Asia

A rare shooting at a public high school in the central Philippines that left three students dead and seven injured has gripped the country amid concerns over campus safety and the mental well-being of young people. Two Grade 9 students, aged 14 and 15, were arrested over the incident at the San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, Leyte province. The weapons involved were a .38 revolver and a 9mm pistol – the latter of which was traced to a police officer who was one of the suspects’...

In a layered signal to Indo-Pacific nations and America’s domestic audience, the Trump administration last week said the US Indo-Pacific Command would revert to its long-used name, the US Pacific Command. The Honolulu-headquartered command was renamed in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first presidency. The administrative order by the Department of Defence was justified to honour the legacy of America’s oldest and largest unified combatant command, established in 1947. In the run-up to the 250th...

A woman who appeared in videos allegedly showing a group of Malaysian tourists mocking locals in China as “smelly” has apologised after days of criticism from social media users in Malaysia and China. Nur Asyiqin Mohd Dalil came under scrutiny after the clips went viral, with users criticising the remarks as insulting to locals in China and saying they reflected poorly on Malaysians abroad. In a statement posted on her TikTok page, @ekyn.wong, on Saturday, she said she took full responsibility...

Three elephants whose transfer from Malaysia to Japan earlier this year sparked public anger over their alleged mistreatment are now at the centre of a corruption investigation over claims that Putrajaya did not receive the money linked to the move. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) said on Monday it had opened a formal investigation into the movement of the elephants – Dara, Amoi and Kelat – from Zoo Taiping in the northern state of Perak to Tennoji Zoo in Osaka. MACC said it was...

A long-delayed bill meant to curb political dynasties in the Philippines – where powerful families dominate elected offices from Congress to local government – has moved closer to becoming law, but critics say the measure could end up protecting the clans it claims to restrain. The House of Representatives approved the measure in early June, a rare advance for an anti-dynasty law, nearly four decades after the 1987 constitution directed Congress to define and prohibit political...

At first glance, the images looked like those of a happy family in Singapore. There were photos of the couple during their school days and on dates, the woman pregnant and the man holding their supposed newborn with a caption that read: “My boys”. Except the family did not exist – the images were all AI-generated. The man in the photos did not even know about them until a friend alerted him in December last year, The Straits Times reported on Sunday. In real life, he was not married or in a...

A cursory look at the ranking of the world’s largest shopping centres shows the scale of the decline in the US retail property market. The US has only one, the Mall of America near Minneapolis, Minnesota, among the top 20. This is not surprising given that virtually no shopping centres were built in the last two decades. A succession of shocks – which included the disruptive impact of e-commerce, the financial woes of department stores that served as anchor tenants for most malls and the damage...

Bangladesh’s new leader has urged Malaysia to reopen its labour market to more Bangladeshi workers, even as migrant rights groups warned that both governments must first address years of recruitment abuse, debt and stranded-worker cases. Prime Minister Tarique Rahman made the request to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim during talks in Putrajaya on Monday, his first foreign visit since taking office, while seeking to broaden bilateral ties. Tarique said he had asked Anwar to consider...

A court has sentenced a former South Korean justice minister to 25 years in prison for his role in ex-president Yoon Suk-yeol’s brief and disastrous declaration of martial law in 2024. Park Sung-jae was found guilty of involvement in “insurrection”, the Yonhap news agency reported from the Seoul Central District Court on Monday. Yoon’s December 2024 martial law declaration lasted only about six hours as lawmakers raced to the assembly building and voted it down in an emergency session. He has...

Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s trip to Russia as part of an Asean delegation to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin was a pragmatic move that showed the city state could uphold its sanctions against Moscow while keeping diplomatic channels open, analysts said. They said the approach reflected Singapore’s need to balance its principled stance on the Ukraine war with its responsibilities as next year’s chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the region’s search for...

A recent meeting between the leaders of Myanmar and China has given the military junta an opening to persuade Asean to allow it to return to the bloc’s summits. Analysts also say, however, that Myanmar’s regime could feel emboldened to escalate action against resistance forces, revving up its “military approach” to deal with the country’s civil war. Last Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping met his Myanmar counterpart Min Aung Hlaing in Beijing, providing vital political endorsement to the...

