Asia - South China Morning Post

By late afternoon in Putrajaya, the smell of smoke fills the air. Charcoal pits glow along the side of the road as office workers and families with school-aged children in tow move through the haze with the deliberate purpose of people who have not eaten since dawn.

This is a Ramadan bazaar in full bloom: rows of bright pink drinks in plastic cups, towers of kueh – bite-sized sweet and savoury snacks – in every colour, and, at one particularly busy stall, rows of whole chickens turning slowly...

Sri Lanka discharged from hospital 22 Iranian sailors who were plucked from life rafts after their warship was sunk by a US submarine, officials said on Sunday.

The sailors were treated at Karapitiya Hospital in the southern port city of Galle since Wednesday after the IRIS Dena was torpedoed just outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters.

“Another 10 are still undergoing treatment,” said a medical officer at the hospital.

He said the bodies of 84 Iranians retrieved from the Indian Ocean were also...

Vietnam’s new law regulating artificial intelligence could become Southeast Asia’s first real test of whether governments in the region are ready to move from voluntary guidelines to binding regulation, a shift analysts say could reshape how companies deploy AI across the region.

The legislation, which took effect on Sunday, introduces a risk-tiered model where AI providers – both local organisations and foreign entities with a presence in the country – must classify their systems as low, medium...

For years India’s economy was driven by its vast services sector that saw millions of people working away in low-cost back offices providing consultancy for predominantly Western companies.

But over the past decade they have given way to centres that allow firms to tap top-tier talent and technology, where white-collar staff perform tasks ranging from IT and data analytics to innovation and design.

Today, these centres are the shiniest parts of India’s red-hot economy but not everyone has been...

Gender equality in politics remains far from achieved across Japan’s 47 prefectures, research by a group of experts has shown as it released local index scores on International Women’s Day.

While nearly 80 years have passed since women in Japan first exercised their right to vote, the politics index fell in eight prefectures, including Kanagawa near Tokyo, from the 2024 figures, while many other prefectures also saw little change.

With a score of 1 representing full equality, Tokyo scored 0.386,...

A man in a Mercedes drives up to a Bangkok forecourt, cash in hand, ready to buy an electric vehicle he hadn’t planned on owning.

Southeast Asia’s EV revolution has found a new accelerant.

“He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to fill up his car any more,” said Samart Prakotkancharna, managing director of Ratchapruek P Car Centre in Thailand’s capital, describing the scene that played out on his forecourt.

Cash buyers had been streaming in all week, spooked by rising diesel prices and hunting for...

When Joshua Tan turned up to Chinese New Year dinner last month, he hadn’t expected to spend the evening defending his career.

He was 27 and freshly employed as a junior software engineer in Singapore. The questions from relatives were pointed: is your job safe? Can’t the computer just do it?

It was an awkward conversation, equal parts interrogation and familial concern. But Tan knew the anxiety behind the questions was real.

Not so long ago, he and his classmates had been so sought-after by...

Singapore is moving to ban caged lorries used to transport migrant workers in a bid to reduce safety risks in emergencies, but activists say the change does not address the wider dangers of ferrying workers in such vehicles.

Senior Minister of State for Transport Sun Xueling said that caged lorry decks posed “additional safety risks” to passengers sitting in the rear.

“For example, if a lorry with a caged door that is locked or latched from the outside is involved in an accident or a fire,...

A 35-year-old rapper and engineer who entered politics just four years ago has beaten a former prime minister in Nepal’s crucial parliamentary election, in a contest widely seen as a referendum on a generational shift in leadership after last year’s youth uprising.

Balendra Shah – the former Kathmandu mayor widely known as Balen – surged ahead of 74-year-old communist leader K.P. Sharma Oli in a race for a seat in Nepal’s House of Representatives in the eastern district of Jhapa, election...

At the bustling Han Market in central Da Nang, two Vietnamese vendors tease a middle-aged South Korean tourist by calling him harabeoji, or “grandfather” in Korean.

“I’m offended!” he jokes.

The women grab his arms and laugh. “It’s OK, it’s OK.”

The man had returned to their stall after buying 200,000 dong (US$7.60) worth of macadamia nuts the day before. It is a small moment of banter, repeated dozens of times a day in a city that many people from South Korea jokingly call their own unofficial...