Asia - South China Morning Post

Halal-certified hotels and food premises in Malaysia are allowed to display Christmas decorations, according to Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Religious Affairs) Zulkifli Hasan.

He clarified that there are no restrictions against halal certification holders from displaying festive decorations linked to religions other than Islam, provided that halal standards are upheld.

“The position is in line with a decision made by the Islamic Development Department Malaysia (Jakim) in 2023,...

South Korea’s foreign resident population has climbed to an all-time high, driven by a sharp rise in young migrants and a particularly strong influx from Vietnam, according to new data.

The 2025 Immigrant Residence and Employment Survey, published Thursday, shows that as of May, the number of foreign residents aged 15 or older exceeded 1.69 million, up from 1.56 million a year earlier, an increase of around 8 per cent.

The figure accounts for about 3.3 per cent of South Korea’s total population...

A drone school in northeastern Japan is developing a new system that uses drones and artificial intelligence to identify and automatically track bears amid a surge in bear-related incidents.

The new system being developed by D-Academy Tohoku in Gojome, Akita prefecture, will be able to detect bears hidden from view in mountainous or urban areas and share their locations via smartphones.

It is expected to be available next year, and local authorities are already showing a keen interest.

The...

Nearly 70 per cent of Japanese want the law to be changed to permit an empress, with observers suggesting that the recent emergence of Princess Aiko on the international stage is fanning a groundswell of support for her to become a future monarch.

A poll by the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun published last Sunday showed that 69 per cent of respondents favoured revisions to the Imperial Household Law to allow a woman to assume the Chrysanthemum Throne, with a further 24 per cent undecided on the...

When a gunman murdered 35 people in Tasmania in 1996, Australia’s political leaders united to implement some of the West’s toughest gun laws. Nearly three decades later, after 15 people were killed at a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach, consensus is more elusive.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s call for tighter gun controls is meeting resistance from ascendant right-wing populists and some mainstream conservatives, revealing a more polarised landscape that contrasts with Australia’s response to...

As the windows rattled from distant explosions, British tourist Brian* sat sleepless in a dim hotel room in Thailand’s Trat province, waiting out a curfew he had not known existed.

With artillery ringing out from across the border with Cambodia, his dreams of reaching the island of Koh Kood seemed to dissolve into the darkness.

“The police said the road was closed and I’d have to find accommodation overnight,” Brian told This Week in Asia, offering only his first name. “I heard explosions all...

Three former members of a Singapore preschool’s senior management admitted on Friday to covering up the offences of a cook who molested toddlers at the preschool where they all worked.

The cook, 61-year-old Teo Guan Huat, had molested three toddlers during naptime over seven months in 2023. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than nine years’ jail last month.

The three members of senior management were the 59-year-old executive director, 61-year-old principal and 49-year-old...

As Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration swings from one setback to another, his ruling coalition has turned to familiar talking points to regain the support of the country’s ethnic minorities.

In the wake of a devastating defeat in the Sabah state election last month, members of Anwar’s ruling Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition have renewed a push for government recognition of school leaving certificates issued by private Chinese high schools.

The call, however, has driven a wedge...

India’s parliament pushed through an overhaul of a rural employment scheme on Friday despite an opposition walkout and a session that stretched well past midnight.

The Developed India Employment Guarantee and Sustenance Mission bill will supersede a decades-old rural jobs scheme for millions of the country’s poorest.

It replaces the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, a defining legacy of the previous left-leaning Congress government, which was in power from 2004 to 2014.

The...

The Arctic shipping route is essential to safeguard China’s development over the next decade, a senior Chinese official said in Beijing, calling for greater efforts to expand its practical use.

With proposals for the next five-year plan incorporating security and development, China must ensure its international transport channels remain unimpeded, Ma Jiantang, deputy director of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference’s economic committee, said.

China’s traditional trade lanes...