At least three teenagers were killed and seven others wounded on Monday in a rare school shooting in the central Philippines, police said. Two alleged shooters, aged 15 and 14, had fired “randomly” inside the school, police information officer Evalyn Diaz said of the incident, which took place at around 9am at San Jose National High School in Leyte province’s Tacloban City. One of the suspects was arrested immediately after the shooting, while the other later surrendered, authorities said....

Malaysian consumers and small business owners have welcomed the government’s decision to introduce subsidised diesel at 2.10 ringgit (50 US cents) per litre (0.3 gallons) nationwide from July 1, although some are seeking greater clarity on fuel allocations under the MyKad-based scheme. Malaysian Tamilan Tow Truck Association president Matheva­anan Mohanaraja said the effectiveness of the initiative would ultimately depend on how much subsidised diesel each identity card holder was entitled to...

Australian police seized a record 2.7 tonnes of cocaine hidden in plastic tubs buried underground on the outskirts of Sydney, detectives said on Monday. It was the largest cocaine haul in Australian history, a joint organised crime investigation force said in a statement. Police allege a Sydney-based organised crime group arranged for a foreign vessel to offload the cocaine in northern Queensland before moving it to Sydney for distribution. “Investigations into the origin of the drugs remain...

Canada is deploying two frigates and a submarine to the world’s largest multinational naval exercise this week, in what analysts describe as both a display of Indo-Pacific seriousness and a pointed rebuttal to Washington’s “freeriding” charge. HMCS Ottawa, HMCS Regina and submarine HMCS Corner Brook are slated to join the biennial Rim of the Pacific Exercise (Rimpac) from Wednesday to July 31, which is expected to draw more than 25,000 military personnel from 31 countries, including Australia,...

China-Asean relations are usually described in two ways. One emphasises danger: the South China Sea, US-China rivalry, military pressure and risk of Southeast Asia being pulled into China’s orbit. The other emphasises opportunity: trade, infrastructure, investment, supply chains and shared growth. Both are true. Neither is enough. I recently joined a study tour by the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World to Chengdu, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. During the trip, I was...

The spectacle of US President Donald Trump thanking China for staying “neutral” with regard to the US-Israeli war against Iran would have been unthinkable a year ago. Yet at the Group of Seven summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, on June 17, he credited Beijing – alongside Moscow – with preventing a full-blown catastrophe. His observation that China “could have sent in an oil ship with six destroyers alongside of it, on each side” but chose restraint, captured the essence of Beijing’s strategic...

Three fully laden India-linked supertankers have re-emerged in the Gulf of Oman, adding to increased reports of traffic moving both ways across the northern and southern routes of the Strait of Hormuz, while conflicting narratives over the status of transits persist. The Desh Vibhor, Desh Vaibhav and Sanmar Herald were observed in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea on Sunday, after having been last seen signalling their attempt to cross the Strait of Hormuz late on Friday, according to...

The South Korean government and defence players are making last-ditch efforts to win Canada’s next-generation submarine project worth up to 60 trillion won (US$39.14 billion), as Ottawa is expected to select a preferred bidder by the end of this month. Under the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project, the Royal Canadian Navy’s ageing fleet of four Victoria-class submarines will be replaced with 12 new 3,000-tonne diesel-electric vessels. The comprehensive contract includes long-term maintenance,...

Within a week of its release, Netflix’s new Korean drama Teach You a Lesson, directed by Hong Jong-chan, topped the platform’s global non-English rankings for the week of June 1 to 7. Adapted from the popular webtoon Get Schooled (2020), the 10-episode series about a government-backed vigilante unit trying to fix the wrongs in schools has quickly become a highly rated breakout hit. Described in a Forbes article as “one of the most addictive feel-good dramas of the year”, the series has exploded...

