Hong Kong’s Deadly 2025 Fire: Accountability on Lee’s Terms
A ministerial resignation, official apologies, and promises of reform leave a fundamental question unanswered: What power do Hong Kong citizens have to demand accountability beyond what their government is willing to offer?
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Dark past of Japan’s Unit 731 buried under airport expansion
A village that sent hundreds of men to one of imperial Japan’s most notorious wartime units is being demolished to make way for a runway at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. Unit 731 carried out lethal experiments on captives, many of them Chinese, to develop biological weapons during the second world war. Around 300 of its roughly 3,000 personnel came from Kamo, a neighbourhood in Shibayama town, Chiba prefecture, east of the capital. Its founder and commander, Lieutenant General Shiro...
‘I’m terrified’: AI comes for Southeast Asia’s graduate jobs
Nafeesa Azman has applied for hundreds of jobs over the past two months, yet the 24-year-old Malaysian marketing graduate is yet to find a permanent role that pays what she needs or uses the skills she spent years, and a good deal of money, developing. Natthanicha Intawong, a final-year media arts student in Bangkok, describes the terror many of her peers feel as they prepare to enter a jobs market that artificial intelligence is already beginning to scythe through. For Joshua Nai, a Singaporean...
China helps dismantle major meth trafficking network in Southeast Asia
China has broken up a major transnational drug trafficking network in cooperation with Indonesia and Malaysia, seizing around 1.2 tonnes of liquid methamphetamine, China’s Ministry of Public Security said on Friday. The operation was carried out on October 21 by Indonesia’s National Narcotics Agency (BNN), which raided and shut down a large-scale drug processing and purification facility in Aceh, Indonesia, and arrested 11 people, with help from China’s National Narcotics Control Commission...
The flaw in Australia’s ‘China threat’ thesis
Australia’s preparations for a possible conflict with China reflect “a relatively superficial understanding”, argues prominent economist John Edwards. Europe, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia and India, he notes, are not preparing for such a conflict. Why should Australia? Edwards, a former senior economic adviser to former Labor prime minister Paul Keating, makes the observation in a Lowy Institute paper released in October and in a newspaper interview. Instead, he sees US-China rivalry as a...
I Covered the Tiananmen Square Massacre. It Still Weighs on Me.
The day that changed modern China also taught me how to recognize true courage.
Fire Devastated a Mongolian Nature Reserve. Who’s to Blame?
The fire in Numrug touches on cross-border capital compliance risks and geopolitical changes impacting Northeast Asia’s ecology.
U.S. to Send Dozens Back to Afghanistan, Despite Risk of Persecution
The Trump administration plans to fly the Afghan immigrants from Louisiana to Pakistan, where they are expected to be expelled over the border to Afghanistan.
New ‘Call of Duty’ Game Draws Criticism for Using Footage of Deadly Seoul Crowd Crush
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 uses actual visuals from a Halloween crowd crush in South Korea, in which over 150 people died in a narrow alleyway.
On a Remote Island, Japan Puts Its Deep-Sea Mining Ambitions on Display
Experts argue that Japan’s rush to exploit rare-earth mud from the sea floor near Minamitorishima is driven less by resources than by the political value of being seen to use the island.
Will Islamic Finance Expand Financial Inclusion in Uzbekistan?
Does removing a religious objection make financing accessible and affordable?
Japan-Taiwan Relations Enter ‘Deep Waters.’ Will They Sink or Swim?
Economic, technological, and societal ties between the two sides have never been stronger, yet political constraints are becoming more and more visible.