Asia - South China Morning Post

After a rendition of My Way and a saxophone accompaniment that felt closer to crooning uncles at a wedding party than high-stakes diplomacy, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and his Thai counterpart Anutin Charnvirakul announced the serious business of squashing a damaging trade row and bringing greater security to the porous border between the nations.

The pair, long-standing friends, also share a love for public spectacle, with Anutin playing the classic song popularised by Frank Sinatra...

India’s struggle to replenish its depleted fighter fleet has led one of the world’s largest defence spenders to seek spare parts from decommissioned aircraft.

New Delhi recently secured nine retired British-built Jaguar ground-attack jets, which will not enter service with the Indian Air Force (IAF) but will be dismantled to help sustain its six operational Jaguar strike squadrons of about 120 aircraft.

Analysts said the acquisition was a practical stopgap but also exposed a deeper weakness in...

Voters in Malaysia’s southern state of Johor will cast their ballots on Saturday in a high-stakes election that is expected to bring Barisan Nasional (BN) back to power, exposing deeper cracks in Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration.

BN is part of Anwar’s unity government but will go head to head against federal partner Pakatan Harapan (PH) in a state long regarded as a BN stronghold.

The contest for Johor’s 56-seat assembly has put Anwar’s multi-ethnic party in an awkward position, but...

The United States is set to resume military sales to Turkey, Nato’s second-largest military power, after President Donald Trump said sanctions imposed against Ankara over its procurement of Russian air defence systems seven years ago would soon be lifted.

“We don’t want to sanction friends,” Trump told journalists at the Nato summit in the Turkish capital on Wednesday, while emphasising his “good chemistry” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Trump further said he would soon take a final...

As US President Donald Trump flew home from a fractious Nato summit in Turkey, he was poised to resume the war with Iran, whose leaders he labelled “sick” and “scum”. Trump also complained about European leaders’ failure to spend enough on arms, support him in Iran and recognise the need for the US to take control of Greenland. The sense of rising global conflict has been palpable this week.

What clearly showed at the summit of the transatlantic security alliance was confirmed by the latest...

A large and powerful typhoon approached a remote chain of islands in Japan’s southwest on Friday, prompting authorities to warn of violent winds, torrential rain, landslides and flooding in what could be the region’s most destructive storm in years.

Super Typhoon Bavi is expected to pass very close to Japan’s Sakishima Islands, a remote island chain that is part of Okinawa prefecture, early on ‌Saturday morning, according to meteorological authorities.

Maximum sustained winds were topping out at...

When Karasi Chandramogan’s father died four years ago, the 35-year-old Singaporean was left with the overwhelming responsibility of being the sole carer for her brother, who has autism, and mother, an amputee.

“Me and my dad were a tag team,” the freelance behavioural therapist said. “When he passed on, I couldn’t mourn too much because I had to handle the funeral situation as well as my mum and brother.”

She recalled an incident in April, when her brother, Bala, suffered seizures during lunch....

A decision by a city near Tokyo to bar a mosque from holding a long-standing outdoor prayer session in one of its parks has triggered debate over multicultural coexistence in Japan, with questions raised over whether officials had sufficient grounds for the move.

The dispute began in May when a mosque in Ichikawa, Chiba prefecture, was denied permission to hold a group prayer in the public park, located in a residential neighbourhood, during a festival that had been held there for years with...

The Philippines still lags behind its neighbours in attracting foreign direct investment, with inflows stagnating in 2025 even as a financing influx swept the region.

This shortfall has cast a spotlight on a corruption scandal that has roiled the country and dented investor confidence, analysts say, compounding long-standing systemic issues.

Manila ranked sixth in Southeast Asia for FDI last year, capturing just US$9 billion of the region’s US$244 billion investment haul, according to the UN...

Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional (BN), the dominant political coalition in Johor, might have expected to cruise to an easy victory come Saturday when the southern state goes to the polls – until a single remark from the son of jailed former prime minister Najib Razak suddenly gave its rivals political ammunition.

On July 3, Nazifuddin Najib, who heads BN in Langkawi, suggested that a strong showing by the coalition would validate calls for his father’s pardon.

“If we win big, it will send a signal...