Thailand makes weight-loss pens prescription-only to counter glut of illegal medicines

The suspect, a 16-year-old student, also died, officials said. It was the third high-profile school shooting in the Philippines in recent months.

President Lee Jae Myung’s comments followed President Trump’s repeated demand for “a little hand” from South Korea, a decades-old American ally.

The war with Iran revealed just how much influence the world’s biggest oil importer has over prices and other countries’ supplies of jet fuel, gasoline and diesel.

Singapore Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing’s use of Mandarin and Chinese philosophy in his speech at a major security forum in Beijing has won him praise on Chinese social media, while shedding light on how cultural familiarity and language can be diplomatic tools for the city state. Videos of Chan at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum quoting ancient philosopher Mencius, or Mengzi in Mandarin, have gone viral on platforms such as Weixin and Baidu, with users hailing his command of the language and...

Property agent Raymond Heng had suspected True Fitness was struggling, but he did not expect the gym he had visited for more than a decade to disappear overnight. The closure was not entirely surprising given the region’s fiercely competitive fitness industry, but its abruptness left Heng, 47, in disbelief after paying S$8,800 (US$6,900) for a lifetime membership in 2013. “I guessed that they might not have been doing that well since branches have been closing over the years, but I did not...

As Rodrigo Duterte’s crimes-against-humanity trial looms, an international tribunal faces the challenge of managing a sprawling prosecution case around the health of an 81-year-old former president of the Philippines, on top of shielding the proceedings from a highly charged media environment. Those pressures came into focus at an International Criminal Court (ICC) status conference on Wednesday, when Presiding Judge Joanna Korner urged prosecutors to trim their witness list and evidence ahead...

Chinese artificial intelligence models from seven major developers combined generate only about 10 per cent of the revenue reported for OpenAI and Anthropic, even as investor enthusiasm remains intense, according to US-based research firm Rhodium Group. The Chinese AI models earned an estimated US$10.7 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR) from March to August, a fraction of the more than US$100 billion combined for OpenAI and Anthropic, according to the Rhodium report published on...

The Bank of Japan’s widely expected move followed an unusual campaign by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for higher rates.

The former prime minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, was convicted in the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal. He’ll serve out his time at a luxury home.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has drawn a clear line against any US request for Seoul to join the war against Iran, explicitly ruling out the dispatch of troops or military assets that could involve his country in the conflict. The stance comes amid mounting public opposition to any military deployment and growing pressure from Washington for Seoul to contribute to efforts to secure freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Lee’s government faces the difficult task of balancing...

Indonesia welcomed its first aircraft carrier on Friday, a former Italian warship that the government says will strengthen the archipelago nation’s maritime security and disaster response capabilities. The 41-year-old former ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi, with capacity for short take-off and vertical landing aircraft and helicopters, was welcomed with a military ceremony upon its arrival at a naval base in North Jakarta’s Tanjung Priok seaport. Rome in March agreed to give the carrier, which was...