Singaporean massage parlour boss added to US ‘worst of the worst criminal aliens list’

Indian police detained several opposition lawmakers in the capital of New Delhi on Tuesday for trying to breach barricades during a protest march to demand the resignation of the election chief over a controversial revision of voter lists. The march presents a fresh political challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi midway into his ‌third term, just months after similar protests forced the resignation of his education minister over exam paper leaks. Parties opposing Modi’s government along with...

On September 22, the global artificial intelligence landscape spun on its axis within a matter of hours. In Beijing, Xiaomi engineers went live with an unusual broadcast, streaming the training run of their new MiMo-V2.6 model. In San Francisco, Anthropic unveiled its frontier Opus 5.5 model. About an hour later, OpenAI crashed the party with the surprise release of its GPT-6 Sol and Luna models. For tech executives and developers trying to keep pace, it was just another overwhelming day in the...

Huge tax breaks and a weak currency sustain exports, widen the government budget deficit and complicate the country’s efforts to rebalance its economy.

Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto is seeking to keep potential rivals in his inner circle as he faces growing political pressure by appointing influential figures from across the political establishment to a presidential advisory council, according to analysts. The council, which advises the president on the direction of government policy but has no power to set or control it, comprises allies of former presidents, political commentators and Muslim leaders. “These are figures who have...

India’s recent push to become more involved in helping end the Russia-Ukraine war comes as the costs of the conflict continue to mount for New Delhi, amid the threat of US tariffs on major buyers of Russian energy and a recent drone attack on an Indian-owned pharmaceutical plant in Ukraine. Sunday morning’s drone attack destroyed a large part of Kusum Group’s factory in Sumy, killing one person and injuring several others. The company, which has manufactured generic medicines in Ukraine since...

Eight public service officers have been referred to Singapore police after a review of 191 officers’ property transactions, Coordinating Minister for Public Services Chan Chun Sing has told parliament. The review followed a working paper by the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research, which identified 2007 to 2011 as the period of concern. The Public Service Division (PSD) extended the scope to 2014 as a matter of prudence, Chan said on Tuesday, because many new MRT station locations...

China’s booming artificial intelligence sector has given local researchers good reason to remain in the country, but it has yet to lure overseas scientists despite a government push.

The president said there were signs that such models were used in recent attacks on several banks involving customer data. Police are investigating.

When Chinese coffee giant Luckin Coffee moved into the unit next to his neighbourhood cafe in Singapore, Folk Yard owner Chew Yit Shan grew nervous. Luckin launched with an aggressive promotional deal of S$1 (78 US cents) per cup, served in just two minutes. In the first few months following its arrival, Chew saw sales at his independent cafe drop by 15 per cent. But once the initial hype had died down and the promotions ended, Chew said regular patrons returned and coffee sales bounced...

Governments and financial institutions in Southeast Asia urgently need to find a way to safely and quickly share data if they hope to contain a surge in scams, cybersecurity experts warn, as artificial intelligence enables criminal operations in the region to expand their reach rapidly. Criminal enterprises stole as much as US$114 billion from victims across the Asia-Pacific in 2025, according to a United Nations report released in July, more than triple the amount from two years earlier, aided...

She spent some of her teenage years helping her mother at a sundry shop in Malaysia after school, and throughout that period kept a dream of achieving something higher alive. Now, 36-year-old Suriati Sukardi is a pilot, flying AirAsia’s commercial A320 and A321 Airbus aircraft. Before that, she had landed a job as the airline’s flight attendant and served the company for eight years since 2017 while continuing to eye and seek an opportunity to climb further in her career. In 2019, her prayers...