Asia - South China Morning Post

A tsunami warning was issued for parts of northeast and northern Japan on Monday after a magnitude-7.5 earthquake struck off the Sanriku Coast, sending residents to higher ground and boats out to sea as memories of the 2011 disaster resurfaced.

Live television footage showed fishing boats and coastal vessels leaving ports along Japan’s northeast coast to avoid incoming waves, while broadcasters urged people in low-lying areas to evacuate immediately to safer ground.

In Hokkaido, Makoto Watanabe,...

Regulators across Asia are stepping up scrutiny of cybersecurity risks in their financial systems, as concerns over Anthropic’s latest AI model Mythos spread.

Singapore’s financial regulator is urging banks to plug holes, while South Korea’s government agencies have met to review and discuss how to respond to the risks.

In Australia, authorities expect lenders to be vigilant to ensure clients are not put at risk by inadequate controls.

The actions around the region reflect rising global concern...

For Southeast Asia, trust in Japan runs deepest where China presses hardest and breaks down where neutrality is a point of pride.

Analysts say that dynamic, revealed in an annual survey released earlier this month, explains why Vietnam and the Philippines both see the East Asian nation as a trusted partner while Indonesia, a country that has long prized non-alignment, is uncomfortable with Tokyo’s deepening embrace of Washington.

Trust in Tokyo is highest in the Philippines (77.3 per cent),...

Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission strongly criticised the military ⁠on Monday as it ⁠investigated the killing of 12 civilians ⁠last week during an operation against rebels in Papua province.

The military said it had no information about the deaths, but the state-run rights commission said over the weekend that 12 people including women and children had been ‌shot dead during an operation against separatists in central Papua on Tuesday. Dozens of others sustained serious injuries, it...

Asia-Pacific economies are likely to suffer a slowdown in growth this year, as rising costs linked to the US-Israel war on Iran combine with lingering trade uncertainty to threaten global trade flows, according to forecasts by top international organisations.

The predictions come despite China showing resilience in the first quarter by posting better-than-expected growth of 5 per cent and finance minister Lan Foan last week stressing that the world’s second-largest economy would remain an engine...

Residents in low-lying areas of New Zealand’s ⁠capital city Wellington ⁠were urged to evacuate on ⁠Monday, as heavy rain continued to drench the city, which experienced flash flooding overnight.

A state of emergency was declared for the region on Monday afternoon, while weather forecaster MetService upgraded its heavy rain warning to red, the highest level, which indicates a threat to life from dangerous river conditions, significant flooding and slips.

Mayor Andrew Little told state-owned Radio...

A US move to freeze the Lunar Gateway orbiting space station could render Japan’s new technologies redundant – but its space agency is expected to be diplomatic in its response.

The Lunar Gateway project was initially planned as an installation that would orbit the moon as part of the United States’ Artemis programme, which recently made headlines for a record-breaking journey that went deeper into space than anyone had ever flown before.

Artemis’ aim is to return astronauts to the moon’s...

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has been putting her own spin on omotenashi, the Japanese concept of hospitality, to build personal rapport with foreign leaders as her diplomatic skills are put to the test about six months into office.

Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister, who was not widely known for her diplomatic experience before taking office, has been adding an element of entertainment to summit talks and relying on personal gifts to win over her counterparts.

Most...

In the early 2010s, a small Australian company tried to build a fleet of satellites before lenders, concerned about its chief executive officer’s flamboyant behaviour, pulled hundreds of millions of dollars of financing. The firm collapsed in 2015.

More than a decade later, Singapore real estate tycoon Ching Chiat Kwong, who says he put US$100 million of his own money into NewSat, has not forgotten.

The Supreme Court of Victoria begins hearing a case on Monday brought by the liquidators of the...

Bolstering strategic partnerships and economic ties will be high on the agenda during South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s six-day trip to India and Vietnam, as Seoul seeks to expand cooperation with the Global South amid turmoil in the Middle East.

Lee, who arrived in New Delhi on Sunday, is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, business leaders and Korean expatriates before concluding the India leg of his visit on Tuesday.

National security adviser Wi Sung-rak said South Korea...