Theatre chain Golden Village (GV) and film distributor Clover Films have added eight more screenings of Dear You in its original Teochew language in Singapore. The additional screenings will take place from June 25 to 29 at GVmax at GV VivoCity. Tickets will go on sale at 3pm on June 22 via GV’s box office counters and online channels. The move comes after all eight of the Chinese film’s previously announced Teochew-language screenings, held from June 18 to 21, sold out. Directed and co-written...

Danny Loong did not fully grieve his father’s death until he became a parent himself. For two decades after his father’s passing, Loong remembered him mostly as a provider and disciplinarian: a man who pushed hard, cared quietly and offered little by way of tenderness. “He would ask me, ‘How come you’re not this, or that? How come you’re not studying hard enough?’ So when he passed away, I missed him, but I somehow couldn’t really grieve for him,” said Loong, 54. “It was only after I had my own...

She was among five girls in Japan believed to have beaten a boy so severely that he required hospital treatment. Yet her most pressing concern was how much money the group should demand from him. To find an answer, she turned to artificial intelligence. The alleged assault took place in January in Hachioji, a city in western Greater Tokyo. For experts, the case has exposed a disturbing pattern: Japanese adolescents instinctively turning to AI to guide their actions, including criminal ones,...

Orchard Towers, a building in Singapore once notorious enough to earn the nickname “Four Floors of Whores”, has found an unlikely new tenant. On weekends, the site of former nightclubs, illegal massage parlours and at least one murder is now flooded with church-goers. Cornerstone Community Church officially opened weekly services at the Orchard Road landmark in January after buying six units on the fourth floor – formerly a nightclub – for S$54.5 million (US$42.3 million) in 2025. Experts say...

Russia has freed 24 Filipinos who have been detained for months without charges in a Siberian city, after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr raised concerns about them in a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, Philippine officials said on Saturday. The 24 arrived in Manila aboard two flights early on Sunday, and the first batch was welcomed by Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro, who accompanied Marcos in his talks with Putin on Wednesday in the Russian city of Kazan, the...

Led by Japan, East Asia seems to be setting off along a road to nowhere – beyond tension and maybe eventual conflict. This may seem a harsh indictment yet consecutive Japanese leaders have shown a lack of vision on the constructive role their country could play in achieving regional peace and economic integration. The latest manifestation of this is Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s proposal this past week to G7 leaders in France to coordinate the stockpiling of critical minerals,...

The Trump administration’s indictment of former Cuban president Raul Castro and sanctions on his successor, Miguel Diaz-Canel, suggest Washington now views regime change in Havana as a viable policy objective. This adds to Cuba’s mounting woes. The fall of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro in January severed the subsidised oil lifeline that had long kept the island nation afloat, plunging Cuba into its worst socio-economic crisis since the 1990s. For most countries, this is a distant problem. For...

As Southeast Asia grapples with energy supply uncertainty, fallout from the Iran conflict and intensifying rivalry between the United States and China, Russia appears to be presenting itself as a viable “third power” option for the region, analysts say. Moscow’s pitch was on display at the Asean-Russia Commemorative Summit in Kazan on Thursday, where Russian leader Vladimir Putin met regional counterparts, and the two sides agreed to bolster political and economic ties, alongside several...

Celty arrives at a cosplay venue in Kuala Lumpur and does not look the part yet, dressed in jeans and a plain t-shirt. He finds a toilet, locks a cubicle door, transforms his looks and is ready to turn heads – dressed from head to toe in a helmet, boots, choker, corset and a glossy black latex catsuit. The Kuala Lumpur-based latex enthusiast has rehearsed the worst-case scenario in his head. If people were to stare at him or mock him for his outfit, he would leave the Anime Fest Plus event at...

Scientists have detected the H5 strain of bird flu in Australia for the first time, meaning the highly contagious variant has now spread to every continent. Australian Agriculture Minister Julie Collins told a press conference on Saturday that the disease had been found in a migratory sea bird, a brown skua, in remote Western Australia, and the result was confirmed by the national science agency. Samples from another sick bird, a giant petrel, had also shown as a suspected positive result, she...