Australia’s incoming political finance laws will cap donations and electioneering spending for the first time, but the limits are generous, the rules complex, and the two-year delay suspiciously convenient for the major parties.

A diplomatic rift is growing after a North Korean prisoner transfer that Kyiv revealed against Seoul’s wishes.

Indian opposition leaders and student activists marched on the Supreme Court on Monday to demand the resignation of the country’s election chief over alleged voter roll manipulation, as authorities erected heavy barricades and shut six metro stations across New Delhi. The rally went ahead after the Chief Justice of India turned down a meeting request from an opposition delegation, urging them instead to file a formal petition. Mainstream opposition parties have sought to harness a groundswell of...

For the EU, the choice is increasingly difficult: secure real concessions from Beijing to address structural trade imbalances or deploy stronger unilateral measures to protect its industrial base.

Southeast Asia’s drug labs are pumping out unprecedented amounts of meth and other synthetic drugs.

An investment surge into artificial intelligence may be helping prop up a global economy battered by energy supply shocks, but the technology’s potential to cull jobs requires swift mitigation if Asia’s youth are to secure a place in the future workforce, delegates were warned at the IMF–World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok on Monday. Soaring energy prices, persistent inflation and mounting debt framed the opening of the week-long summit, which was last hosted in the Thai capital in...

China accounts for about 5 per cent of the equipment and materials directly supplied to the US chip industry when measured by country of manufacture, but its grip on certain rare earths needed for chipmaking is over 90 per cent, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). While 95 per cent of the nearly US$27 billion annual spending by American chipmakers on manufacturing equipment and materials was sourced from companies headquartered in the US, Europe, and Japan, that figure...

Indian factories, smelters and households are being hit by blackouts and rising energy costs as the impact of plunging coal stockpiles at the country’s power stations ripples through the economy. The weakest monsoon since 2015 has curbed hydropower output, while hotter-than-normal weather has buoyed demand for air conditioning and farm irrigation. That has seen coal-fired power stations, which supply about two-thirds of India’s electricity, rapidly burn through their inventories. Smaller...

A former top executive at HSBC has launched an artificial intelligence-driven wealth management start-up, setting her sights on a billion-dollar valuation and betting that AI can transform how individuals manage their investments and finances. Trista Sun, formerly a managing director in the international wealth and premier banking division at HSBC, said in an interview last week that her venture Equora aimed to help investors manage their finances “proactively” with AI agents, addressing...

Malaysians have reacted with sarcasm and disbelief to an Indonesian official’s claim that his country provides the region’s oxygen, as toxic smoke from forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan chokes neighbouring nations. Syahganda Nainggolan, head of Indonesia’s government communications agency, prompted the backlash after invoking his country’s forests when questioned on Saturday about the severe smog that has forced school closures and triggered health warnings across Malaysia and...

With his reformist credentials battered by coalition compromises and a looming general election, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has used his 2027 budget to launch a fresh wave of anti-corruption measures. But as his government nears its four-year mark, analysts warn that restoring public confidence will require more than additional funding and tighter legislative oversight. The measures, announced when Anwar presented Malaysia’s 2027 budget on Friday, include 1.1 billion ringgit (US$269...

Emirati investigators said the co-pilot accused of attacking a captain on a flight to Israel drifted toward extremism during his time as a student in Australia.

Singapore again ranked as the world’s most polluted city on Monday, according to Swiss-based air quality monitor IQAir, as the fires on Borneo and Sumatra islands – intensified by a turbocharged El Nino weather phenomenon – keep emitting toxic haze. The city state has rolled out subsidies for haze-related medical treatment and schools were closed in parts of neighbouring Malaysia, as both countries grapple with persistently unhealthy air quality due to fires in nearby Indonesia. The fires have...

New research has exposed a potential flaw in the memory-saving technology underpinning DeepSeek’s models, marking a rare challenge to a breakthrough that has helped the Chinese artificial intelligence lab close the gap with US rivals OpenAI and Anthropic with its low-cost approach. The findings were published late last month in a paper led by researchers from ByteDance and co-authors affiliated with Princeton University, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. The study,...

