Asia - South China Morning Post

The age of cheap oil is over and Thailand’s rooftops are reflecting that fact.

Across homes, garages and warehouses in the sun-drenched kingdom, the blue-black sheen of solar panels is spreading, as the Iran war has done what years of climate summits could not: turn solar power into a necessity.

Demand for solar panels has swamped companies like Wayso, whose managing director is colouring in Thailand’s rooftops as fast as he can find technicians to do it.

“We can’t hire quickly enough,” Suwat...

Some exporters at the Canton Fair in Guangzhou report a modest return of orders to China from Southeast Asia, as energy-market volatility linked to the US-Israeli war in Iran prompts some Western buyers to prioritise supply chain stability.

The shift is visible in buyer patterns on the exhibition floor, where the number from Europe and the United States appears to have recovered from last year’s levels, according to Chinese exporters, with more inquiries for home appliances, new energy products...

The arrest of fugitive former congressman Zaldy Co has revived a long-stalled Philippine corruption investigation and sharpened political pressure on President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, whom the wanted lawmaker has accused of personally benefiting from a multibillion-peso kickback scheme tied to flood control projects.

Observers called Co’s arrest a “notable step towards accountability” in a case that had stalled after the collapse of the commission set up to investigate it.

Co resigned from the...

Even before Donald Trump returned to the White House, Vietnam’s military planners were already busy preparing for a possible second invasion by the United States and its allies. In the “Second US Invasion Plan”, secretly issued in August 2024, the Vietnamese military rejected playing any part in America’s China containment strategy in the Asia-Pacific.

Rather, it sees the US promotion of “freedom and democracy” as a cynical ploy to maintain hegemony in the region. The document, released in...

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said on Friday that the war in Iran had laid bare the urgency of long-delayed UN reforms, arguing that the world body must be strengthened if multilateral diplomacy is to help restore global peace and security.

“We have been talking about that for a long time, but only talking happens,” Tokayev told the fifth Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkey. “Everybody is feeling the impact of the Iran war and everybody is suffering.”

At the three-day summit ending...

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is usually seen in carefully choreographed meetings with presidents, kings and regional leaders in Putrajaya.

So it was striking to see him instead riding through the city on a casual live stream with Sneako, the controversial 27-year-old American streamer and Muslim convert whose appeal to mainly young male audiences has made him an unlikely cultural figure.

For more than an hour on Friday, the live stream gave Anwar a rare chance to sell Malaysia, his...

Asian airlines are cutting flights, raising fares and reshuffling networks as the Iran war sends jet fuel prices soaring, leaving carriers across the region scrambling to protect their margins and preserve key routes.

The shock has hit Asia especially hard because many economies depend heavily on fuel flows from the Middle East, according to aviation analysts, and some regional carriers are less protected from sudden price spikes than their counterparts in Europe or the US.

“The impact has been...

A Pakistan-flagged tanker that entered the Persian Gulf over the weekend has become the first carrier to exit through the Strait of Hormuz with a crude cargo since a US blockade began on Monday, underscoring just how limited traffic through the vital chokepoint remains.

The Shalamar sailed just south of Iran’s Larak Island and out into the Gulf of Oman late Thursday with around 450,000 barrels of crude loaded at Das Island in the United Arab Emirates, according to ship-tracking data. The Aframax...

As divorce rates continue to rise in Indonesia, more single mothers are bearing the brunt of financial hardship and struggling to collect court-ordered child support from former spouses.

For some women, help comes from an initiative unique in the country: the East Java city of Surabaya bars men from accessing public services if they fail to pay court-ordered child support.

First introduced in 2023, the scheme has been used to block administrative access to more than 8,000 men, according to Irvan...

Vietnamese budget carrier VietJet Air has agreed to lease as many as 10 Chinese-made C909 regional passenger jets, giving a lift to their manufacturer’s goal of vying with Airbus and Boeing in overseas civil aviation.

VietJet said in a statement on Thursday night it had agreed with SPDB Financial Leasing, a subsidiary of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank in China, to finance the aircraft through operating leases. Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) makes the jets that are the subject...