Asia - South China Morning Post

In a swanky penthouse office outside Kuala Lumpur, tech firm Zetrix AI is putting a grand plan into motion to get 1 million people across Southeast Asia using its artificial intelligence agent, Avatar, by the end of the year.

Designed as an autonomous alter ego, Avatar is adept at dealing with tasks ranging from the mundane, like filling out forms, to the particular, such as helping influencers reply to thousands of social media messages.

The ultimate goal, according to the company’s Gen Z...

When Marco Rubio was confirmed as US Secretary of State last year, fireworks of optimism went off in New Delhi. Given his years as a senator championing a pro-India, staunchly anti-China posture, policymakers anticipated an unprecedented alignment.

However, as Rubio arrives in India on Saturday for a four-day visit spanning Kolkata, Agra, Jaipur and New Delhi, he enters a relationship strained by transactional politics, structural deadlock and mounting strategic unease over Washington’s recent...

On Great Nicobar, a remote island located closer to Indonesia than mainland India, New Delhi is embarking on one of its biggest developments in decades.

The US$9 billion project is intended to transform the country’s southernmost tip into a major transport hub comprising a transhipment port, an international airport and associated logistical facilities.

Spread across 166 sq km (64 square miles), the project in India’s Andaman and Nicobar archipelago is slated for completion over three decades,...

Two Indian climbers have died on Mount Everest during a record-breaking period of ascents via Nepal’s southern route, as experts warn of overcrowding on the world’s highest peak.

“They fell ill while descending at high altitude. We are working out how to retrieve the bodies,” Nivesh Karki, director at Pioneer Adventures, said.

He named them as Sandeep Are, who he said summited on Wednesday, and Arun Kumar Tiwari, who reached the peak on Thursday.

Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 10 highest...

Thousands of protesters in Bangladesh clashed with police in a bid to seize a suspect accused of raping a four-year-old girl, officials said on Friday.

In recent months, the South Asian country has seen a spike in reported cases of violence against women and children, fuelling widespread anger.

Police said the suspect, Monir Hossain, was detained by locals in Bangladesh’s second-largest city of Chattogram and was being handed over to the authorities on Thursday when tensions boiled over among...

After three agonising days with no word from his son, Warsono finally saw the face he had been waiting for.

The 60-year-old Indonesian from Bandar Lampung in Sumatra spoke by video call on Thursday evening to his son, Andre Prasetyo Nugroho, following the 27-year-old journalist’s release from Israeli detention in Gaza.

“To my great relief, I could see he was in one piece, albeit somewhat worse for wear,” he said, adding that his son had bruises on his hands from being tightly zip-tied and,...

The Javan and Sumatran rhinos are down to their last few dozen, just like the Cat Ba langur of Vietnam, while the soala living in Laos’ Annamite mountains may already be gone for good.

Southeast Asia’s remarkable biodiversity is under severe threat from the encroachment of cities and farms, deforestation, warming seas and the trafficking of rare wildlife for food, traditional medicines and as pets.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) told This Week in Asia that more than...

Perhaps the most fascinating and important aspects of US President Donald Trump’s jolt to the global economy have been its unintended consequences, especially the impact on relations between China and India.

Two consistent aspects of Trump’s meandering narrative are to “make America great again” by bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US, and to hobble China as an economic and strategic threat.

A decade later, there has been negligible progress on either objective. Instead, the unintended...

Former Malaysian economy minister Rafizi Ramli’s breakaway gamble is unlikely to bring down Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on its own, analysts say, but it could still wound the ruling coalition by peeling away reformist voters who helped Pakatan Harapan (PH) take power in 2022.

Rafizi and former natural resources and environmental sustainability minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad announced on Sunday that they would quit Anwar’s People Justice Party (PKR), vacate their parliamentary seats and take over...

On Cenang Beach, Mohamad Zaki Najmi sells jet ski rides and boat tours in Langkawi’s turquoise water: adventure activities that have powered the Malaysian island’s tourism economy for years.

But costs are rising fast on the popular resort island, and the sea sports operator has been forced to pass them on to customers – a last resort for tourism players in Malaysia as competition for international visitors hots up across Southeast Asia.

Higher fuel prices, triggered by the US-Israel war on Iran,...