Asia - South China Morning Post

The United States and Pakistan are reviving defence and minerals cooperation in a bid to reset their uneasy ties, marking a policy shift that has stirred anxiety in India even as Washington seeks to reassure New Delhi.

Washington has approved hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrades for Pakistan’s ageing F-16 fighter jets and opened the door to more than US$1 billion in financing for US companies involved in critical minerals projects in the South Asian nation.

These moves mark the most...

Malaysians who have fallen victim to scams are being warned about a new form of fraud involving self-styled “anti-scam” law firms that promise unusually high recovery rates but ultimately exploit victims again, according to the Malaysian Chinese Association’s Public Services and Complaints Department head Michael Chong.

He said his office had received complaints involving online ad­­vertisements by entities claiming to be law firms, which said that they had success rates of more than 90 per cent...

A father and son were driven by “Islamic State ideology” when they fired on Bondi Beach in one of Australia’s deadliest mass shootings, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday.

Sajid Akram and his son Naveed opened fire on Jewish crowds thronging the famous beach for Hanukkah on Sunday evening, killing 15 people and wounding dozens more.

Authorities said the attack was designed to sow panic among the nation’s Jews, but have so far given little detail on the gunmen’s deeper...

Kim Jong-un has publicly mourned nine North Korean soldiers killed in Russia, in a rare display of grief analysts say belies a harder message of military solidarity with Moscow and rising expectations of compensation.

North Korean state television broadcast scenes of Kim greeting wounded soldiers in wheelchairs and consoling relatives of the fallen during a welcome ceremony in Pyongyang on Friday.

The event honoured engineering units that had recently returned from Russia’s western Kursk region,...

Bangladesh’s interim government said it would fly a leader of the 2024 uprising, a candidate in coming elections, for treatment in Singapore after an assassination attempt that left him critically wounded.

Masked attackers shot student leader Sharif Osman Hadi on Friday as he left a mosque in the capital Dhaka, wounding him in the ear.

The shooting took place one day after authorities announced a date for the first elections since the student-led uprising last year that overthrew the autocratic...

Indonesia will revoke more than 20 forestry permits across the country, the forestry minister said on Monday, after deadly floods and landslides devastated parts of the northwestern island of Sumatra.

Environmentalists and experts have pointed to the role forest loss played in flash flooding and landslides that this month killed more than 1,000 people and washed torrents of mud into villages.

The government will revoke 22 forestry permits that encompass more than one million hectares of land,...

When National Basketball Association veteran Jason Collins married his long-term partner Brunson Green in May, having to divert his honeymoon to Singapore six months later for an experimental treatment for stage 4 brain cancer was not on his bingo card.

The 2.13 metre (7 feet) former centre, 47, and Green, a film producer, found themselves spending Thanksgiving in the city state last month, far from their extended family, as Collin underwent his first doses of EDV (EnGeneIC Dream Vector) in his...

Australia will toughen gun laws after a father and son killed 15 people in the nation’s deadliest terror attack, opening fire on members of the Jewish community who were celebrating the start of Hanukkah at Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach on Sunday.

A 10-year-old girl, a Holocaust survivor and a local rabbi were among those killed, while 42 others were rushed to hospital with gunshot wounds and other injuries.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese convened a meeting of the leaders of Australia’s states...

One of India’s poorest states is facing scrutiny over its public health performance after data showed thousands of registered HIV cases in a single district of Bihar, including hundreds of children, despite years of national progress against the disease.

Local media reports said around 7,400 people in Sitamarhi district had been registered as HIV-positive, including more than 400 children, prompting alarm over a possible surge in infections.

District health officials have confirmed the figures...

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has urged Congress to fast track a long-delayed law banning political dynasties, but a bill filed by the speaker of the House and his eldest son is drawing sharp criticism for aiming to do the opposite.

Days after the president met House Speaker Faustino “Bojie” Dy III, Majority Leader Ferdinand Alexander Marcos and others, Dy and the younger Marcos filed the bill on Friday.

Lawmakers and critics have slammed the proposal for legitimising and entrenching...