Before the deadly landslides and floods hit Indonesia about two weeks ago, Amran Siagian, 39, frequently met Tapanuli orangutans on a hill in the region of Sipirok, North Sumatra province. Siagian, who has been working as a ranger to protect the endangered animal at the Orangutan Information Centre (OIC) for at least five years, remembers how the orangutans were fond of eating durian and other fruits from farms in the area. But after the landslides hit Sipirok, the orangutans are nowhere to ..

Indonesia is confronting its deadliest natural disaster in more than two decades as floods and landslides ravage Sumatra, overwhelming local authorities and prompting scrutiny of how President Prabowo Subiantos administration is managing the crisis. Officials insist relief efforts have moved quickly, given how the scale of devastation demanded complex coordination, but critics and segments of the public argue the response has felt slow and at times tone-deaf, a perception analysts said could...

A last-minute medical intervention halted the deportation of a Filipino man from the United States after advocates warned that his deteriorating condition and months of alleged neglect in immigration custody had put his life at risk. Greggy Valerio Sorio, a 37-year-old long-time US resident affectionately known as Kuya G, had already boarded a plane bound for Manila on Sunday night when Philippine Airlines medical staff reportedly intervened, citing his condition. He was returned to the...

A fire ripped through an office building in Indonesias capital, Jakarta, on Tuesday, killing at least 22 people, including a pregnant woman, police said. Flames engulfed the seven-storey building, sending thick black smoke billowing into the sky and causing panic among nearby residents and workers in a neighbourhood in Central Jakarta. The fire, which broke out around midday, is believed to have started on the first floor of the building in the Kemayoran neighbourhood before spreading to ..

An arrest warrant is being prepared for Cezarah Sarah Discaya, the businesswoman once dubbed the Philippines queen of flood control, after prosecutors accused her of pocketing millions from a government project that was paid for but never built. Discayas impending arrest expected within days, according to President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr would mark one of the most high- profile developments in the multibillion-peso flood control corruption scandal that has roiled Manilas political...

The owners of an Indian nightclub in the tourist hotspot of Goa fled the country hours after a deadly fire at their business killed 25 people at the weekend, police have said. Most of the victims of the tragedy that struck a club in Arpora in the north of the coastal state were staff members, including four Nepali citizens. The blaze was likely triggered by electrical firecrackers, officials said, with most people dying due to suffocation in the basement and kitchen area after wooden parts of...

A 24-year-old fighter from Myanmars pro-democracy Peoples Defence Force has said many of those who fight alongside him have switched sides at times in the long-running civil war, with a lack of financial compensation forcing them to temporarily side with a junta-aligned armed group. The fighter, who identified himself only as Soe, joined the PDF to regain democracy after the military coup of February 1, 2021, which ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Formerly a physics major...

At least eight people have been killed in renewed fighting on the Thai- Cambodian border, officials said on Tuesday, as Bangkok accused Phnom Penh of launching cross-border rocket attacks despite a White House warning to end the bloodshed. The latest escalation has shattered a shaky US-steered truce that had largely held since late October, when Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and Cambodian leader Hun Manet agreed to halt hostilities under a deal witnessed by US President Donald Trump ..

Singapores approach to curbing foreign interference and cybercrime is being tested by the sheer speed and borderless nature of online threats, according to analysts who say the city states legal powers provide important safeguards but are unlikely to fully keep pace with a rapidly evolving digital landscape. They note that while swift takedown orders and targeted legislation have strengthened Singapores defences against misinformation and coordinated online harms, long-term resilience would...

The fate of the panda on the scooter is hanging in the balance. The artwork, modified by a Chinese artist at Chew Jetty in Malaysias Penang state, has yet to be legalised although an application was made a month ago. The Chinese tourist, known as Shen Shishi or Shi Shi, had painted a panda onto an existing mural on a wall at the jetty. The panda has surprisingly become an additional attraction at the usually busy tourist hub, with more people flocking there. The panda mural triggered online...

A former spokesman for Rodrigo Duterte has claimed that the International Criminal Court is preparing to arrest two of the ex-Philippine leaders closest allies over his administrations bloody war on drugs. Harry Roque told This Week in Asia that President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr intended to use such arrests to destroy the [political] opposition, arguing that clearing Duterte-allied senators from the chamber would secure the votes Marcos needed to oust Vice- President Sara Duterte-Carpio his...

A 15-year-old girl from Myanmar is the first foreigner to have their Singapore long-term immigration status revoked for possessing an e-vaporiser pod containing etomidate, or a Kpod. A vape pod containing the drug was found in her possession during a routine check by police officers on November 14, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Health Sciences Authority (HSA) said in a joint press release on Monday. She has been issued a Special Pass to allow her to remain in Singapore to assist with...

