masfih) spokesman Manivannan Rethinam said the person had reported themselves to the Malaysian embassy in Kathmandu. “For Masfih and the other families, the finding of a safe Malaysian 37 days later is an extremely relieving and meaningful development,”...

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s reshuffling of his cabinet signals an urgent need to address criticism and dipping ratings by banking on experienced technocrats and trusted figures in key positions. But while the appointment of a new foreign minister has raised hopes of some restraint on Prabowo’s more impulsive foreign policy decisions, analysts say the president’s self-imposed role as “chief diplomat” is unlikely to change. In his second senior cabinet change in under three weeks,...

The first apartment came up for auction and nobody moved. More than 60 people crowded into a room in Singapore to watch seven properties seized in one of the world’s biggest money-laundering cases go under the hammer. Their opening prices totalled more than S$43 million (US$33.6 million). But when bidding began for a luxury unit at Gramercy Park, an upscale condominium near the city state’s Orchard Road shopping district, not a single hand went up. Next came a 2,658 sq ft (247 square metres)...

South ‌Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Friday threatened unspecified measures against Ukraine unless Kyiv acknowledged what Seoul says was a confidentiality agreement covering the transfer of two captured North Korean soldiers and apologised. “If the refusal to acknowledge the facts and issue a public apology continues, we will take additional measures,” Lee said in a social media post. Lee also expressed “grave regret” over what he described as Ukrainian remarks about an imminent ⁠military...

Thitu Island and its residents have come under the spotlight after the Philippines, in a bid to reinforce its claims in the South China Sea, announced plans to file an updated maritime chart with the United Nations. Observers say the filing would not establish Philippine sovereignty but could help Manila identify and challenge competing claims in more precise legal terms. More than just a technical document, the updated map is a means for the government to formally document its presence and...

Two new islands have appeared off Anak Krakatoa, potentially the first in nearly a century to emerge within the caldera left by Krakatoa’s catastrophic 1883 eruption. The formations, discovered following a 25-hour eruption in early September, sit hundreds of metres off opposite sides of Anak Krakatoa – one to the northwest and the other to the southeast – almost on a straight line through the volcano’s crater, according to Indonesia’s Geological Agency. The agency places one about 760 metres...

Singapore’s biggest crackdown so far on fake online reviews has exposed how businesses exploit the appeal of five-star ratings to game the system, with experts warning generative AI will make fake reviews more rampant and consumers need to be more discerning about what they read online. The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCS) has taken action against 45 companies – including a funeral parlour, a law firm and an aesthetics clinic – after finding they bought reviews from a...

Reggie Manlapig, 46, has been driving jeepneys for nearly 25 years and has weathered rising fuel prices – but with costs spiking amid the global energy crunch, he is now wrestling bigger demons. “The impact has been huge. Before, in a 16-hour shift of driving, I could take home 400 to 500 pesos [US$6.30 to US$8] – now there’s a big cut to that income,” said Manlapig, who plies a two-hour daily round route from Malolos in Bulacan, north of Manila, to San Fernando, Pampanga. “Doing the full route...

When the US Space Force announced on September 14 that “the US has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action”, I thought of Isaac Newton’s well-known declaration that he could not calculate the madness of people. This is the first time a country has admitted to deploying weapons in space. Today, the orbits are congested and contested with many nations conducting military activities, such as surveillance and reconnaissance, early missile...

US President Donald Trump’s unilateral announcement of a “colossal” South Korean investment package has prompted Seoul to clarify that the deal is far from finalised, laying bare stark differences between the allies over the terms of their trade agreement, observers have said. On Wednesday, Trump announced that South Korea would invest in the construction of a natural gas-fired power plant in Texas, eight large-scale nuclear power plants across the United States and a liquefied natural gas (LNG)...

Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto replaced ⁠his foreign minister with a career diplomat on Thursday, in his second change to a top post in his cabinet in less than three weeks. Prabowo ‌in a cabinet reshuffle named as foreign minister, the ministry’s former permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, with the outgoing Sugiono appointed Human Development minister. The appointment of Nasir, who was Sugiono’s deputy, is expected ⁠to mark a shake-up at the ministry. It comes...

Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto is replacing Listyo Sigit Prabowo as the country’s police chief with the head of the National Narcotics Agency, Suyudi Ario Seto, amid reports of police transgressions under Listyo’s watch in recent years. Chairman of the House Commission on Legal Affairs Habiburokhman confirmed on Thursday morning that the house had received a presidential letter dismissing Listyo and nominating Suyudi to the post, according to Tempo news magazine. “This morning, we...