Asia - South China Morning Post

The judge who convicted former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak over the 1MDB scandal said the plunder of the sovereign wealth fund was so vast that it eclipsed the exploits of Attila the Hun, one of history’s most notorious conquerors.

“The scale of the plunder that took place (financially speaking, of course) made Attila the Hun look like a choirboy in comparison,” Collin Lawrence Sequerah said in the introduction to his 809-page grounds of judgment.

The written judgment was issued on...

The US military is planning a permanent war-ready weapons stockpile for its Marine Corps on Australia’s southeast coast beyond the range of most Chinese missiles, according to tender documents and officials.

The development of the stockpile, a first for the Marine Corps in Australia, came as the US was keen to leverage the continent’s strategic location in the South Pacific to counter China’s rapid military build-up, analysts said.

The US Marine Corps began global pre-positioning of military...

Indonesia has vowed to overhaul the country’s ambitious free nutritious meals programme following public pressure and recent allegations of corruption – a move analysts described as a “moderate” concession in lieu of an “embarrassing” discontinuation of President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship initiative.

The US$15 billion initiative aims to reach 83 million schoolchildren, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, and toddlers to prevent malnutrition and stunted growth. However, it has been dogged by...

When the ground tore open beneath the Philippines last week, Roldan Dante was working in a nearby town. By the time he could return, his home in Glan, Sarangani province, had collapsed. His wife and two young children were gone.

“If only I had known this was going to happen, I would have picked them up,” he told This Week in Asia, as social workers pressed government cash aid into his hands.

“I feel traumatised. I’m in shock and I still can’t accept what happened.”

Dante’s loss speaks to the...

A 6.7-magnitude earthquake shook part of central Indonesia’s Sulawesi island on Tuesday, causing scattered damage and rattling residents of a city devastated by a quake and tsunami eight years ago.

The initial quake was centred inland about 43km (30 miles) east-southeast of Palu, and the US Geological Survey said it was about 10km deep.

The strong shaking sent people fleeing into open areas in and around Palu, a city of about 400,000 people and the capital of Central Sulawesi province. Several...

Nisa Mohd did not send her daughter to boarding school unprepared. Before the now 17-year-old left for Melaka, her mother enrolled her in silat, the Malay martial art, and made one instruction clear: report any trouble immediately.

She still watches for shifts in her daughter’s mood each time they speak.

Millions of parents across Malaysia recognise her vigilance, with the country still following the inquest into the death last year of 13-year-old Zara Qairina Mahathir and a steady succession of...

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. Singapore PM Lawrence Wong to visit Russia, first since Ukraine war sanctions

Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong is set to visit the Russian city of Kazan in a trip that would mark the first high-level talks between leaders from both sides since the city state...

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s debut at this week’s G7 summit is an opportunity to turn her rapport with Donald Trump into a bridge between the US president and the bloc’s leaders, analysts say, as she seeks to cement her image as Japan’s “Iron Lady”.

At a working dinner on Monday – the opening night of the three-day meeting in Evian, eastern France – Takaichi also proposed a joint strategic stockpile partnership to bolster critical mineral supply chains and reduce China’s dominance in the...

When Singaporean Kristen Chng watched Chinese indie film Dear You with his father in Suzhou last month, he was reminded of his grandfather’s journey of sweat and hardship after leaving his ancestral village in Guangdong province with little to his name.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the room, he said, as cinema-goers followed the story of a man uncovering his family’s past by tracing remittance letters sent home from Thailand.

“My grandfather moved to Singapore in his teens and had a habit of...

North Korea’s latest spirited defence of its nuclear arsenal signals a strategy that goes beyond rejecting international calls to disarm and instead leans into mounting global superpower rivalry to legitimise its weapons build-up.

The verbal offensive comes as North Korea could soon face renewed pressure to return to the negotiating table. Analysts say the winding down of the Iran conflict may allow Washington and its allies to refocus attention on the Korean peninsula.

Pyongyang has also seized...