Asia - South China Morning Post

Fresh allegations of violence threatened to derail peace efforts on Monday as Cambodia claimed Thai F-16s bombarded Siem Reap and Preah Vihear, undercutting an earlier announcement by Malaysia that the two sides had agreed to a Christmas Eve ceasefire meeting.

Cambodia’s defence ministry said the Thai military shelled areas of Siem Reap and Preah Vihear provinces.

“At 4.18pm, the Thai military deployed F-16 fighter jets to bombard further deep into the Cambodian sovereign territory in the area...

A Malaysian court on Monday granted rapper Namewee a full acquittal from his drug use charge after the prosecution presented a negative urine test in court.

Namewee’s lawyer, Joshua Tay, confirmed the acquittal with This Week in Asia.

Tay told the Kuala Lumpur magistrates’ court that since the pathology report was negative, there was no prospect of recharging his client, whose real name is Wee Meng Chee.

“The appropriate order should be a discharge and acquittal,” Tay said.

Magistrate S...

Lion dancers, drummers, stilt walkers and unicyclists flooded the streets of George Town on Sunday as the northern Malaysian city staged its annual Chingay parade, a century-old procession best known for performers balancing towering flagpoles on their chins and fingertips.

This year’s spectacle carries added weight. Malaysia and Singapore have jointly nominated Chingay for recognition on Unesco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a move organisers hope will elevate the tradition onto the...

A passenger bus crash killed at least 16 people on Indonesia’s main island of Java just after midnight on Monday, officials said.

The bus carrying 34 people lost control on a toll road and struck a concrete barrier before rolling onto its side, said Budiono, a search and rescue agency chief who goes by a single name like many Indonesians.

The inter-province bus was travelling from the capital Jakarta to the country’s ancient royal city of Yogyakarta when it overturned while entering a curved...

A Japanese H3 rocket carrying the sixth satellite in a seven-orbiter geolocation system failed to deliver its payload into orbit after lift-off on Monday, the country’s science ministry said.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is assessing the situation and investigating the cause of the second-stage engine’s premature cut-off that occurred shortly after lift-off from the Tanegashima Space Centre in Kagoshima prefecture.

Placed on multiple orbital planes, the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System...

Japan took the final step to allow the restart of the world’s largest nuclear power plant on Monday as the region of Niigata voted to resume ‍operations, a watershed moment in the country’s return to nuclear energy nearly 15 years after the Fukushima disaster.

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, located about 220km (136 miles) northwest of Tokyo, was among 54 reactors shut after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Since then, Japan...

A 26-year-old Singaporean man who was arrested after a suspicious item was found at St Joseph’s Church in Bukit Timah was charged with making a false terrorist threat on Monday.

Kokulananthan Mohan was charged with an offence under Regulation 8(2)(a) of the United Nations (Anti-terrorism Measures) Regulations.

According to charge sheets, he is accused of placing three cardboard rolls “filled with stone pebbles and sporting protruding red wires, held together using black and yellow adhesive...

A Malaysian court on Monday dismissed former prime minister Najib Razak’s bid to serve the remainder of his prison sentence under house arrest, dealing a setback to his attempt to secure early release from jail.

Najib, 72, is serving a reduced six-year sentence after receiving partial royal clemency earlier this year in the SRC International case, a former subsidiary linked to the scandal-ridden Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, in which he was convicted of abuse of power, criminal breach of...

Indonesia is seeking to plug an unusually deep revenue shortfall before year-end by scrutinising wealthy individuals and big businesses for extra tax payments.

As the country’s budget deficit projection edges towards a 3 per cent gross domestic product cap, tax officials have stepped up scrutiny of the rich, summoning some to review their returns in an effort to boost collections in what has been an anaemic year for receipts in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

Several people familiar with the...

When Washington unveiled its “Pax Silica” initiative earlier this month, the absence of countries like India and Vietnam spoke almost as loudly as the presence of Japan, South Korea and Singapore. The message? America’s new vision for the AI supply chain will begin with only its most trusted hands.

The Pax Silica Declaration, signed at a summit held in the United States on December 12-13, brought together a carefully chosen group as founding signatories. Alongside the host nation and its East...