Asia - South China Morning Post

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...

Two crew members and six passengers were killed when a private helicopter crashed in dense forest on Indonesia’s Borneo island, the transport ministry said on Friday.

The Airbus H130 helicopter, owned by local firm Matthew Air Nusantara, lost contact with air traffic control about five minutes after take-off from an oil plantation in the West Kalimantan province on Thursday morning. It was on its way to another plantation in Kubu Raya district.

All eight on board were men and one was a Malaysian...

Myanmar ⁠has freed former president Win Myint and reduced the sentence of imprisoned former leader Aung San Suu ‌Kyi as part of an ‌amnesty that saw the release of 4,335 prisoners, according to state media.

“The president has pardoned Win Myint,” said a statement on Friday from the office of newly elected president Min Aung Hlaing.

Win Myint, an ally ‌of ⁠Suu Kyi, served as president ⁠from 2018 and 2021 but ‌was ousted ‌by a military coup and had been detained since.

Suu Kyi’s 27-year sentence...

A South Korean woman in her thirties is facing child abuse charges after allegedly feeding her two-month-old infant tteokguk, or rice cake soup, with the case coming to light through photos she posted online.

The dish, commonly eaten to mark the new year in South Korea, is considered inappropriate for infants, whose digestive systems are not yet developed enough to process semi-solid foods.

According to the Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency on Friday, the unidentified woman is being...

Asian refiners have grown increasingly reliant on US crude as oil-starved fuel makers scour the globe to replace Middle Eastern supply and stave off shortages that could ripple through the broader economy.

Buyers in Japan led the charge to purchase May-loading cargoes from the US early in the month, with South Korean, Singaporean and Thai processors also among customers, said traders familiar with the matter. At least 60 million barrels of grades from the US Gulf were bought for loading next...

An Australian company will import 250,000 tonnes of urea fertiliser from Indonesia in the coming months, easing fears of a shortage that would crimp food production, Canberra said on Friday.

Australia is one of the world’s biggest exporters of crops including wheat, barley and canola but relies on fertiliser imports that are threatened by ‌the war on Iran, which has cut supply from the Middle East, a major urea producer.

The price of urea, a source of nitrogen that fuels plant growth, has risen...

As the war on Iran continues to command global attention, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has stepped up his appearances at military events, using drills and missile tests to project confidence at home and defiance abroad.

His heightened visibility suggests that Kim feels more secure in his country’s nuclear deterrence as Washington’s focus is pulled in several directions, analysts say.

Kim has cast himself as increasingly assertive and is distancing himself from the symbolic rituals observed by...

The decades-long negotiations on a code of conduct in the South China Sea may finally come to an end this year. Several parties involved, including China and the Philippines, have expressed confidence in reaching a final conclusion to the proposed set of rules in the contested waterways in the coming months.

In March, Beijing signalled its hope of concluding negotiations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations by the end of the year while Manila has repeatedly expressed its intention to...

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr said on Thursday night that a key suspect in a corruption scandal that has sparked public outrage in the Philippines has been arrested in the Czech Republic and that efforts were under way to repatriate the former lawmaker.

Zaldy Co, who resigned from the House of Representatives in September after being implicated in financial anomalies involving flood control projects, was detained by authorities in Prague after crossing into the Central European...