Asia

Tukaram Mundhe is an Indian bureaucrat on a mission. As a state food safety commissioner, the 51-year-old has raided food businesses in the country’s commercial capital Mumbai in an unprecedented crackdown on poor hygiene and unsafe food that has captivated the public nationwide. Mundhe has led the suspension of food permits of four Domino’s and one Pizza Hut outlet in recent weeks, and has also targeted cricket clubs, hotels and well-known restaurants in over 3,000 raids since he took over as...

South Korea said on Monday that the United States had cancelled a large joint amphibious landing exercise scheduled for next month due to constraints on force availability caused by the war with Iran. The biennial Ssangyong drills involve marine forces from South Korea and the US and are designed to strengthen combined operations, typically involving warships, aircraft and ground forces rehearsing amphibious landings. The cancellation follows US President Donald Trump’s order last week to scale...

Singapore’s latest pro-family push has been welcomed by some parents for tackling the costs of raising children, but others say lower fees and more leave are unlikely on their own to overcome deeper worries over time, careers, housing and lifestyle. During the annual National Day Rally on Sunday night, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced a raft of measures to make having children more appealing in the city state. These include increasing childcare leave based on the number of children a...

Indonesia has given Malaysian agencies ⁠official permission ⁠to enter its ⁠airspace to conduct cloud seeding operations, Malaysia’s environment minister has said, part of both countries’ efforts to combat the haze blanketing the region. Indonesia has been stepping ‌up efforts to slow the spread of haze caused by forest and land fires across several provinces, which this month led to dozens of school closures, including in neighbouring Malaysia. Malaysia’s national disaster management agency and...

In global commercial real estate investment markets, data centres are all the rage. While stock markets continue to suffer bouts of volatility as sentiment oscillates between concerns artificial intelligence (AI) will fall short of expectations and fears it will prove more disruptive than many think, the fundamentals of data centres are exceptionally strong. According to JLL, global data centre occupancy was 97 per cent at the end of last year while 77 per cent of all capacity under construction...

Malaysian politician Mukhriz Mahathir has triggered a social media storm after declaring in a video that he “hates Americans, all of them”, over Washington’s support for Israel – echoing the fierce anti-US rhetoric long associated with his father, former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. “I hate Americans. I despise Israelis, but I hate Americans, all of them,” Mukhriz said in the video, posted on Saturday. “It matters not if they’re Republican or Democrat, pro-Israel or pro-Palestine. None of it...

A Malaysian Islamic university has formally distanced itself from an academic whose viral claims about ancient Malay civilisation – including that Malays could fly and taught the Chinese “flying kung fu” – have drawn ridicule from historians. In a statement on Sunday, the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) said Solehah Yaacob, a former linguistics professor, had been terminated from academic service on April 27 and was no longer entitled to claim any affiliation with the...

New ⁠Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Monday his party would introduce a bill in parliament that seeks to ban children under 16 from using social media, proposing fines of up to 10 per cent of a ‌platform’s global revenue for non-compliance. The bill would require social media platforms to take reasonable steps to verify users’ ages, including by using existing account information, facial technology and digital identity documents. “We simply cannot accept the harm being done to a...

A twist of fate put a guitar in Nene Royal’s hands. Aged seven, she wanted to join the computer science club at her school in Phuket, Thailand, but it was already full. “The only place left was in the music club, and the teacher handed me a guitar,” she told This Week in Asia. “The moment I started playing, something clicked.” Now just 16, the self-taught rocker has a shot at global stardom on the world’s most watched talent show, America’s Got Talent. “I learned by watching YouTube videos,...

The Philippines is positioning itself as Latin America’s bridge to Southeast Asia, testing whether shared history and culture can translate into hard trade figures as Asean and the Mercosur bloc look beyond their traditional partners. Manila’s Foreign Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro made the pitch during visits to Brazil and Chile from August 10 to 13. “Upon this human foundation, commercial bridges thrive: the Philippines stands as the premier strategic gateway for Latin American firms expanding...

