Asia - South China Morning Post

She was among five girls in Japan believed to have beaten a boy so severely that he required hospital treatment. Yet her most pressing concern was how much money the group should demand from him. To find an answer, she turned to artificial intelligence.

The alleged assault took place in January in Hachioji, a city in western Greater Tokyo.

For experts, the case has exposed a disturbing pattern: Japanese adolescents instinctively turning to AI to guide their actions, including criminal ones,...

Orchard Towers, a building in Singapore once notorious enough to earn the nickname “Four Floors of Whores”, has found an unlikely new tenant.

On weekends, the site of former nightclubs, illegal massage parlours and at least one murder is now flooded with church-goers.

Cornerstone Community Church officially opened weekly services at the Orchard Road landmark in January after buying six units on the fourth floor – formerly a nightclub – for S$54.5 million (US$42.3 million) in 2025.

Experts say...

Russia has freed 24 Filipinos who have been detained for months without charges in a Siberian city, after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr raised concerns about them in a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, Philippine officials said on Saturday.

The 24 arrived in Manila aboard two flights early on Sunday, and the first batch was welcomed by Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro, who accompanied Marcos in his talks with Putin on Wednesday in the Russian city of Kazan, the...

Led by Japan, East Asia seems to be setting off along a road to nowhere – beyond tension and maybe eventual conflict. This may seem a harsh indictment yet consecutive Japanese leaders have shown a lack of vision on the constructive role their country could play in achieving regional peace and economic integration.

The latest manifestation of this is Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s proposal this past week to G7 leaders in France to coordinate the stockpiling of critical minerals,...

The Trump administration’s indictment of former Cuban president Raul Castro and sanctions on his successor, Miguel Diaz-Canel, suggest Washington now views regime change in Havana as a viable policy objective.

This adds to Cuba’s mounting woes. The fall of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro in January severed the subsidised oil lifeline that had long kept the island nation afloat, plunging Cuba into its worst socio-economic crisis since the 1990s.

For most countries, this is a distant problem. For...

As Southeast Asia grapples with energy supply uncertainty, fallout from the Iran conflict and intensifying rivalry between the United States and China, Russia appears to be presenting itself as a viable “third power” option for the region, analysts say.

Moscow’s pitch was on display at the Asean-Russia Commemorative Summit in Kazan on Thursday, where Russian leader Vladimir Putin met regional counterparts, and the two sides agreed to bolster political and economic ties, alongside several...

Celty arrives at a cosplay venue in Kuala Lumpur and does not look the part yet, dressed in jeans and a plain t-shirt.

He finds a toilet, locks a cubicle door, transforms his looks and is ready to turn heads – dressed from head to toe in a helmet, boots, choker, corset and a glossy black latex catsuit.

The Kuala Lumpur-based latex enthusiast has rehearsed the worst-case scenario in his head. If people were to stare at him or mock him for his outfit, he would leave the Anime Fest Plus event at...

Scientists have detected the H5 strain of bird flu in Australia for the first time, meaning the highly contagious variant has now spread to every continent.

Australian Agriculture Minister Julie Collins told a press conference on Saturday that the disease had been found in a migratory sea bird, a brown skua, in remote Western Australia, and the result was confirmed by the national science agency.

Samples from another sick bird, a giant petrel, had also shown as a suspected positive result, she...

The runway at Clark International Airport was built to launch American air power across Asia. Now, it is being repurposed to project German industrial ambition.

Analysts say the multimillion-dollar deal to develop the former US military base in the Philippines illustrates how economic investment has become the new language of strategic power.

The deal, struck last week during German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s milestone visit to Manila – the first by a German head of state since 1963 –...

South Korean e-commerce companies are increasingly turning to Chinese platforms to help sellers tap rising demand for Korean products, offering a lower-cost route into China and other overseas markets without building local operations.

11street, one of South Korea’s major online marketplaces, recently opened a storefront on JD Worldwide, JD.com’s cross-border e-commerce platform, where about 700 million consumers have made at least one purchase over the past year.

The store carries products from...