Asia - South China Morning Post

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has rebuffed a threat by eight US lawmakers to suspend military training funds unless Kuala Lumpur reverses its long-standing restrictions on Israeli nationals.

Muslim-majority Malaysia has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has long been one of Southeast Asia’s most vocal supporters of Palestinian statehood.

Anwar said Malaysia was exercising its sovereign right to control entry and rejected the lawmakers’ assertion that his government was violating...

Labour unions are rallying across South Korea after Samsung Electronics caved in to protests and agreed to hand out bonuses of more than US$400,000 to some of its employees.

Just this week, assembly-line workers at Hyundai Motor staged a three-day partial strike as they seek up to 30 per cent of consolidated profit to be set aside for bonuses.

Meanwhile, unions at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and telecoms operator LG Uplus want payouts equivalent to at least 30 per cent of operating profit, while...

Public support for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi appears to be fraying, with two new opinion polls suggesting voters are losing patience with a leader who won a sweeping mandate in February but has since spent political capital on conservative causes instead of tackling cost-of-living pressures.

Analysts said the problem was not simply that Takaichi’s honeymoon period was ending, but that she had used her commanding position to push through legislation dear to the most conservative...

South Korean prosecutors have charged Korean-American professor Morse Tan for criminal defamation over false claims targeting President Lee Jae Myung.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office reportedly indicted Tan without detention on Thursday on multiple defamation charges.

Tan, who served as the US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice under the first Donald Trump administration, is accused of spreading false allegations during a press conference in Washington last year. He...

A South Korean court’s conviction of Seoul’s mayor for illegal polling payments threatens to put an end to his presidential ambitions just weeks after he won a historic fifth term.

Oh Se-hoon, the 65-year-old conservative who has led South Korea’s capital on and off for nearly two decades, was fined 10 million won (US$6,800) on Wednesday for violating the Political Funds Act ahead of the mayoral by-election in 2021.

Under South Korean law, any elected official fined more than 1 million won for...

In April 1955, amid the Cold War, 304 representatives across 29 Asian and African nations convened in Bandung, Indonesia, to discuss the principles of a more complex future world order. Among them were India, China and host Indonesia.

While India would go on to champion the non-aligned movement at the 1961 Belgrade Conference, Mao Zedong’s China and Sukarno’s Indonesia were more sceptical of the colonial, Western order. Then the more US-sympathetic Suharto seized power in Indonesia in 1966....

A married Singapore minister’s sudden resignation amid revelations he had exchanged inappropriate messages with a woman has rocked the city state’s establishment circles, with a groundswell of sentiment calling for him to be retained.

Amid online petitions and calls to keep former minister-in-charge of Muslim affairs Faishal Ibrahim following his resignation on Monday, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong shed further light on the controversy, suggesting the matter was more serious than previously...

Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio suffered a serious setback in her impeachment trial this week after the Senate allowed prosecutors to examine key financial records in an unexplained wealth case against her.

Analysts said the Senate impeachment court’s ruling could give prosecutors a clearer route to show she amassed ill-gotten wealth and pull down her popularity ratings in time for the 2028 presidential election, thus raising the stakes for Duterte-Carpio as she fights not only to...

Malaysia would not be intimidated into changing its decades-old policy of not allowing Israeli nationals into the country, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Wednesday.

Anwar said Malaysia was also not in contravention of any international laws for having such a policy in place.

“I would like to respond to the United States lawmakers, some of them at least, who stated categorically that Malaysia is in contravention of international laws and was disrespectful of the rights of nations.

“This is...

India’s student-led “cockroach” protests, which began as anger over alleged entrance exam leaks, are now becoming a broader test of whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government can contain young Indians’ frustration over education, jobs and accountability.

The fast-growing movement gained political momentum on Tuesday when opposition leader Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were forcibly removed after a gathering with about 100 fellow lawmakers outside...