Asia - South China Morning Post

For her New Year’s resolution, Cheryl Tan decided that she would drink less alcohol on nights out. The 26-year-old Singaporean finance professional said she was starting to find it increasingly difficult to shed the effects of hangovers, rendering her immobile long into the next day.

“It seemed like recovery after a night out was taking too long, and I started to scale back so I would be more productive,” she said.

Cutting back has also saved her money. A cocktail at a bar in Singapore could...

I underestimated Japan’s determination to ruffle China’s feathers. In a November 2023 column, I argued that the apparently cordial meeting between President Xi Jinping and then US president Joe Biden in the US unsettled Japan, which wanted to attain its goal of becoming a “normal country” again.

In a column last December, I said Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s hardened position against China – exemplified by her November 7 speech saying China’s forceful takeover of Taiwan could pose an...

Explosions were heard in the Afghan capital Kabul Sunday, Agence France-Presse journalists said, with the Taliban government saying they were responding to aerial Pakistan attacks.

A spokesman for Afghanistan’s defence ministry said “air defence strikes were carried out against Pakistani aircraft in Kabul”.

Months of cross-border clashes have flared since Thursday when Afghanistan launched an offensive along the frontier, with Pakistani forces hitting back on the border and from the skies.

The...

The killing of Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli air strikes has prompted governments across Muslim-majority South and Southeast Asia to reiterate calls for restraint as protests flared in several cities, with some religious and political movements hailing the cleric as a “martyr”.

Iranian state media confirmed Khamenei’s death on Sunday and declared a 40-day mourning period, casting the assassination as a pivotal moment for the Islamic Republic he had led since...

When Malaysian rapper Zamaera hit send on an email to South by Southwest’s (SXSW) music team in mid-December, she had already been told she was returning to Austin as a showcasing artist.

What she wanted was bigger: a stage for Malaysia, the kind Japan, Taiwan and Britain already had at the US music festival.

“They have a stage … for Japan. Taiwan already has a stage … even the UK and Germany,” the 31-year-old rapper, born Sharifah Zamaera, told This Week in Asia in an exclusive interview.

She...

The Philippines cannot afford an aircraft carrier, could not sustain one if it had it and, according to most analysts, does not need one.

What it needs is messier, cheaper and harder to photograph, they say: a web of missiles, patrol boats, frigates and surveillance assets designed not to project power, but to deny it.

Two recent developments have made that choice harder to ignore. Last month, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr openly mused that an aircraft carrier with “accompanying...

If all goes to plan, in under three years the world’s largest stadium will tower over Hanoi’s southern suburbs as a shimmering monument to the good times ahead for Vietnam and, by extension, its leader To Lam, the secret policeman who now holds power.

The golden, drum-shaped Trong Dong Stadium, with a capacity of 135,000, is the centrepiece of a proposed US$38 billion new town designed to ease Vietnamese capital’s chronic congestion.

Vingroup, the country’s dominant cars-to-minimarts...

Flights across the Middle East were being cancelled on Saturday as several countries slammed their airspace shut after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran.

Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates all announced at least partial closures of their skies in the hours after smoke began rising over Tehran and Iran began retaliatory attacks in the region.

Iranian missiles hit capital cities around the wealthy Gulf region, killing at least one, as witnesses...

The coordinated US and Israeli strikes inside Iran mark more than another episode in a long-running confrontation. They represent a structural escalation – one whose consequences extend well beyond the Middle East.

This is not the start of a new war. It is the next stage in a conflict that has been unfolding since October 2023, gradually shifting from proxy exchanges and shadow operations to direct state-on-state confrontation.

On February 28, Washington moved from strategic backstop to visible...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gifted new sniper rifles to top government and military officials following a weeklong ruling party congress celebrating his leadership, with state media highlighting an image of his teenage daughter taking aim at a shooting range as her increasingly prominent appearances fuel speculation Kim is grooming her as a future leader.

Kim presented the rifles to senior party and military officials on Friday, calling them a sign of his “absolute trust” and gratitude for...