Asia - South China Morning Post

An Australian boy had died in hospital after being bitten by a shark in Sydney Harbour, his family said on Saturday after a series of shark attacks along the country’s east coast.

Nico Antic, 12, was attacked on Sunday as he and friends were jumping off rocks in Vaucluse, around 9km (5.5 miles) from Sydney’s central business district.

He was pulled from the water by friends and taken to hospital with severe injuries to both legs.

“We are heartbroken to share that our son, Nico, has passed away,”...

When Indonesian actress Aurelie Moeremans released her memoir earlier this month, she never intended for it to start a national conversation over abuse and consent.

Her book, Broken Strings: Fragments of Stolen Youth, recounts how she was groomed as a teenager – and how long it took her to understand what had happened.

The story has struck a nerve across Indonesia, where parents, educators and officials are now asking how such harm could have happened unseen.

Made freely available online, the...

A landslide killed at least eight people and left over 80 missing on Indonesia’s main island of Java on Saturday, a disaster official said.

The landslide triggered by heavy rainfall struck a village in the region of West Bandung at around 2.30am, burying residential areas.

Floods and landslides are common across the vast archipelago during the rainy season, which typically runs from October to March.

“There was a rumbling noise, like thunder,” said Oyoh, a resident of Pasir Langu village who,...

Japan welcomed a record 42.7 million foreign visitors in 2025, fuelled by a weak yen that made it one of the world’s cheapest major tourist destinations, but the boom may already have peaked.

The number is expected to decline this year amid a political row between Japan and China, and staff shortages in the tourism sector, according to industry forecasts, potentially complicating the government’s ambition to attract 60 million overseas visitors by 2030.

In comparison, 31.9 million tourists...

Malaysian anti-corruption authorities have opened two investigation papers into a man bearing the title “Tan Sri” over his alleged involvement in a large-scale investment fraud amounting to more than 300 million ringgit (US$75 million).

The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) had arrested two individuals and carried out searches at five premises around the Klang Valley earlier in the week following information received.

Preliminary investigations found that between 2021 and 2024, nearly...

The Pentagon foresees a “more limited” role in deterring North Korea, with South Korea taking primary responsibility for the task, a Pentagon policy document released on Friday said, a move likely to raise concern in Seoul.

South Korea hosts about 28,500 US troops in combined defence against North Korea’s military threat and Seoul has raised its defence budget by 7.5 per cent for this year.

“South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more...

New Zealand police have found human remains beneath mud and debris from a landslide that struck a campsite in the popular holiday spot of Mount Maunganui, and are now moving to recover more victims.

Efforts to rescue at least six people buried alive at the park ended on Saturday.

Police Superintendent Tim Anderson said it could take several days to locate all of the bodies, after a mountain of dirt and debris tumbled onto a campsite in Mount Maunganui on Thursday.

Anderson said it was...

Malaysia’s world-leading producers of latex gloves are facing tightened profit margins as the nation’s strong currency bites into dollar-denominated earnings, underscoring challenges for the nation’s exporters.

“While ringgit strength lowers systemic risk at the macro level, it comes at the expense of exporter earnings,” said Teck Yong Eng, business enterprise and analytics professor at the University of Reading Malaysia.

The strengthened Malaysian currency hurt first-quarter earnings of Top...

Malaysia’s next general election may well be decided by the country’s millions of young voters and its biggest conservative Islamist party is determined to win them over.

For the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), winning young people’s support means dominating the online spaces they inhabit.

“Whoever controls [online] media will gain their votes,” said the party’s deputy president, Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, in an interview with This Week in Asia.

Founded by religious scholars in 1951 amid the...

Vietnam saw its exports of durians to China soar by US$500 million last year, as the country shook off earlier phytosanitary issues and leveraged its geographic advantages to outcompete its Southeast Asian rivals in the lucrative Chinese market.

Growers from Vietnam shipped US$3.44 billion of the spiky, pungent fruit to China in 2025, up from US$2.94 billion the previous year, Chinese customs data showed.

Leading supplier Thailand, meanwhile, lost market share as its exports to China remained...