Asia - South China Morning Post

A Malaysian court has granted an application by anti-corruption officials to issue an arrest warrant for two sons of former finance minister Daim Zainuddin, after they failed to comply with repeated requests to turn up for questioning over their family’s wealth.

Daim and his clan have been at the centre of a years-long probe into alleged abuse of power and corruption by the country’s elites, who critics have accused of colluding with two-time prime minister Mahathir Mohamad to enrich themselves...

The Philippine call centre industry is a juggernaut, employing over a million and generating billions in revenue. Its workers’ voices are a familiar sound for callers from around the world, the nation’s deep pool of English speakers underpinning the country’s rise into a global hub for customer service outsourcing.

Artificial intelligence is shaping up to be a huge disruptive force but another, more insidious problem is emerging – an education system that is producing graduates who were never...

A 38-year-old woman has been charged over her involvement in an accident which killed a six-year-old Indonesian girl and severely injured her mother at a popular tourist district in Singapore.

The woman, who cannot be named due to a gag order, was handed two charges on Wednesday. One was for driving without due care and attention causing death, and the other for driving without due care and attention causing grievous hurt.

If found guilty of the first charge, she could be jailed up to three...

Japan’s tougher deportation drive is deepening fear among asylum seekers and long-term foreign residents, rights groups say, warning that the government’s push to remove more undocumented migrants is clashing with its duty to protect refugees.

Official figures show a record 318 foreign nationals were forcibly deported from Japan under escort in 2025, up 30 per cent from a year earlier, as authorities ramped up the Zero Illegal Foreign Residents Plan (Zero Plan), a government drive launched last...

Singapore will not negotiate for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, as doing so would undermine fundamental principles of international law, Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan has said.

Responding to a parliamentary question on Tuesday by Member of Parliament Fadli Fawzi on whether Singapore would engage Iran or consider paying a toll for its vessels, Balakrishnan stressed that transit through such waterways was a right – not a privilege.

“There is a right of transit passage,”...

Cambodia’s first law targeting scam centres, passed after mounting international pressure over the country’s massive fraud and trafficking economy, may do little to curb it unless authorities go after the officials and networks that have long enabled it, analysts have warned.

Approved by parliament on Friday, the law takes aim at an industry estimated to generate up to US$19 billion annually and to have trafficked as many as 200,000 workers into compounds across the country.

Justice Minister...

On April 1, amid China’s cybercrime offensive in Southeast Asia, Cambodia extradited to China Li Xiong, former chairman of Huione Group, which had been severed from the US financial system last year for laundering at least US$336 million from cyber scams between 2021 and 2025. The US had also sanctioned Huione’s parent company, Prince Group, and indicted founder Chen Zhi. In January, Cambodia extradited Chen to China, securing the arrest of a man accused of being Cambodia’s biggest scam...

A pet ostrich went for a speedy jaunt down a busy Thai highway on Tuesday, before being returned safe and sound to its enclosure at an animal-themed cafe.

The six-month-old male ostrich raced along a three-lane highway in Thailand’s coastal Chonburi province as cars and trucks sped by the flightless bird, according to a video posted by a man who was driving directly behind it.

“Who lost an ostrich on the road? Come get him. He runs so fast,” the motorist, Chairat Sompong, is heard saying in the...

Tehran’s decision to let Malaysia-linked vessels through the Strait of Hormuz highlighted Iran’s growing use of access to the strategic waterway as leverage, analysts said, with only a limited number of ships now able to pass and access increasingly determined by political ties rather than treated as a neutral commercial right.

For Malaysia, the move drew attention not only to Tehran’s close ties with Putrajaya but also to scrutiny surrounding sanction-sensitive oil trade and ship-to-ship...

The US and Israel’s war against Iran is casting an unusually long shadow over India’s next round of state elections, stoking fears of an energy shock and fresh uncertainty for millions of migrant workers in the Middle East.

As voters prepare to cast ballots in Assam and Kerala on Thursday, and in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu later this month, concerns about higher energy costs, tighter cooking gas supplies and the fate of workers in the Gulf have given the campaign an unusual international...