Asia - South China Morning Post

The recently concluded Balikatan joint drills have marked a shift in the Philippines’ defence strategy alongside Japan, with Tokyo offering the transfer of warships to its Southeast Asian ally, while a top Filipino official for the first time voiced “serious concern” over islands claimed by Beijing and Tokyo.

Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jnr on Wednesday said Manila now considered the uninhabited Diaoyu Islands, which Japan calls the Senkaku Islands, a security flashpoint in the...

A US$30 million carbon credit deal by tech giant Amazon with India’s Good Rice Alliance will boost carbon markets globally, according to experts, potentially showing agriculture – as well as industry – can be at the heart of emission reductions.

The organisation, primarily backed by Bayer and in collaboration with GenZero and Shell, is designed to transform emissions-heavy rice cultivation in India through scientific advances.

It helps thousands of smallholder farmers adopt climate-smart growing...

China’s rapid technological gains and aggressive pricing are making it increasingly difficult for South Korean firms to find profitable areas of industrial synergy with their Chinese counterparts, according to experts.

Speakers at a recent forum in Beijing urged firms from both countries to pivot towards building more interdependent ecosystems in high-growth sectors such as batteries and artificial intelligence, while also calling for the advancement of negotiations towards an upgraded...

Malaysia’s nascent electric vehicle market may be decimated before it gets up to speed, as business experts warn of a sharp drop in demand and delay in the renewable energy transition if the government imposes strict price curbs on imported units from July, in a move to protect the country’s vehicle makers.

The ministry of investment, trade and industry (Miti) on Wednesday announced that from July 1, it will only allow the sale of imported EVs that have a cost, insurance and freight (CIF) value...

An AI-powered database tracking corruption cases against Malaysia’s politicians was independently launched on Friday, putting fresh scrutiny on the status and outcomes of the country’s biggest graft prosecutions across administrations.

The Prosecutorial Accountability Watch (PAW), built by civil society group Projek SAMA and hosted with news outlet Malaysiakini, tracks 33 high-profile cases involving current and former elected representatives – from ex-prime minister Najib Razak’s 1MDB-linked...

The risk of a hantavirus outbreak in Asia remains minimal, according to health experts, despite two Singapore residents returning home from a cruise ship where three people died from the infection that triggered a regional panic.

Hantaviruses are a family of rat-carried viruses that can infect humans through direct exposure, even though transmission between people is extremely rare. The virus takes its name from South Korea’s Hantan River, where an early strain was identified after outbreaks of...

The former chief of Sri Lanka’s state-owned airline, who was charged with corruption over the purchase of 10 Airbus aircraft, was found dead on Friday, police said.

Kapila Chandrasena, the former chief executive of SriLankan Airlines, was found at the Colombo home of a relative, said police.

“We are investigating the cause of death and circumstances,” a police officer said.

Chandrasena was remanded in March on charges of conspiring to accept a US$16 million bribe from Airbus in connection with a...

Japanese police have arrested a bus driver on suspicion of negligent driving after a crash on a Fukushima expressway killed a high school student on Wednesday, as investigators look into whether he was speeding and driving without the proper license required to carry passengers for hire.

On Friday morning, Fukushima prefectural police searched bus operator Kanbara Tetsudo in Gosen, Niigata prefecture.

The arrested driver, Tetsuo Wakayama, 68, told investigators after his arrest on Thursday that...

Three hikers – two Singaporeans and a local – died in an eruption on Friday of Indonesia’s Mount Dukono volcano where they found themselves in a no-go zone, officials said.

The eruption on Halmahera island sent an ash cloud about 10km (6.2 miles) into the air, with no towns or villages near enough to face any immediate threat.

Twenty hikers were on the slopes when disaster struck, North Halmahera police chief Erlichson Pasaribu told reporters at a volcano monitoring station in Mamuya...

The spectre of the global energy crisis loomed over the three-day Asean summit in the Philippines as regional leaders converge for a final day of talks in Cebu on Friday.

Analysts say that while some major flashpoints were addressed – with Thailand and Cambodia’s joint statement of solidarity being a bright spot – surging fuel costs as a result of the Iran war weighed heaviest on the minds of Southeast Asian leaders.

The fuel crisis was the “defining issue”, said Vu Lam, an Asean observer and...