Asia - South China Morning Post

Three months after moving from China to Japan, Alisa Lin has yet to buy a single drink from Mixue – the Chinese ice cream and tea giant – despite being a frequent customer back home, where a cup costs under five yuan (73 US cents) during promotions.

“It’s not a very popular brand here. Only one of my friends in Japan has ever bought it,” Lin said, adding that value for money was the main consideration behind her own consumer choices in Tokyo. While Mixue’s basic teas are cheap, a plain bubble...

In the Philippine capital, 85 pesos (US$1.40) is barely enough to buy a meal for one, let alone a family of five.

Yet that modest sum, roughly the price of 1½kg of premium imported rice, is the largest single wage increase ever approved for Metro Manila’s minimum-wage earners.

The government called it “historic”. Labour groups called it an insult.

The increase, to be rolled out in two stages, was confirmed by the Department of Labour and Employment on Tuesday.

Non-agricultural workers will see...

A Japanese space probe performed a fly-by of a near-Earth asteroid on Sunday, in a test mission for technology that could help protect the planet from space rocks.

The fridge-sized Hayabusa2 was due to fly within 800 metres (0.5 miles) of asteroid Torifune, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) scientists said earlier, a trial run to see whether such a probe could deflect a potentially dangerous space rock away from Earth.

The mission comes after Nasa deliberately smashed a spacecraft into...

A “super typhoon” with equivalent force to a category-5 hurricane made landfall on the US island of Rota in the Pacific on Monday, the National Weather Service (NWS) said, warning of “catastrophic damage and [a] life-threatening situation”.

“The western eyewall of Super Typhoon Bavi is currently moving over the island of Rota. The latest forecast intensity is at 180mph (290km/h) as it passes over Rota,” the NWS said. “Catastrophic winds exceeding 150mph will continue across Rota during eyewall...

“The Emiratis – by far the most hawkish, by far the most pro-Israel country in the [Gulf Cooperation Council] – they’re having conversations with the Iranians that have never happened before,” US Vice-President J.D. Vance told British media outlet UnHerd following the Iran-US negotiations in Switzerland.

The Iranians “are certainly talking differently than they have in the past”, he added in a note of cautious optimism, highlighting how both Washington and its allies in the Persian Gulf are...

Hit by the biggest energy supply shock in decades during the Middle East war, import-dependent India is expanding domestic crude exploration, its oil minister says.

India, the world’s third-largest importer of oil and the second-largest buyer of liquefied petroleum gas, faced major disruptions due to restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz during the conflict between the United States and Iran.

With a temporary US-Iran deal in place to pause hostilities, oil and gas shipments are flowing through...

In a quieter part of western Bali, far from the crowds and chaos of the south, a 38-year-old housewife was bitten by a stray cat while hanging out laundry in May.

Within weeks, she was dead: one of five people killed by rabies on the Indonesian resort island so far this year.

The following month, a rabid dog kept as a family pet in the same region, Jembrana regency, attacked two children and an adult. All three survived, thanks to swift post-exposure vaccination after tests confirmed that the...

When South Korea’s national football team returned home on Tuesday after their shock group-stage exit from the 2026 World Cup tournament, the fury of fans was not targeted at captain Son Heung-min or other players.

It was aimed at head coach Hong Myung-bo, who announced his resignation during a press conference in Guadalajara, Mexico – the tournament’s co-host – on June 28.

South Korea lost 1-0 to Mexico and South Africa after opening their World Cup campaign with a 2-1 win over the Czech...

Asean military observers have now visited both sides of the Thai-Cambodian frontier, measuring damage and recording claims as Bangkok and Phnom Penh continue to trade allegations of ceasefire breaches following last year’s deadly clashes.

In late June, a delegation from member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations fanned out across Thailand and Cambodia, escorted through contested ground and competing narratives.

The fighting last year resulted in more than 100 military and...

Japan has partnered with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to support Kazakhstan’s efforts to address the decline in the Caspian Sea’s water level driven by climate change, pledging a 465 million yen (US$3 million) grant towards its sustainable use.

Under the initiative for the world’s largest inland water body, Japan hopes to promote cooperation among littoral states on water resource management and enhance monitoring systems, according to the foreign ministry. The decline in the Caspian...