Asia - South China Morning Post

A man suspected of repeatedly stalking a 22-year-old university student has been arrested in Malaysia after CCTV footage showing him sniffing her shoes outside her flat went viral on social media.

The footage shows a man in a black T-shirt loitering in a corridor outside what is believed to be the victim’s home in Shah Alam, before reaching through a grille to grab her footwear and sniff it.

The victim lodged a police report on Sunday after the post drew widespread attention, claiming to have...

We have selected seven stories from the SCMP’s coverage of Asia over the past week that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing.

1. Why South Korea is celebrating a Canada submarine deal it lost

South Korea may have lost Canada’s multibillion-dollar submarine order, but analysts say its close-run contest with Germany has handed Seoul a different prize: proof that it can challenge one of the world’s...

Jeju’s renewed push to allow Chinese tourists to drive rental cars on the South Korean resort island is reigniting a decade-old debate over safety, insurance and legal loopholes.

On July 2, the island’s Vice-Governor Park Cheon-su said allowing Chinese tourists to drive could boost visitor spending during a live-streamed meeting with senior provincial government officials.

“A large portion of independent foreign travellers are Chinese, but they cannot use rental cars at the moment,” Park said....

Mark Wahlberg shed the aura of a Hollywood star when he savoured street food and mingled with locals in Penang while filming Netflix’s The Big Fix. His trip delighted Malaysians and highlighted the country’s growing appeal to global productions.

Videos of Wahlberg, who played a former Boston police detective in Spenser Confidential, filming around the Malaysian state went viral on social media over the weekend.

Some clips showed the 55-year-old walking through a market, waving to onlookers and...

India’s nuclear energy ambitions hinge not only on reactors and reforms but also on an unresolved fuel question: where the uranium will come from.

A deal finalised with Australia last week could provide part of the answer, giving New Delhi access to the world’s largest known uranium reserves after years of delay linked to concerns over nuclear safeguards.

Analysts said the agreement would help India shore up fuel security for its planned nuclear expansion, while also signalling deeper strategic...

On July 6, a Chinese strategic nuclear submarine fired a missile carrying a training dummy warhead into a designated area of the Pacific. Beijing described the launch as routine, said relevant countries had been notified and insisted that it targeted no state.

The regional reaction was immediate, with Australia, Japan, the United States and Pacific nations raising concerns around insufficient notification and the politics of nuclear-free zones. Those reactions matter because they show how far...

Concern that foreign spies can operate with impunity in Japan has deepened following a media report that dozens of Russian agents ordered to leave Western European countries have entered Tokyo and are buying components for Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Moscow’s agents were taking advantage of Tokyo’s failure to enact a law specifically designed to combat espionage and the large number of companies manufacturing components critical to the Kremlin’s war...

Interior minister Shabana Mahmood announced plans on Monday to change UK law to allow a convicted paedophile who led a so-called grooming gang to be deported following his release from prison.

Shabir Ahmed was jailed in 2012 for 22 years for multiple child sexual offences including rape when he was the ringleader of a gang of similarly predatory men targeting girls in Rochdale, northern England.

He left prison on licence earlier this month under the country’s early release programme.

He was...

A university symposium in Guangzhou has placed the Philippines’ northernmost province of Batanes at the centre of a new argument over history, geography and sovereignty, after scholars at the event claimed the islands belonged to Taiwan and, on that basis, fell under overall Chinese sovereignty.

The claim, made at a June 30 symposium hosted by Jinan University in Guangzhou, has been rejected by Philippine historians and officials, who dispute the scholars’ reading of geography, dynastic...

A decade after a tribunal in The Hague ruled on July 12, 2016, that Beijing’s sweeping South China Sea claims had no legal basis, Philippine officials and analysts say Manila remains heavily outmatched at sea but has begun turning its landmark legal victory into a more credible form of deterrence.

The Philippines brought the case in 2013 under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), challenging Beijing’s nine-dash line and other claims.

The tribunal ruled that China’s...