Asia - South China Morning Post

Pang Kok Meng, 65, lives with his 91-year-old mother in a public housing flat in Geylang, a township in central Singapore. For more than a decade, he has been feuding with a neighbour living one floor below.

“Whenever there’s a little noise – if someone’s high heels make clacking sounds, or if I drop something on the floor – he retaliates by banging on his ceiling,” he told This Week in Asia. “He does it every day, from day to night, it scares my mother to tears.”

Pang is far from alone....

Afghanistan said on Sunday it had killed 58 Pakistani soldiers in overnight border operations, in response to what it called repeated violations of its territory and airspace.

Pakistan’s army gave far lower casualty figures, saying 23 troops were killed.

Earlier in the week, Afghan authorities accused Pakistan of bombing the capital, Kabul, and a market in the country’s east. Pakistan did not claim responsibility for the assault.

The two countries share a 2,611-km (1,622-mile) border known as...

Japanese summers had lengthened by about three weeks over the 42 years from 1982 to 2023, a university research group said on Saturday.

The Mie University group said that due to climate change, the number of days classified as summer has increased each year, while the length of winter has remained relatively unchanged, and the average durations of spring and autumn have shortened.

The group cited “the rise in sea surface temperatures due to global warming” as the main factor, warning that “the...

Vilma Lagnayo woke up on Saturday to a sobering reality – her family home of five years in the quiet coastal town of Manay in southern Philippines was gone.

The 56-year-old recalled that minutes before an offshore magnitude 7.4 quake hit at 9.43am on Friday, she was outside her house attending to house chores when the ground began to tremble softly.

Within seconds, the shaking turned violent – the walls of their house creaked and then collapsed, windows rattled, and the air filled with the sound...

In the wake of a landmark ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, the world’s oil traders are watching the Middle East with a rare sense of cautious optimism, as hopes for lasting peace begin to chip away at the recent risk premium attached to global energy flows.

While analysts caution that the immediate effects on oil supply and demand may be muted, the truce is already having an effect.

Should the agreement lead to fewer attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes, renewed progress on Iran’s nuclear...

At least seven police officers and six militants were killed after gunmen attacked a police training centre in northwestern Pakistan, triggering a fierce firefight that lasted for hours, officials said on Saturday.

It is the latest violence to rock the area, which is the base for several armed groups, and comes as Pakistan struggles with a worsening security situation.

Friday night’s assault targeted a police training facility in Ratta Kulachi, on the outskirts of Dera Ismail Khan city.

Police...

A surge in bear attacks in Japan has forced the government to relax rules on “emergency shootings” in populated areas, amid concerns over whether municipalities can secure hunters skilled enough to respond without putting residents at risk.

From April this year, Japan, mainly in its northern parts, saw a high number of attacks and damage caused by bears, resulting in six human deaths, matching a record set in the year from April 2023 to March of the following year, according to Ministry of...

Dazed survivors of a pair of major earthquakes in the southern Philippines awoke on Saturday to scenes of devastation, after hundreds of aftershocks rocked the region overnight.

Many coastal residents of Mindanao island had slept outdoors, fearful of being crushed to death by aftershocks of the 7.4 and 6.7 magnitude quakes that struck off the coast within hours of each other on Friday.

Philippine authorities said at least eight people were killed. Office of Civil Defence Information Officer...

South Korea’s Chuseok harvest festival, typically a time of national celebration, has been overshadowed by political mudslinging after President Lee Jae-myung’s appearance on a prime-time television cooking show coincided with a digital disaster that crippled the government’s online services.

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and the opposition People Power Party (PPP) have each accused the other of exploiting the incident for political gain in duelling defamation lawsuits.

At the heart...

Before a Myanmar student descends into a classroom entombed in a concrete bunker, she prays for compassion and her community’s safety, knowing her appeal will go unanswered.

“May the fighter jets not come. May the pilots show kindness to us. May the bombs not explode,” 18-year-old Phyo Phyo said, recalling her unspoken wishes.

She is enrolled in a class of around a dozen at the subterranean academy, founded in June after a junta strike obliterated a nearby school and killed at least 20 pupils...