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Asia - South China Morning Post

Breaking news, analysis and opinion from the SCMP"s Asia edition.

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China-wanted gambling kingpin to be extradited by...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/10

A Thai court of appeal has upheld an extradition order against a Chinese gambling kingpin after more than three years of legal battles, Thailand’s state prosecutor said in a statement on Monday. She Zhijiang, 43, a Chinese national who also holds a Cambodian passport, was arrested by Thai police in August 2022 on an international warrant and Interpol red notice requested by Beijing, who accused him of running illegal online gambling operations. A Thai criminal court ordered his extradition to...

‘Everything stopped’: Thailand halts Cambodia peace...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/10

Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has threatened to derail a fragile peace deal with Cambodia – signed just last month – after a landmine explosion injured two Thai soldiers near their shared border. The soldiers stepped on what the Thai army suspects were newly laid mines while on routine patrol Monday in Si Sa Ket province. It was the seventh such blast in four months, following a wave of explosions in July that sparked the deadliest border clashes in years. As a result,

Why Vietnam’s property sector has weathered Trump’s...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/10

In an interview with Fox News in April, Peter Navarro, US President Donald Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing, described Vietnam as “essentially a colony of communist China”. For someone who believes trade negotiations with Beijing are pointless, such extremist views are unsurprising. Yet the fact that Navarro, the chief architect of Trump’s trade wars, has it in for Vietnam attests to both the vulnerability and the strength of the country’s manufacturing sector. Among the...

Experts in Vietnam race to save centuries-old wreck...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/10

Severe coastal erosion caused by Typhoon Kalmaegi exposed a centuries-old shipwreck in Vietnam, providing a narrow window to salvage what experts say could be a historically significant find. Initially discovered in 2023 off the coast of Hoi An, the at least 17.4-metre (57-foot) vessel – whose heavy wood-ribbed hull survived hundreds of years of rough seas almost perfectly intact – was resubmerged before authorities could reclaim it. Experts have not yet dated the wreck, but preliminary

Malaysia boat tragedy reignites concern over rising...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/10

The deaths of at least 16 people, including several children, in a boat accident off Malaysia’s coast have reignited fears of a renewed surge in perilous sea crossings by refugees fleeing conflict in Myanmar and worsening conditions in neighbouring Bangladesh. The vessel had reportedly departed from Rakhine state in Myanmar, where members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority continue to face severe restrictions on movement, access to aid and basic rights. Many others are stranded in...

Indonesia considers PUBG curb after Jakarta school...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/10

Indonesia is weighing restrictions on video games like PUBG following a school blast in Jakarta that injured nearly 100 people. President Prabowo Subianto ordered his cabinet to look into such measures after receiving updates about the police investigation into the act, State Secretary Prasetyo Hadi told reporters in Jakarta on Sunday. Developed by South Korea’s Krafton, PUBG: Battlegrounds is an online multiplayer shooting game that popularised the battle royale genre alongside games like...

Outcry as Suharto named Indonesia’s national hero...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/10

Indonesia awarded the title of national hero on Monday to late president Suharto, who was forced out of office in 1998 by violent protests that ended a three-decade rule marred by accusations of mass human rights violations, corruption and nepotism. The title was conferred in a ceremony presided over by President Prabowo Subianto, Suharto’s former son-in-law, despite protests by pro-democracy activists and the families of those affected by the strongman’s iron-fisted rule. Prabowo took office...

Iris Hsieh’s death: Malaysian rapper Namewee to...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/10

Malaysian rapper Namewee will remain in custody on Monday after a court extended his remand, his lawyer has told This Week in Asia, as police continue a murder investigation into the death of Taiwanese influencer Iris Hsieh. Namewee, 42, whose real name is Wee Meng Chee, surrendered to the Kuala Lumpur police on Wednesday in connection with the death of Hsieh, who was found unresponsive in the bathroom of a high-end hotel in Kuala Lumpur on October 22. The rapper and actor, who has millions

Philippines counts cost of storm damage as Typhoon...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/10

A weakening Typhoon Fung-wong departed the Philippines over the South China Sea on Monday morning, after its driving winds and heavy rain killed at least four people and forced more than a million to evacuate. Fung-wong, with a footprint that spanned nearly the entirety of the archipelago, slammed into the country’s eastern seaboard on Sunday evening as a “super typhoon” after uprooting trees and swamping towns further south. It landed just days after Typhoon Kalmaegi swept through the

Singapore police grab 2 Malaysians after woman hands...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/10

Two Malaysian men have been arrested in Singapore for their suspected involvement in separate government official impersonation scams targeting a woman. Police said on Sunday that they received a scam report two days earlier involving the impersonation of government officials claiming to be from the Ministry of Law and the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The victim had received a call from an unknown person claiming to work for a bank. When informed that a credit card had been applied for

