Asia - South China Morning Post

Lea Albritton’s mornings belong to the repair shop. Her afternoons belong to the camera.

The 40-year-old from Leyte in the central Philippines has lived in the US state of Georgia since 2019 with her 62-year-old American husband, Timothy, running a recreational vehicle repair shop in the mornings.

After lunch, she produces videos about Filipino food, migration advice for couples stuck in the fiancée visa queue and glimpses of domestic life for the 250,000 followers of her page, Pinay sa America...

As the artificial intelligence race moves beyond language models into the physical world, Asia’s manufacturing and supply chain strengths could give it an edge over the US, says Granite Asia’s Jixun Foo.

The veteran venture capitalist said the current wave of AI development, sparked by breakthroughs in foundation models over the past two years, had entered a new phase where physical applications – from robotics to industrial automation – were becoming increasingly important, playing to Asia’s...

A single father has refused to accept any more donations from Malaysians following a viral video that appeared to show him having difficulty finding money to pay a mechanic after his motorcycle broke down in Kuala Lumpur.

According to Sinar Harian, the man known as Dicky Yau was touched by the concern shown by social media users who had offered to extend financial help to him after seeing the situation he was in.

“I would like to thank everyone who sent private messages to offer help. However, I...

The flags arrived before BINI did. They were already rippling across the Mojave Tent at Coachella in a sea of blue, red and white when the eight-member group took the stage on a recent Friday afternoon, carried by fans who had travelled across oceans and time zones for a moment that had never been seen before.

The 45-minute set that followed made BINI the first P-pop act from the Philippines – and the first Southeast Asian girl group – to perform at one of the world’s most influential music...

Malaysian comedian Rizal van Geyzel keeps his three children – aged six, 14 and 15 – off social media. He calls it a “gateway drug” to fake news, pornography, stalkers and doom-scrolling.

“Do I risk them resenting me? Sure, but these are the sacrifices of parents for their children’s mental health and physical safety,” the 43-year-old said.

Across Southeast Asia, governments are increasingly siding with parents like him. Indonesia last month became the first country in the region to bar...

Singapore has earned top marks for digital resilience in the Asia-Pacific, but a new study reveals a disconnect at the heart of its corporate world: its executives ranked 10th out of 11 for leadership on the issue.

The findings, published on Wednesday by Economist Impact and Australian telecoms company Telstra International, drew on responses from 1,420 senior executives across 11 Asia-Pacific markets, including Australia, mainland China, Hong Kong and Thailand.

Singapore ranked first overall –...

Construction of a US$1 billion Chinese-invested hydropower station has begun in Cambodia to facilitate the Southeast Asian country’s use of renewable energy as the fallout from the Iran war constricts developing countries’ access to traditional fuel supplies.

Work on the Upper Tatay pumped-storage hydropower project in the hilly southwestern province of Koh Kong started on April 10, Xinhua reported, describing it as a future “green power bank” for Cambodia’s national grid.

It said the project...

For a Chinese enterprise venturing overseas, the first decision is often not which market to enter, but which city to launch from. And that choice increasingly narrows to Hong Kong or Singapore.

Both offer deep capital markets, common law systems and Chinese-speaking talent. Both want to be the trusted first stop. But a gap has emerged – not in what the two cities offer on paper, but in how they treat the enterprises they both want.

What does a “launch pad” deliver? It is where a Chinese...

Japan and Australia said on Saturday they have finalised contracts to jointly deliver the first three of 11 ships for the Australian navy based on the upgraded Japanese Mogami-class frigate, as the two countries deepen their defence cooperation amid China’s growing assertiveness.

The deal, announced by Japanese Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi and his Australian counterpart Richard Marles in Melbourne, comes ahead of Japan’s planned easing of its rules on defence equipment exports, which place...

East Asia’s “economic miracle” in the post-World War II period was predicated upon a number of factors, such as the region’s export-led growth model, but critically it also depended on an assured supply of capital to finance business investment.

One source of such finance was bank loans, the supply and direction of which can be officially influenced by various means rather than being chiefly market-determined. Even today, bank loans account for most of the business financing in Japan, the...