A Melbourne man whose Islamic community centre has been linked by prosecutors in the United Arab Emirates to the co-pilot who allegedly attacked the captain of a Flydubai jet has hit out at “false accusations”. The Omani co-pilot, now in custody in the UAE, had drawn inspiration from al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 suicide attacks, and carried out his attempt “with the aim of causing the greatest possible loss of life”, according to the Emirati prosecutor’s findings published by state media last...

Arrmanatha Nasir is highly qualified, but his success may hinge on whether or not he has access to President Prabowo Subianto.

For his next act, Kim Jones, formerly of Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Dior, is starting a namesake collection. It’s a trend.

Share in Genting plunged by the most in 28 years after the leisure group controlled by Malaysian billionaire Lim Kok Thay announced plans to raise about 1.25 billion ringgit (US$306 million) through a renounceable rights issue. The stock fell as much as 17 per cent to 1.56 ringgit, the biggest decline since 1998. The issue price would be fixed at a discount ranging between 25 and 30 per cent, Genting said in a bourse filing on Friday, adding that proceeds raised would be used to repay its...

Is Theint Win Htet's removal from the Treasury Department's blacklist a sign of a looming rapprochement between Washington and Naypyidaw?

More than half of Hong Kong’s working adults believe artificial intelligence will make their retirement path more unpredictable than previous generations, yet only one in five feel financially prepared for the shift, according to a survey by global asset manager T. Rowe Price. About 55 per cent of the 1,004 Hong Kong residents surveyed – all 30 or older and earning at least HK$15,000 (US$2,239) per month – said they expected AI-driven disruptions to destabilise their long-term career and income...

China’s manufacturing sector is leapfrogging straight into the era of agentic artificial intelligence and is now exporting that playbook to global supply chains, according to the CEO of Black Lake, a Chinese provider of cloud-based AI tools for factories. “Just as China skipped credit cards and jumped directly to mobile payments, many factories are skipping full traditional digitalisation and jumping directly to AI agents,” Zhou Yuxiang said in a recent interview with the South China Morning...

Washington announced last week that it would not accept or process applications from top Indian IT companies for H-1B visas.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has long succeeded in isolating and undermining opponents. The Gen Z protests pose a challenge unlike any he has faced before.

AirAsia co-founder Tony Fernandes met with officials from Malaysia’s finance ministry two weeks ago to discuss potential government support for Southeast Asia’s largest low-cost airline, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The talks reflect growing government concerns about the financial health of the country’s largest domestic carrier following a spike in jet fuel prices, the people said. Discussions centred on the prospect of the government backing AirAsia’s fundraising...

Recently re-elected president of the Nepali Congress, Thapa vowed to end the culture of nepotism and groupism in the party and to open it to a new generation of leaders.

Due to abundant labor, its social structure, and the inertia of an economic system, there was little incentive to initiate mechanization and the Industrial Revolution in India.

Indonesian authorities and conservation workers have successfully moved eight ⁠orangutans to a safe ⁠location after the endangered ⁠primates’ homes were destroyed by wildfires in the forests of Borneo. The Southeast Asian nation is battling its most intense wildfires in 11 years, mainly on Sumatra and Borneo islands, and the ‌government has warned the blazes could continue until November, aggravated by the El Nino weather pattern. Three mother-child pairs and two adolescent male orangutans were...

Since taking office in April, the former general has visited five ASEAN member states as he seeks normalization with the Southeast Asian bloc.

A South Korean container ship has returned from a trial voyage through the Arctic, testing an alternative route opened by melting sea ice as conflict in the Middle East disrupts global shipping. The PanStar Acro made the round trip to Europe in less time than the conventional route through the Suez Canal, officials said. The initiative has drawn concerns that increased traffic could accelerate Arctic ice loss. The Arctic route could also expose operators to sanctions-related risks because it...

North Korea on Monday fired multiple ballistic missiles off its east coast, Seoul’s military said, after weeks of mounting friction over a landmine explosion along the countries’ heavily fortified border. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed in a statement that it had detected several ballistic missiles launched from the Pyongyang area, adding that its military “has stepped up surveillance and vigilance against possible additional launches”. One of the missiles flew more than 900km (559...