Possible explosive powder found after Indonesian...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/08

Indonesian police found possible explosive powder as they investigated explosions at a mosque in the capital of Jakarta, and the suspected perpetrator was recovering, the police chief said on Saturday. Explosions that injured nearly 100 people during Friday prayers could have been an attack, officials said, with a 17-year-old student the suspected perpetrator. “Several pieces of supporting evidence were found,” police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo told a press conference after visiting the

Philippine ombudsman claims Duterte’s drugs war ally...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/08

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Philippine Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, who oversaw then-president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, according to the nation’s ombudsman, although the ICC denied the assertion. Duterte, in office from 2016 to 2022, was arrested and taken to The Hague in March on a warrant linking him to murders committed during his war on drugs, in which thousands of alleged narcotics peddlers and users were killed. “The ICC has issued a warrant...

Prabowo’s popularity holds steady, but can he boost...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/08

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s public approval rating is steady at 78 per cent a year after he took office, a survey showed on Saturday, despite a challenging first year in office marked by deadly student protests. Prabowo’s approval is little changed from 80.9 per cent in the previous poll, released in January. He took office in October last year after sweeping a general election, but his government has had to deal with a number of economic and social challenges, including the

Taliban says Afghanistan-Pakistan ceasefire will...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/08

Afghanistan’s Taliban government said on Saturday its ceasefire with Pakistan would remain even though their latest talks failed, blaming Islamabad’s “irresponsible and uncooperative” approach. The two sides met on Thursday in Turkey to finalise a truce agreed on October 19 in Qatar, following deadly clashes between the South Asian neighbours. Both have remained tight-lipped on the content of the discussions, which are known only to have addressed long-standing security issues. “During the...

‘Reject it altogether’: sex tourists from South Korea...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/08

A civic group in South Korea has raised concerns over reports that some Korean men are engaging in organised sex tourism in Laos, with some even reportedly renting long-term housing in major cities to facilitate the purchase of sex. Activists warn that the trend has become so widespread that it is pushing up local rents. Lee Hyun-sook, head of the civic group Tacteen Naeil, which works to prevent sexual crimes against minors, revealed the findings during a CBS Radio interview on Thursday. Her...

Nose length is best indicator of penis size, Japanese...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/08

A new study by researchers in Japan has found a stronger correlation between nose length and penis size than with hand or foot size.Researchers at Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine analysed autopsy data from 124 men, measuring various body parts and comparing them to each man’s “stretched penile length” – the length of the penis when gently pulled while flaccid. Their findings, published in the journal Basic and Clinical Andrology, suggest that nose size may indeed be a more reliable...

Fun or nuisance? Singapore’s pickleball fever leaves...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/08

Under the floodlights of a street football pitch dotted with cement-covered potholes, 69-year-old retiree Lilian Sek beams as she whacks a hollow orange plastic ball through the night sky in the southern neighbourhood of Telok Blangah in Singapore. Behind her, a laminated sign on the back of the court reads “Please lower your volume” and reminds players of the quiet hours between 10.30pm and 7am for those living in the public housing flats that overlook the court. Sek, a former administrative...

‘He’s a friend of mine’: Trump says he will visit...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/08

US President Donald Trump has said he will visit India at the urging of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the latest sign of a possible thaw in a trade dispute that has soured the two countries’ relationship. “He’s a friend of mine, and we speak, and he wants me to go there, and we’ll figure that out, I’ll go,” Trump told reporters on Thursday, calling Modi a “great man”. Trump said the visit “could be” next year but otherwise declined to provide a timeline for a trip. “I do not have anything on...

How to survive a bear attack in Japan: 5 tips from...

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/08

Bears have killed a record 13 people across Japan since April, with a steady flow of reports of the animals entering homes, roaming near schools and rampaging in supermarkets. Hajime Nakae, the country’s leading medical expert in treating bear attack victims, knows all too well the damage that the powerful animals can inflict on humans. Here, the professor of emergency and critical medicine at Akita University Hospital advises what to do in the event of a bear encounter. 1. Keep facing the...

Yasukuni litmus test looms for Japan’s new PM Takaichi

Asia - South China Morning Post ·

2025/11/08

Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is under growing pressure from nationalist conservatives to make a high-profile visit to Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine, a symbolic move that analysts warn could embolden the country’s far-right and strain relations with neighbours. While Takaichi has long championed visits to the shrine, which honours Japan’s war dead including 14 convicted Class A war criminals, she has so far held off as leader – opting instead to send a ritual offering

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