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr is facing his lowest ratings yet since taking office in 2022, a trend observers warn could be a signal that his efforts to quell the spiralling corruption scandal around the countrys flood control projects are backfiring. Marcos satisfaction ratings fell to 21 per cent in November a drop of 14 percentage points from August, and his steepest decline since February this year, according to findings released by independent public opinion firm WR Numero...

Malaysias former economy minister Rafizi Ramli has renewed his attack on Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahims reformist agenda, alleging that anti-corruption officers targeted candidates who challenged the leaders daughter in internal party polls earlier this year. In an episode of his Yang Berhenti Menteri (The Minister Who Quit) podcast streamed on Friday, the Pandan MP and former Anwar ally alleged that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) had investigated several contenders for the...

The first giant panda cub born in Indonesia is noisy, nursing well and showing other signs of good health, the conservation park where he was born said on Sunday. Indonesian Safari Park released video and photos showing the fuzzy newborn in an incubator and squirming and squealing while being cuddled by his mother. The mother, 15-year-old Hu Chun, gave birth to Satrio Wiratama - nicknamed Rio - on November 27 at the park in Cisarua, West Java province. The name symbolises the hope, ..

Japan has dropped out of plans to build a major nuclear power plant in Vietnam because the time frame is too tight, Japanese ambassador Naoki Ito told Reuters, potentially complicating Vietnams long-term strategy to avoid new power shortages. Vietnam, home to large manufacturing operations for multinationals including Samsung and Apple, has faced major power blackouts as demand from its huge industrial sector and expanding middle class often outpaces supplies, strained by increasingly ..

Thailand launched air strikes on Cambodian military positions on Monday after a Thai soldier was killed, pushing a shaky US-brokered truce to the brink of collapse as renewed fighting broke out along their shared frontier. Each side accused the other of shattering the peace by mounting attacks on border bases and personnel over the weekend, in the fiercest eruption of hostilities for months between the Southeast Asian neighbours. The violence has forced thousands of civilians on both sides to...

Taking a short cut through Pattayas Scammer Alley, a neon maze of bars, hotpot restaurants and 24-hour Korean barbecue joints, taxi driver May shakes her head. The money washing around this Thai resort is so thick with fraud that even her own bank account has been frozen. They pay with QR codes linked to mule accounts, she said, referring to bank accounts legally registered under Thai names but secretly controlled by the foreign cybercriminals who have turned this part of Southeast Asia...

In the tumultuous days before Singapores separation from Malaysia in 1965, founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew clung to the hope that the city could still be part of the federal government under a looser arrangement, but his deputy had no desire to pursue this ideal. While Lee was conflicted and even wavered at the eleventh hour when he asked then Malaysian prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman if he was certain there was no alternative, Goh Keng Swee, widely regarded as the architect of modern...

Eighteen people were killed in an air strike on a town in central Myanmar, according to a local official, a rescue worker and two residents who spoke to Agence France-Presse on Saturday. Myanmar has been rocked by civil war since the military snatched power in a 2021 coup, and its battles with numerous anti-coup fighters have brought frequent air strikes that often kill civilians. Two bombs were dropped on Tabayin township in Sagaing region on Friday evening, with one hitting a busy teashop,...

Two years after Thai worker Sudthisak Rinthalak was killed by Hamas militants, his family in northeastern Thailand is preparing to welcome his remains home and hold a Buddhist ceremony they believe will bring his spirit peace. Sudthisak was among 47 hostages whose bodies Hamas has returned under the current ceasefire agreement. The handover of deceased hostages was a key condition of the initial phase of the deal aimed at ending the war in Gaza. Sudthisaks elder brother Thepporn has spent the...

Funds siphoned off from the Philippines flood control projects and converted into cryptocurrency may be linked to online scam syndicates run by offshore gaming operators, an official from the countrys cybercrime unit has revealed. Renato Paraiso, acting executive director of the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Centre, told This Week in Asia that investigators had uncovered a definite link between digital assets tied to the multibillion-peso flood control scandal and cryptocurrency...

Indonesias disaster agency on Saturday reported a rise in the death toll from floods and landslides on the island of Sumatra, saying at least 883 people had been confirmed dead while more than 500 were missing. The National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) said the figures covered three provinces Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra which had been hit by days of intense rainfall that triggered overflowing rivers, landslides and severe damage to transport infrastructure. The agency said 520...

What happens when a democracy begins to fear its own internet? In Indonesia, that question is no longer hypothetical, as the government threatens to pull the plug on major online platforms many of its people rely upon. When Jakarta warned last month that it could block major platforms like Cloudflare and Wikipedia, the move was justified as a crackdown on online gambling a vice officially outlawed in the worlds largest Muslim-majority nation. But for tech industry players and free-speech...

For Malaysian tech worker Sam, there were three short steps to being replaced by robots at a global social media companys Kuala Lumpur office. First came weeks spent training the companys artificial intelligence systems. Then came the ominous warnings of restructuring. Finally, the inevitable: redundancy. One day, out of nowhere, we had to attend a town hall, said the 29-year-old, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect his job prospects. They never explicitly said it was due to AI, but...

