Asia - South China Morning Post

Indonesia has confirmed it will not ban holiday rental platform Airbnb after Bali said it was considering doing so to curb unlicensed hotels and villas that have mushroomed on the island.

The split underscores the growing tension between Bali’s push to rein in illegal accommodations and Jakarta’s preference for regulation over platform bans. Analysts also say that a ban on Airbnb alone would not fix deeper problems such as unregistered guest houses, weak enforcement and foreigners subletting...

Fatin Anuar never imagined that managing just two credit cards would leave her battling months of financial anxiety.

The 25-year-old customer service worker in Kuala Lumpur initially saw them as a buffer for day-to-day spending and emergencies. It felt like a smart way to manage cash flow, she said, but the bills began creeping up until the debt felt like “a weight”.

“It kind of snuck up on me. I wasn’t really keeping track, and one day I looked at the statement and thought, ‘Okay, this is...

Retired regional human resources director Helen Kuan typically spends this time of year picking up Christmas presents from her usual department store haunts around Singapore. But her options are becoming more limited as more of these one-stop stores have been shuttering in recent years.

On Monday, shopping centre NEX, located in the northeast of Singapore, announced that Japanese brand Isetan would close in April next year, a month after the chain shut its Tampines outlet. With these closures,...

Seoul police have arrested a South Korean man who poured boiling water on his Thai partner’s face while she was sleeping in the hopes of disfiguring her so that she would not leave him for other men.

Police from the Uijeongbu station in Gyeonggi province said on Thursday they had arrested a man in his forties on special assault charges, according to local media.

The man is accused of scalding the face of his Thai partner, who is in her thirties, while she was sleeping in his flat in the...

Industrial plants in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi have come under renewed pressure to scale back their operations as authorities respond to a week of heavy and hazardous smog in the city.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Health earlier this week urged power, steel and chemical plants to cut output when the air quality index exceeds 200. The index gauges the volumes of hazardous small particles known as PM2.5 that are in the air.

The air quality index (AQI) hit 243 midday on Thursday, putting Hanoi...

A plunge in the value of the Indian rupee to record lows over the past week, making it Asia’s worst-performing currency, could be a mixed blessing for the South Asian economy as it pushes to finalise a trade deal with the United States, observers say.

The rupee depreciated beyond 90 to the US dollar this week, deepening a slide that began last week.

While the currency’s weakness is driving up the cost of essentials such as oil imports and overseas tuition, it has also brought some short-term...

Three Thai civilians were killed as heavy combat continued along the country’s border with Cambodia, the Thai military said on Thursday, marking the country’s first civilian fatalities since the fighting resumed.

The latest large-scale fighting was set off by a skirmish on Sunday that wounded two Thai soldiers and derailed a ceasefire pushed by US President Donald Trump that ended five days of combat in July over long-standing territorial disputes.

About two dozen people have been reported...

The impending termination of a long-running tax incentive that powered South Korea’s booming cosmetic surgery clinics risks driving away cost-conscious foreigners to destinations like Singapore and dealing an economic blow to the local medical tourism sector, industry groups have warned.

South Korea launched the 10 per cent value-added tax (VAT) refund scheme in 2016 for visitors going under the knife for procedures such as facelifts, skin revitalisation, breast augmentation and double-eyelid...

Heart-stopping footage released on Thursday by Australian authorities showed the moment a skydiver was left dangling thousands of metres in the air after their parachute caught on the plane’s tail.

The skydiver survived the incident, which occurred south of Cairns during a stunt in September, but has only just been revealed following investigations by the transport safety watchdog.

Plans for a 16-way formation by parachutists at 4,600 metres (15,000 feet), filmed by a parachuting camera...

A controversial British adult film star faces deportation from Indonesia’s resort island of Bali for violating immigration laws after she was arrested on suspicion of making pornographic online content, police said on Thursday.

Local police last week raided a studio in the popular tourist hub of Badung near the island’s capital, Denpasar, detaining Bonnie Blue, whose real name is Tia Billinger.

Three men – two Britons and an Australian – were also detained after police received a tip-off from a...