Asia - South China Morning Post

Asean’s bold pledge to take a unified position on US tariffs is all but untenable now, experts say, as deals struck by the region’s largest economies with Washington set them on different paths towards softening the blow to their vital exports.

Economic ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will meet on Tuesday to discuss their next steps after US President Donald Trump’s administration slapped tariffs of between 10 and 40 per cent on the bloc’s 10 members.

It will be...

A Malaysian man on death row for trafficking heroin is to be executed this week in Singapore, anti-death penalty activists said on Monday, renewing calls for a halt to capital punishment in the city state.

If the execution goes through, Datchinamurthy Kataiah, 39, will become the third Malaysian national and the eleventh person to be hanged this year in Singapore.

His family received a notice on Sunday that his hanging will take place on Thursday at Singapore’s Changi prison, according to Kokila...

A Japanese research team that painted cows with zebra-like stripes to protect them from biting flies has received this year’s Ig Nobel Prize in Biology, marking the country’s 19th consecutive win at the tongue-in-cheek science awards.

The prize, awarded in a ceremony at Boston University on Thursday, honours research that “first makes people laugh, then makes them think”.

While painting cows like zebras may sound absurd, the research points to a serious application in chemical-free pest control,...

Singapore will reconsider its position on recognising a Palestinian state if the situation continues to deteriorate, or if Israel takes further steps to extinguish a two-state solution, Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan has said.

Singapore has always supported a negotiated two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

“We will recognise the State of Palestine when it has an effective government that accepts Israel’s right to exist and categorically renounces terrorism,”...

Myanmar and Asean leaders are locked in a “diplomatic impasse” with the military junta determined to prevent the bloc from interfering with its plans for a general election later this year, according to observers.

Four foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations last week postponed their planned trip to Myanmar to discuss the election, which is set to begin in December, and other matters.

The diplomats from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines were originally...

More than 10,000 people sheltered in schools and evacuation centres in the Philippines on Monday as heavy rains and gale-force winds from Super Typhoon Ragasa lashed the country’s far north.

The typhoon, which is gaining strength as it proceeds on a collision course with southern China, is expected to make landfall over the Philippines’ Babuyan Island.

The sparsely populated islands lie about 740km (460 miles) south of Taiwan, where smaller-scale evacuations were also under way.

As of 11.00am,...

Singapore handbag brand Aupen and its founder Nicholas Tan have been issued correction directions under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) for allegations made about Singapore’s intellectual property authority.

Tan published multiple allegations about the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) on his Instagram account on September 9, 15 and 16. The September 15 post was also published on Aupen’s Instagram page.

These Instagram posts and stories contained...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has responded positively to a recent overture by US President Donald Trump, even as analysts say the prospects for another summit between the two leaders remain slim due to their wide differences over denuclearisation.

Kim said he could meet Trump again, provided the US were to drop its insistence on North Korea’s denuclearisation, noting he had “good memory” of Trump, according to Pyongyang’s state media.

The comments by Kim followed a statement by Trump at his...

Donald Trump’s sticker shock on H-1B visas risks disrupting Indian tech firms’ US projects, and is forcing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to once again deal with the fallout from America First policies.

The US president’s order on Friday – which requires a US$100,000 fee for H-1B applications – will hurt margins of Indian outsourcers who use the programme to deploy engineers to client sites.

That is a blow to India’s US$280 billion IT services sector, which is already grappling with sluggish...

Malaysians will be able to buy even cheaper petrol – but only up to 300 litres (79 gallons) per month – from next Tuesday under a sweeping new fuel subsidy scheme announced on Monday, aimed at reducing the country’s bloated subsidy expenditure.

Fuel subsidies have long strained the budget, with nearly 20 billion ringgit (US$4.7 billion) spent annually in recent years – about 8 per cent of total expenditure.

Under the old system, all motorists enjoyed unlimited RON95 petrol at 2.05 ringgit (49 US...