Asia - South China Morning Post

Malaysia’s medical tourism sector could receive a boost amid the widening conflict in the Middle East as potential patients look for safer alternatives in Asia, according to a private healthcare company.

Dubai, the main medical hub in the region, has been under Iranian missile and drone retaliatory attacks since the US and Israel began air strikes on the Islamic Republic on February 28.

This could prompt Middle Easterners who are seeking medical treatment to travel to Southeast Asian countries...

Singapore sits just one degree north of the equator, where the air rarely drops below 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit) and humidity clings year round.

It is, by most measures, one of the worst places on Earth to cool a data centre. Yet the city state crams more into its small footprint than almost anywhere else.

Home to more than 70 facilities and over 1.4 gigawatts of capacity, Singapore has one of the highest densities of data-centre infrastructure per capita on the planet – a...

Distrust in Australian police among Queensland’s Indian diaspora is set to deepen after an officer was caught on body camera hurling expletives at an Uber driver, leading the victim to sue the force in federal court.

The officer said, “f*****g Indians, mate, they are a bunch of f*****g perverts” to a colleague in 2023, before they charged the man with committing an indecent act for allegedly masturbating in public, court records showed.

A court later quashed the charges because two witnesses...

In April 2020, as the world struggled with the Covid-19 pandemic and soldiers from India and China moved towards a large-scale border stand-off, New Delhi amended its foreign direct investment (FDI) policy to require prior government approval for all investments from countries sharing a land border with India – a measure directed at China.

Nearly six years on, India has changed its FDI policy again. It is a significant move for India-China relations.

During the pandemic, the FDI regulation...

Shigeaki Mori, the Japanese atomic bomb survivor whose hug with then US president Barack Obama at a 2016 remembrance event in Hiroshima went viral globally, has died at the age of 88, just days after warning that the world seems on the brink of another nuclear catastrophe.

Tributes have been coming in since Mori died in Hiroshima on Saturday, with many pointing out that as well as being a survivor of the world’s first atomic weapon, he was also a keen amateur historian who attracted attention in...

A recent radio programme by Australia’s national broadcaster made several “baseless claims” about Singapore’s political system, Singapore’s High Commissioner to Australia, Anil Nayar, said on Tuesday.

Nayar noted in his response that the programme’s host and several of his commentators called Singapore a “one-party state”, an “autocracy” and “verging now on a flawed democracy”.

“They portrayed Singapore’s group representation constituencies (GRCs) – introduced to guarantee minority...

Nepal’s prime minister-in-waiting came to power on a promise of change.

Now he faces the monumental challenge of taking on a system weighed down by corruption and poor governance while meeting the towering expectations of the millions who backed him and his anti-establishment party.

Balendra Shah – a rapper, engineer and former mayor of Kathmandu popularly known as Balen – handily defeated former prime minister K.P. Sharma Oli in the election on March 5, with his Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP)...

A bakery in Malaysia’s Sarawak state has set tongues wagging with its premium cake offerings sold at eye-watering prices, as Muslims countrywide this week stock up on sweets and delectable treats to celebrate Eid ul-Fitr, marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Cakes, chocolates and sweet biscuits are must-haves in the homes of the nation’s 20 million Muslims to host family and friends during the festival.

Among the favoured snacks are the colourful kek lapis or layered cake, a...

The smoke rising from Babitha Sivadasan’s kitchen in rural Kerala carries a scent that belongs to her grandmother’s era.

“I have started cooking with firewood,” said Babitha, who began rationing her half-empty cooking gas cylinder after failing to secure a refill from her Indian Oil distributor. “The agency hasn’t taken bookings in a week.”

As the Iran war enters the third week and cooking gas becomes scarce amid a conflict-driven supply shock, some Indian homemakers are turning to practices of...

A framework proposed at an Asean ministers’ meeting is set to propel disaster management to the top of the bloc’s agenda, further easing cooperation and decision-making in a region facing nearly US$18 trillion in disaster risk exposure.

Analysts say the proposal, if implemented, would strengthen anticipatory action – potentially enabling the bloc to act before a formal request from a member state is even made.

At the 35th Asean Socio-Cultural Community Council Meeting in Manila on March 5, bloc...