Indonesian police fired tear gas into crowds of protesters near two universities in the major regional city of Bandung, student groups and authorities said on Tuesday, raising tensions around demonstrations that have killed eight since last week.

The protests began in the capital Jakarta, targeting government spending such as enhanced perks for lawmakers, and have since spread nationwide. They escalated into rioting and looting after a police vehicle hit and killed a motorcycle taxi driver,...

South Korea’s Unification Church has forcefully rejected allegations that its leader, Han Hak-ja, bribed the wife of former president Yoon Suk-yeol, even as prosecutors expand a corruption investigation that threatens to expose decades of the church’s political entanglements.

In a rare video address released on Sunday, Han – the widow of church founder Sun Myung-moon – denied direct involvement in any irregularities.

“False information is being spread that, under my instructions, our church...

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. What Vietnam’s South China Sea island-building spree means for Asean

Vietnam’s rapid expansion of artificial island construction in the disputed Spratly Islands has put it on track to surpass China’s land reclamation in the South China Sea, according to new satellite...

Elon Musk has voiced support for an anti-immigration demonstration in Japan, where the number of foreign-born residents is low and a “Japanese first” party did well in recent elections.

The Tesla and SpaceX chief and former adviser to US President Donald Trump has backed far-right parties in other countries, such as Alternative for Germany.

Commenting on a video of the modest rally in Japan posted on social media by an account called The British Patriot, South African-born Musk said on Monday:...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un crossed the border into China on his signature green train early on Tuesday to attend China’s celebration of the formal surrender of Japan in World War II, relying on a slow but specialised form of transport that the reclusive country’s leaders have used for decades.

Compared with North Korea’s ageing fleet of passenger aircraft, the bulletproof trains offer a safer and more comfortable space for a large entourage, security guards, food and amenities, and a place...

Japan’s struggling pachinko industry has been dealt a fresh blow with the arrest of six executives at a major parlour operator accused of paying staff to vote for their favoured candidate in the July upper house election, an indication of the growing desperation of a sector that has fallen on hard times.

Lee Chang-beom, a South Korean national who also goes by the name Masanori Yamamoto and is president of the Derupara Group, was arrested on August 26 along with five other executives of the...

At Asean’s first ever artificial intelligence summit in Kuala Lumpur recently, YTL AI Labs, in partnership with the University of Malaya, launched a large language model (LLM) called ILMU – which translates from Malay into English as “knowledge” but is used in this instance by the developers as a Malay acronym. Billed as Malaysia’s first, fully sovereign AI model with data locally hosted, managed and governed, ILMU has been trained on local, contextualised data and outperforms global...

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that India has offered to reduce its tariffs on American goods to zero, even as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was making public shows of solidarity with Chinese and Russian leaders in the face of trade pressure from Washington.

While calling the US relationship with India “one-sided”, Trump wrote on social media: “They have now offered to cut their Tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago.”

The Indian embassy in...

Crime drama Countdown on Amazon Prime Video has drawn criticism for its perceived inaccurate portrayal of Singapore and its citizens in an episode last month.

In the 47-minute show, two American detectives question “Singaporean” Kieran Teo, played by American actor Brian Yang, at his office in Los Angeles after a murder takes place on company property.

The fictional company is called Beruang Holdings, with the characters revealing it is 60 per cent owned by Singapore’s ruling People’s Action...

A correction order under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) has been issued to US comedian Sammy Obeid after a row over his cancelled Singapore show.

“Mr Obeid’s account of protracted back-and-forth interactions with the government is inaccurate,” the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) said on Monday.

“In his posts, he claims that the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) requested edits, told him to ‘completely remove’ portions of his...