Australia’s shortage of air traffic controllers is showing signs of nearing a breaking point after the country’s busiest airport recorded at least four near misses in the past month. Since late July, incidents at Sydney Airport included a passenger jet aborting its take-off because there was a plane in its path. In a separate close call, an aircraft that was taxiing had to slam on the brakes to avoid colliding with another jet. Short-staffed control towers have long been a problem globally, but...

Residents of Malaysian villages near the Thailand border were left shaken this weekend after hearing loud booms and seeing flashes of light across the frontier, as Thai authorities confirmed more than 50 coordinated attacks on Saturday night. The blasts, heard in Kampung Lubok Gong and Kampung Tersang in Malaysia’s Kelantan state, coincided with a wave of near-simultaneous attacks across 21 districts in Thailand’s Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces beginning around 8pm local time on...

Indonesia produces and exports more palm oil than any other country, but when it comes to setting the price, it still plays second fiddle to Malaysia. President Prabowo Subianto wants to change that. On August 14, he announced a new exchange for commodities including palm oil, nickel and coal, targeted to begin operations on January 1. But analysts say dominance in physical supply does not automatically translate into pricing power. Jakarta’s move to set new benchmarks may not be enough to...

A group of 21 former international cricket captains, including India’s Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, signed a letter to Pakistan’s government on Sunday regarding the healthcare of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan. Khan has been in prison since 2023 and was sentenced late last year along with his wife to 17 years on corruption charges they both deny. The 73-year-old, who was also a former Pakistan cricket captain, was transferred back to jail on Friday hours after he was taken to hospital...

Indonesian authorities arrested 72 people suspected of starting some of the forest and peatland fires as huge blazes in central and west Indonesia triggered choking haze. Indonesia has been battling fires driven by an intensifying El Nino pattern and a prolonged dry season, generating dense smoke that crossed into Malaysia, according to Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency, or BNPB. Fires are a regular problem in Indonesia that strain relations with neighbouring countries. Plantation...

Singapore will increase its spending on pro-family measures focusing on easing childcare costs, with Prime Minister Lawrence Wong calling them “one of the best investments” on Sunday, as the city state aims to reverse its declining fertility rate. The policy shifts announced by Wong at the annual National Day Rally, Singapore’s biggest political speech of the year, are some of the most significant in years, revolving around boosting support for families to have children. He also spoke about...

Singapore will no longer restrict the number of cinema screenings for dialect films, relaxing a decades-long policy in a significant move that analysts say was driven by recent discourse over the Chinese blockbuster Dear You. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said on Sunday the relaxation came with the prerequisite that a Mandarin-dubbed version would be available. Restrictions for pay television content in dialect will also be eased, with details to be announced at a later date. “Even as we promote...

Dressed as his favourite superhero, Indonesian teenager Rudiyansah walks along a charred landscape, helping douse wildfires that have razed large parts of Borneo island. The Southeast Asian country has been battling infernos that have left a thick, blanketing smog over parts of the island that Indonesia shares with Malaysia and Brunei. Rudiyansah’s red and blue Superman costume stood out against the stark, scorched landscape surrounding the town of Palangkaraya, where he has joined a local...

At a recent Apec digital technology and AI forum in Chengdu, ministers across the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum issued a statement in support of open-source artificial intelligence models – a rare point of agreement in a debate often framed as a zero-sum US-China contest. It pointed towards an AI order that cuts against the assumption of a contest with a single winner, an assumption that still shapes Washington’s alarm over every Chinese AI breakthrough. Across Asia, governments are...

It was a ⁠vision to give South Korea a stock market that reflected its true economic ⁠dynamism, by shedding regulatory taboos and encouraging bolder bets – instead, it created an investor trauma that could take years to shake. The ⁠30 per cent decline in the Kospi benchmark since its June 19 peak has hurt President Lee Jae Myung’s government politically and turned the spotlight on an economic system that drove retail investors into poorly understood leveraged products. It has also raised...

