Asia - South China Morning Post

Malaysia’s king has issued a blunt warning to officials, saying his “hunt for the corrupt” will reach all levels as the country reels from a corruption scandal inside the armed forces that has implicated senior ranks.

A former army chief and dozens of other officers and civilians have been arrested in recent weeks as the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) seized 52 million ringgit (US$12.8 million) in cash, gold, cars and luxury watches.

The anti-corruption body also froze 80 bank...

As silver prices surged past S$100 (US$78) an ounce in recent weeks, Singaporean Faris Ghani saw a long-running bet finally begin to pay off.

The 35-year-old relocation consultant has been quietly accumulating the metal since he was 21, betting that silver – long overshadowed by gold – would one day have its moment.

That moment appears to have arrived. On Monday, spot silver traded near record highs of about US$94 an ounce, more than tripling from around US$30 an ounce a year earlier.

The surge...

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has nominated his nephew to join the central bank’s board of governors, two sources said, amid growing concern about its independence as the government seeks more support for ambitious economic targets.

Investors have worried that independent monetary policymaking in Southeast Asia’s largest economy might be under pressure as Prabowo targets economic growth of 8 per cent by 2029, ⁠from about 5 per cent now.

Those fears grew after Bank Indonesia (BI) unveiled...

Pakistani firefighters ‌began pulling bodies from the smouldering remains of a sprawling Karachi shopping centre on Monday where more than 60 people were still missing after a ‍massive fire that killed at least 23 people.

The fire started late on Saturday at Gul Plaza, which houses 1,200 shops in a multi-storey complex spread across an area larger than a football field. The blaze in Karachi’s historic centre raged for more than 24 hours before it was mostly extinguished.

Videos showed fierce...

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s record on legal reforms has come under scrutiny after a journalist was detained under a colonial-era Sedition Act for asking a “sensitive question” linking the Gaza crisis to the treatment of ethnic Chinese in the Malay-majority country.

Rex Tan, 31, a journalist for local news site Free Malaysia Today (FMT), was arrested early on Saturday morning after he asked the question at a public debate five days earlier in Kuala Lumpur.

Tan is being investigated...

A divorced Malaysian couple looking to rekindle their relationship were arrested for being alone in a hotel room after religious enforcement officers raided their hotel room in Johor in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Johor’s Islamic Religious Department (JAINJ) said on social media that officers detained the pair at 1.15am in a hotel in Kluang, following a tip-off about alleged immoral activity.

They were suspected of khalwat, an Islamic moral offence under Malaysia’s state sharia laws for...

Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) will delay the restart of its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, which was originally scheduled for Tuesday, public broadcaster NHK reported on Monday, after an alarm malfunction.

It would have been the first reactor restart for Tepco since its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was hit by a powerful tsunami in 2011.

The company had planned to restart Unit No 6 at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa on Tuesday and Unit No 7 around 2030, as Japan seeks greater energy...

In Japan, “foreigner policy” has entered mainstream consciousness, with a politically middle-of-the-road newspaper concluding that xenophobia dominated the country’s “national conversation” last year.

In a December 29 review of the year, the Mainichi reported that policies and attitudes towards foreign nationals “leapt to the forefront of Japanese politics and onto front pages”, propelled in part by the “xenophobic policies and rhetoric of the right-wing Sanseito party” in the July general...

Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr said on Monday that a “significant” discovery of natural gas had been made near the country’s sole producing offshore site.

About 2.8 billion cubic metres (98 billion cubic feet) of natural gas was found 5km (three miles) east of the Malampaya Field near the island of Palawan, Marcos said, or enough to provide power to 5.7 million homes for a year.

The Philippines has some of the region’s highest energy costs and faces a looming crisis as the Malampaya...

The verdant green leaves and dainty white flowers of the alligator weed are becoming a common sight in waterways across Japan.

But while the plant, whose scientific name is Alternanthera philoxeroides, may look innocuous, it is an absolute menace according to Koichi Goka, head of the Invasive Species Research Team at Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES).

“We first had reports of alligator weed in Japan in Hyogo prefecture in 1989 and it quickly spread from there across...