Asia - South China Morning Post

The fragile ceasefire between the Taliban and Pakistan has broken, and there is now open war in South Asia.

This week has seen a dangerous escalation between the former allies, starting when Pakistan carried out a series of air strikes on what it says were terror “camps and hideouts” in Afghanistan’s border provinces. Pakistan claims it killed 80 militants, whereas the Taliban says villages were hit and 17 civilians were killed.

The two have since engaged in a deadly tit-for-tat of ground and...

For years, India has prided itself on a foreign policy doctrine of “dehyphenation”: maintaining productive, parallel relations with conflicting countries such as Israel, Iran and the Arab Gulf states without letting any one bilateral tie poison the others.

That doctrine is now being tested to the limit.

The killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by US-Israeli strikes within days of Narendra Modi returning from a high-profile visit to Tel Aviv provided instant ammunition for the...

Myanmar’s military junta granted amnesty on Monday to more than 7,000 prisoners convicted of financing or sheltering a “terrorist group”, a designation it has used to outlaw pro-democracy factions opposing its rule.

Thousands of dissenting civilians have been swept into jails since Myanmar’s military snatched power in a 2021 coup, ending a decade-long experiment with democracy and detaining elected figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi.

Pro-democracy activists backing Suu Kyi and armed groups challenging...

With memories still raw from the deaths of scores of its nationals during the Gaza war, Thailand has issued an alert to its estimated 110,000 citizens working across the Middle East as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran rages across the region.

Around 60,000 Thais are working in Israel’s fields, factories and shops, drawn by “danger money” wages higher than those available at home or in competing markets. Thai authorities have said an additional 250 Thais are believed to still be in Iran, while...

None of Japan’s prefectural governors are willing to accept soil collected in decontamination work near the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex without further safety information and support from the central government, according to a Kyodo News survey.

A search for final disposal sites for 14 million cubic metres (500 million cubic feet) of removed soil and other waste in Fukushima after the March 2011 nuclear disaster is a key part of the government’s reconstruction efforts in...

Oil prices surged by the most in four years on Monday as the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei amid a widening conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran brought tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to a near standstill.

Freight costs climbed sharply alongside crude, as traders swiftly priced in the war, which analysts say will have far-reaching consequences for Asia’s heavily import-dependent economies.

Benchmark Brent crude jumped 13 per cent to a high...

A man has been arrested in Johor after an 11-second viral clip showed him clinging to the front of his ex-wife’s moving car before tumbling onto the road in full view of onlookers.

Police said the suspect had clung to the car for around 2km (1.2 miles) and that he had tested positive for ketamine.

The incident unfolded at about 3.30pm on Saturday outside a supermarket in Bandar Seri Alam, a township in Johor, the southern Malaysian state bordering Singapore, after an argument between the pair...

Kim Jong-un will have seen the footage. A supreme leader of nearly 37 years, killed alongside members of his own family. Citizens celebrating in the streets. Rivals already angling for a role in the political transition.

If the US-Israeli strike that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday was intended to send a message to the world, analysts say North Korea almost certainly received it.

Though the lesson likely learned – do not negotiate with the US and never be in Iran’s position...

Images claiming to be from the wedding shoot of South Korean Girls’ Generation group member Tiffany Young and actor Byun Yo-han spread rapidly online – before being confirmed as artificial intelligence-generated fakes.

Soon after Young, 36, and Byun, 39, announced they had registered their marriage, photos reportedly of couple began circulating across social media and online communities under the title “Tiffany–Byun Yo-han wedding photos”.

The images depicted Young in a pink-toned wedding dress...

Australia’s internet regulator said it might push search engines and app stores to block artificial intelligence services that failed to verify user ages after a review found more than half had not made public any steps to comply by a deadline next week.

The warning reflects one of the most aggressive efforts globally to rein in AI companies, which face a growing number of lawsuits for failing to stop – and even encouraging – self-harm or violence, while researchers caution that such platforms...