Asia - South China Morning Post

Alice Guo, the controversial former mayor linked to a raided scam hub and accused of faking her Philippine citizenship, is facing 70 new criminal complaints along with her relatives, including document fraud and violations of laws barring foreigners from owning property or running businesses.

Analysts say the case highlights how foreign syndicates have exploited gaps in the country’s legal and political systems to gain a foothold in sensitive sectors – from local government to online gambling –...

A leopard was captured on Monday after it wandered into a hotel complex in one of Indonesia’s most popular holiday destinations, sparking panic among guests.

The big cat was spotted on Monday morning outside a guest room on the second floor of a hotel in Bandung, the capital of West Java, Indonesia’s most populous province.

The hotel management alerted firefighters, who then contacted the local conservation agency about the sighting.

“We used a tranquilliser, and at around 10am (the leopard was...

Malaysians may be asked to retire five years later at 65 but should be spared any sharp tax rises in Friday’s budget, economists say, as Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim faces an economy hampered by an ageing population, high youth joblessness and surging living costs at the halfway point of his administration.

About 8 per cent of Malaysia’s 34 million population are aged 65 and older, according to government data, firmly placing the Southeast Asian nation in the ageing nation category.

At the same...

American scientists Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi from Japan won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for their discoveries in peripheral immune tolerance, creating openings for possible new autoimmune disease and cancer treatments.

This year’s prize “relates to how we keep our immune system under control so we can fight all imaginable microbes and still avoid autoimmune disease”, said Marie Wahren-Herlenius, a rheumatology professor at the Karolinska...

Japan’s government has granted final approval for Kyoto to implement the nation’s highest-ever hotel tax, authorising the historic capital to charge guests up to 10,000 yen (US$68) per person, per night at luxury hotels from next March in a bid to rein in rampant overtourism.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications gave the green light to the move on Friday, removing the last bureaucratic barrier after Kyoto’s city assembly endorsed the proposal earlier this year.

The new tax regime,...

Thayil Jacob Sunny George, the founder of Asiaweek who launched the publication in 1975 to provide an English-language magazine owned by Asians that spoke for the region at a time when none existed, died at the age of 97 on Friday.

Over a seven-decade career in journalism, George forged a stellar reputation as an advocate of press freedom, revered among colleagues as someone who spoke his mind and was unrelenting in questioning even top political leaders.

In his last column for the New Indian...

It is easy to be critical of Singapore’s seemingly never-ending property cooling measures. Since 2009, the government has intervened at least 15 times in an effort to take the heat out of the city state’s residential real estate market. Despite this, average prices of second-hand private properties as well as those built by the Housing and Development Board (HDB), Singapore’s public housing authority, keep hitting new highs.

Even historically cheap suburban areas are no longer a “budget...

A hospital blaze caused by a suspected short circuit killed at least six patients in a trauma centre at the largest state-run hospital in India’s northwestern city of Jaipur, and injured five, officials said on Monday.

The fire began in the intensive care unit of the Sawai Man Singh Hospital, “releasing toxic gases”, hospital official Anurag Dhakad told the ANI news agency, adding that a short circuit was the suspected cause.

“Five patients are still critical,” he said, while 13 had been safely...

A Spanish tourist was attacked by a bear cub on Sunday morning during his visit to the scenic mountain village of Shirakawa in central Japan, according to the local government.

The 40-year-old man sustained a minor injury to his right arm. He was walking with another Spanish man at about 8.30am when they came across a small bear emerging from the grass near a shuttle bus stop in the village, part of which is a World Heritage site.

According to the municipal government, the bear, which fled the...

A government-sanctioned gala dinner in Malaysia where alcohol was served in the presence of Muslim guests has triggered calls for the resignation of the minister involved, as the culture wars that have plagued Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration resurface.

Malaysia has taken a conservative tilt in recent years, with Anwar’s government seeking support from the Malay-Muslim majority that accounts for about 60 per cent of the country’s 34 million population.

That constituency broadly...