Cambodia is preparing to restart joint military exercises with the United States next year, in a move analysts described as a pragmatic reset of defence ties strained since 2017 – though not a pivot away from China. Senior officials from both countries discussed restarting the Angkor Sentinel drills last weekend, alongside expanded training and military reforms, Cambodian media reported. Washington has also signalled interest in further visits to Ream, a strategically located Cambodian naval...

Coal-dependent Indonesia is reviving decades-old plans to build nuclear power plants that were put on hold following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, as it seeks to meet its decarbonisation targets. Some members of the public and experts, however, have voiced concerns about the risks of a nuclear disaster in the quake-prone country, despite one of the leading candidate sites being an uninhabited island considered not to be in an active seismic zone. The government began discussing...

Bangkok’s best street food has always existed on a kind of mental map for Thai food writer Choltanutkun Tun-atiruj. It is built from habit, cravings and neighbourhood rhythms: the office crowds, the schools, the university nearby and the vendors selling everything from moo ping (grilled pork skewers) and sticky rice to pad thai and kuay teow reua – a bowl of rice noodles in dark broth flavoured with cow or pig’s blood, then topped with meat and spices. “I can’t tell you my favourite because I...

Malaysian politics runs on grudges and few illustrate that better than the one nursed by Rafizi Ramli. A year after losing the deputy presidency of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s People’s Justice Party (PKR), he has built a vehicle for the disaffected, aimed squarely at the coalition of which he was once part. Parti Bersama Malaysia – or Bersama, meaning “together” – is barely three months old under its new leadership, yet it has already rattled Malaysia’s governing alliance. Taken over in May...

⁠India’s coastguard ⁠and navy continued search-and-rescue operations off the eastern coast on Sunday after a Panama-flagged cargo vessel carrying 24 crew sank, with two Chinese nationals rescued, a ‌senior official said. The two rescued Chinese seafarers said the vessel developed a list on Friday and sank within eight minutes, forcing crew to abandon ship, Shyam Jagannathan, director general of India’s Maritime Administration, said. Jagannathan said the chances ⁠of finding survivors generally...

Indonesia is deploying an additional 1,500 soldiers to Borneo, an official said on Saturday, to help tackle wildfires that have burned through swathes of the island and created thick smog choking some areas. Fires between January and July burned over 200,000 hectares of land – an area three times the size of the capital Jakarta, the government said this week, as dry conditions driven by a powerful El Nino weather pattern take hold. President Prabowo Subianto, on a visit to Borneo on Saturday to...

A Myanmar military air strike on a monastery where civilians were gathered for a meditation retreat marking Buddhist Lent killed 14 people, two rebel fighters who witnessed the aftermath said. Myanmar has been consumed by civil war since the military staged a 2021 coup ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and detaining the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Over the past five years, more than 100,000 people are estimated to have been killed across all sides as the military battles an...

Australia’s capital will join a gun buy-back ⁠as part of ⁠a response to a ⁠shooting spree that killed 15 at a Jewish festival in Sydney, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Saturday. Albanese’s centre-left government enacted laws in January for the gun buy-back, tighter checks for gun ‌licences and a crackdown on hate in the wake of the December 14 gun attack at a Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales. The state, Australia’s most populous, became the...

Why is the idea of a planned economy anathema to so many people despite China’s success? And why do so many retain faith in market economies given the economic chaos much of the Western world is descending into? These questions have acquired a particular piquancy as Hong Kong embraces long-term planning for the first time, attracting criticism from some that it is falling into Chinese-style error. Having been in Asia for 50 years – in Singapore, which I consider a planned economy, and Hong Kong...

Less than two years before the Philippines chooses its next president, Ferdinand Marcos Jnr still has no candidate to carry his banner. Sara Duterte-Carpio, his estranged vice-president and fiercest political rival, has already declared her intention to run and remains the early front runner, despite an impeachment trial that could bar her from politics. Marcos said on August 14 that he would “certainly endorse a candidate” in 2028 but added: “Who that is I cannot tell you because even I don’t...