Asia - South China Morning Post

A woman who appeared in videos allegedly showing a group of Malaysian tourists mocking locals in China as “smelly” has apologised after days of criticism from social media users in Malaysia and China.

Nur Asyiqin Mohd Dalil came under scrutiny after the clips went viral, with users criticising the remarks as insulting to locals in China and saying they reflected poorly on Malaysians abroad.

In a statement posted on her TikTok page, @ekyn.wong, on Saturday, she said she took full responsibility...

Three elephants whose transfer from Malaysia to Japan earlier this year sparked public anger over their alleged mistreatment are now at the centre of a corruption investigation over claims that Putrajaya did not receive the money linked to the move.

The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) said on Monday it had opened a formal investigation into the movement of the elephants – Dara, Amoi and Kelat – from Zoo Taiping in the northern state of Perak to Tennoji Zoo in Osaka.

MACC said it was...

A long-delayed bill meant to curb political dynasties in the Philippines – where powerful families dominate elected offices from Congress to local government – has moved closer to becoming law, but critics say the measure could end up protecting the clans it claims to restrain.

The House of Representatives approved the measure in early June, a rare advance for an anti-dynasty law, nearly four decades after the 1987 constitution directed Congress to define and prohibit political...

At first glance, the images looked like those of a happy family in Singapore. There were photos of the couple during their school days and on dates, the woman pregnant and the man holding their supposed newborn with a caption that read: “My boys”.

Except the family did not exist – the images were all AI-generated.

The man in the photos did not even know about them until a friend alerted him in December last year, The Straits Times reported on Sunday. In real life, he was not married or in a...

A cursory look at the ranking of the world’s largest shopping centres shows the scale of the decline in the US retail property market. The US has only one, the Mall of America near Minneapolis, Minnesota, among the top 20. This is not surprising given that virtually no shopping centres were built in the last two decades.

A succession of shocks – which included the disruptive impact of e-commerce, the financial woes of department stores that served as anchor tenants for most malls and the damage...

Bangladesh’s new leader has urged Malaysia to reopen its labour market to more Bangladeshi workers, even as migrant rights groups warned that both governments must first address years of recruitment abuse, debt and stranded-worker cases.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman made the request to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim during talks in Putrajaya on Monday, his first foreign visit since taking office, while seeking to broaden bilateral ties.

Tarique said he had asked Anwar to consider...

A court has sentenced a former South Korean justice minister to 25 years in prison for his role in ex-president Yoon Suk-yeol’s brief and disastrous declaration of martial law in 2024.

Park Sung-jae was found guilty of involvement in “insurrection”, the Yonhap news agency reported from the Seoul Central District Court on Monday.

Yoon’s December 2024 martial law declaration lasted only about six hours as lawmakers raced to the assembly building and voted it down in an emergency session.

He has...

Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s trip to Russia as part of an Asean delegation to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin was a pragmatic move that showed the city state could uphold its sanctions against Moscow while keeping diplomatic channels open, analysts said.

They said the approach reflected Singapore’s need to balance its principled stance on the Ukraine war with its responsibilities as next year’s chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the region’s search for...

A recent meeting between the leaders of Myanmar and China has given the military junta an opening to persuade Asean to allow it to return to the bloc’s summits.

Analysts also say, however, that Myanmar’s regime could feel emboldened to escalate action against resistance forces, revving up its “military approach” to deal with the country’s civil war.

Last Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping met his Myanmar counterpart Min Aung Hlaing in Beijing, providing vital political endorsement to the...

At least three teenagers were killed and seven others wounded on Monday in a rare school shooting in the central Philippines, police said.

Two alleged shooters, aged 15 and 14, had fired “randomly” inside the school, police information officer Evalyn Diaz said of the incident, which took place at around 9am at San Jose National High School in Leyte province’s Tacloban City.

One of the suspects was arrested immediately after the shooting, while the other later surrendered, authorities said....