Asia - South China Morning Post

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said oil from a record stockpile release will be made available in Asia and Oceania immediately as buyers in the region clamour to replace barrels lost to war-related disruptions in the Middle East.

The agency released a statement after it said it received implementation plans from member states. Barrels for Europe and the Americas will only be made available from the end of March.

The IEA last week said that the oil market is seeing the biggest supply...

A passenger bus carrying Indian pilgrims slipped off a mountain road and rolled down its slopes in central Nepal, killing seven people and leaving nine more injured, police said Sunday.

All seven killed were Indian pilgrims, and seven other Indian pilgrims on board were injured and taken to nearby hospitals to get medical treatment. The other two injured in the crash, which happened on Saturday night, were the Nepali bus driver and his assistant.

The bus was returning after the pilgrims visited...

A survey showing workers in Indonesia as the happiest in Asia-Pacific has prompted discussions about the factors underpinning their positive attitudes relative to their regional peers.

A workplace report published this month by employment marketplace Jobstreet by SEEK found 82 per cent of Indonesian respondents said they felt somewhat or extremely happy at work, the highest level among eight regional markets surveyed.

The headline figure inevitably begs the question: does the result reflect...

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said he was “pretty surprised” by the US-Israel war on Iran, adding that he did not see any “rationality” in the military campaign.

Prabowo, a retired general who now heads the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, said in an interview that Iran recently told him they were wary of entering into negotiations with the US to stop the war because they felt “basically they have been tricked” twice. In an asymmetrical war, he added, “they really just have to...

Since the Iran war began late last month, it has threatened shipping across the Middle East’s two most important maritime chokepoints – the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb – through which much of Asia’s energy imports and manufactured exports flow.

For Gulf states and their major trading partners in Asia, the conflict is forcing a hard question: what, if anything, can protect supply chains if US security guarantees can no longer be taken for granted?

Analysts say the usual answers –...

What does the world’s digital economy rest on? Thousands of kilometres of fibre-optic cable lying on the ocean floor and, increasingly, in the crosshairs of great-power rivalry.

The confluence of recent subsea cable disruptions, gaps in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) and intensifying great-power competition has elevated this underwater infrastructure from a technical and commercial concern to a security issue – characterised as “this century’s hidden battleground”. It has...

For Hong Kong’s Topaz Family Office, investing in hotels in Japan holds up as a sound decision even as a Middle East war clouds the macroeconomic environment.

The wealth manager has made Japan a central plank of its pivot into hospitality and real estate over the past two years, driven by a sharp post-pandemic tourism rebound. The investment thesis now looks increasingly robust thanks to multiple structural tailwinds and a growing pool of institutional capital flowing into the same trade.

“Japan...

Hands knotted by a lifetime of hard work, Supon Haochareon says Thai farmers in his position do not get to retire.

Instead, the 81-year-old and his wife Lamduan, 74, must tend more than 300 trees in Samut Sakhon, an hour west of Bangkok, agonising each year as prices slump and their coconuts grow smaller in the withering heat.

This month brought the lowest prices on record: two baht (six US cents) per coconut – less than a stick of chewing gum – virtually wiping out all profit from their...

For many of those rescued from Southeast Asia’s scam compounds, escape is not the end of the ordeal.

They leave behind the locked gates, surveillance and violence, but often return home carrying injuries, trauma and the stigma of having been forced to scam others.

Just as difficult is what comes next: trying to explain the experience to the people waiting for them.

“Some of them are not able to tell their family members or their community what has happened,” said human rights advocate Andrey...

There are places in the world where you expect war to intrude. And then there are places where its arrival feels surreal.

For me, the Sri Lankan city of Galle has always belonged firmly to the latter category. The old fort, perched above the Indian Ocean, has the feel of a tropical cousin to Cartagena’s walled city. Inside its ramparts is an improbable mix: Western expatriates, boutique hotels, a long-standing local Muslim community and wealthy Sri Lankans who have restored colonial houses into...