Asia - South China Morning Post

Tey Yong How remembers running along the shores of eastern Singapore as a child, the sea breeze mingling with the smell of sizzling seafood.

Birthday dinners here meant three or four tables pushed together, with cousins chasing each other between the chairs as the adults pulled apart succulent chilli crab.

“My childhood memories will linger there,” the 47-year-old said on a recent Wednesday evening of the seafood restaurants at East Coast Park. “Whatever may become of it in the...

In Jakarta last month, many May Day demonstrations took place, but two stood out as reflections of the divisions among Indonesia’s trade unions.

At the National Monument (Monas), tens of thousands of workers gathered at a rally with President Prabowo Subianto as the guest of honour. Several kilometres away at the People’s Representative Council complex, around 10,000 people assembled under a different banner: “May Day with the People”. Their stated position was an explicit refusal to be co-opted...

Jaslinda Saludin, the Malaysian hiker who went missing after descending Gunung Batu Putih mountain in Perak state’s Tapah two weeks ago, has been found and is now undergoing treatment.

“Thank you to everyone involved, especially the police, Fire and Rescue Department personnel, NGOs, the Orang Asli (indigenous people) and all those who participated in the search operation,” said her husband, Haszman Othman, 61, who was full of gratitude over the successful rescue.

He was met by the media at the...

Six years after the Ladakh crisis erupted in May 2020, triggering the worst military confrontation between India and China in decades, the two countries are attempting something that once seemed improbable: a diplomatic reset.

The latest indication came late last month when officials met in Beijing for the 35th meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs. The message emerging from the talks was positive. The two sides reaffirmed their...

Malaysia has staked its economic future on becoming Southeast Asia’s data-centre capital. It has also promised to slash fossil fuel use by 2050. Right now, those two ambitions are pulling in opposite directions – and gas is winning.

There were 54 operational data centres across Malaysia by the end of 2024, with that number expected to rise to 81 by 2035, government minister Akmal Nasrullah Mohd Nasir told parliament last year.

In the handful of years from 2021 and mid-2025, some 144.4 billion...

An ⁠American student ⁠who disappeared while on ⁠a family holiday in Japan was found dead outside Kyoto, his mother wrote in a social media post on Saturday.

The body of James ‌Higginbotham, 20, was discovered in a mountainous area by a volunteer search-and-rescue group, Nancy Higginbotham wrote.

A cause of death and further details were not immediately available.

“Our family is heartbroken,” she said. “The grief we feel is ⁠impossible to put into words.”

Higginbotham, an Alabama resident ‌and an...

Protesters outside a ballot-counting site in ⁠South Korea on ⁠Saturday rallied for a second ⁠day, demanding a re-run of local elections held earlier this week.

Around 10,000 citizens were estimated to have gathered at the SK Olympic Handball Stadium as of 5.30pm local time, where votes were counted from Wednesday’s elections to pick mayors and local government officials and assembly members, Yonhap News Agency reported, citing an unofficial police estimate.

Representatives at Seoul Metropolitan...

What is in effect Japan’s version of the Belt and Road Initiative is being rolled out at an accelerating pace. But unlike China’s global infrastructure initiative, which mainly takes the form of highways, railways and sea lanes, Japan’s project is all about energy networks and supply chains.

It poses a further challenge to America’s waning economic and strategic influence in Asia, the world’s most populous, resource-rich and potentially powerful region. What is more, it is a cooperative venture...

Three social media platforms have been ordered to block access to 14 posts which “target the Indian community and undermine Singapore’s model of multiculturalism”, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said on Saturday.

The police have issued disabling directions under the Online Criminal Harms Act to block access to the posts on YouTube, Facebook and X, MHA said in a statement.

The direction required the platforms to “take all reasonable steps to disable access by Singapore users to these posts”,...

Hundreds of supporters of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), an online joke that drew millions across India, gathered for the first time in the national capital on Saturday, taking the social media movement off screens and into its biggest real-world test yet.

The protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, marks the movement’s first foray into street politics after weeks of dominating social media feeds and news headlines, attracting millions of online followers and widespread support among young...