The tarpaulin barely held against the wind, sagging under days of ceaseless rain. For the earthquake survivors of San Remigio, in the central Philippines, it was all that remained a thin sheet of plastic above a patch of mud, standing in for the homes a 6.9-magnitude quake had reduced to rubble weeks earlier. Then, in early November, Typhoon Kalmaegi barrelled through. The storm, known locally as Tino, drenched thousands of families still huddled in their makeshift shelters. Roads vanished...

Malaysias government is under mounting pressure to explain the fatal police shooting of three men in the southern state of Melaka, after an audio recording and forensic claims released by the families appeared to contradict the police account of a violent confrontation with the suspected robbery gang members. In the latest case, the three Puspanathan Murulitharan, 21; Poonesvaran Tiagarajan, 24; and Logeswaran Georgie, 29 were killed on November 24 during a police operation in Durian...

The last time Sugeng Widodo spoke to his wife, Indonesian domestic worker Sri Wahyuni, something did not feel right for him. It was around 1pm Hong Kong time on November 26, just a few hours before a devastating fire would rip through Wang Fuk Court in the citys Tai Po district, killing at least 159 people. Wahyuni, 42, would be among the dead her body found in a room in a fourth-floor flat at the estate, hugging her employer, a 93-year-old woman, according to Widodo, citing information...

Bali is considering a ban on Airbnbs accommodation, its latest attempt to impose order on a resort island struggling to cope with a record surge in tourism. Use of Airbnb-style rentals has exploded in recent years, eroding tax revenue from hotels even as foreign arrivals boom, Bali Governor I Wayan Koster told state news agency Antara. The proliferation of unregistered villas and guest houses in turn hampers the governments ability to raise revenue to fund public services, he was quoted as...

The year-end usually brings hordes of Singaporeans to Johor Bahru, but this holiday season, the city feels unusually quiet, according to business owners in the capital of the Malaysian state of Johor. They believe this is due to the stronger Malaysian ringgit, with the drop becoming especially noticeable since last month. Besides the ringgits strong performance, other factors included the unpredictable weather. November and December have always been the busiest period for businesses here, but...

Indonesian authorities on Thursday named a Chinese executive of a metal smelting company as a suspect in a caesium-137 contamination case that resulted in the recall of some exports to the US. Lin Jingzhang, who is a director of PT Peter Metal Technology (PMT), has been designated as a suspect, Bara Hasibuan, a spokesperson for the investigating task force, said. The Certain Crimes Directorate of the Indonesian National Polices Criminal Investigation Unit has named Lin Jingzhang, a citizen of...

Malaysia said on Thursday that it would consider a proposal by Singapore to jointly develop water infrastructure in southern Johor, signalling the intention of both sides to move beyond decades of rancour over the vital resource. The two countries have for years disagreed over various issues related to water supply, ranging from prices to the interpretation of the 1962 water agreement signed by them. Malaysia has argued that Johors water is sold too cheaply to Singapore. With Johor ..

With rising tensions between Beijing and Tokyo disrupting travel plans, Chinese tourists are actively seeking alternative destinations for their winter getaways. While South Korea hopes to capitalise on this diverted tourist flow, it faces fierce competition from popular hotspots like Thailand, Russia and other destinations, according to travel industry officials. The diplomatic spat began when Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested potential military intervention in the Taiwan ..

Last year, Mutalib Uthman could only look on helplessly as flames consumed his home, reducing everything he owned to ashes in a wall of thick, black smoke. The book publisher from Selangor said a faulty fuse box on the lower floor had sparked the blaze inside his home in Bandar Baru Bangi. Despite a neighbour trying to help with a fire extinguisher, the two-storey home near Putrajaya was quickly destroyed. The box was inside the store room, which was full of unused items, he told This Week in...

With Chinese tourists shunning Japan and Thailands Hat Yai, Malaysias Penang state is poised for a year-end tourism bonanza. Penang tourism committee chairman Wong Hong Wai said Indonesians and Singaporeans, along with Malaysians who normally prefer Hat Yai, are expected to redirect their holiday plans to the state. December is traditionally one of the busiest periods, coinciding with the school holidays in both Malaysia and Singapore, and the Christmas and new year festive break. There is...

Faced with growing scrutiny by authorities at home and in Singapore, mainland Chinese living in the city state are being more discreet about their wealth, in a shift that is hitting sales of luxury goods from Bentleys to private jets. Singapore, where some 75 per cent of the resident population is ethnically Chinese, has seen massive inflows of mainland Chinese wealth over the last few years due to the islands political stability, tax-friendly environment and cultural affinity. The Covid-19...

A former political aide of Malaysias leader and a Sabah-linked businessman pleaded not guilty to four counts of corruption each on Thursday, in a case analysts say will taint Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahims anti-corruption credentials. Anwars reform platform has already been tested by disputes over mineral exploration rights in Malaysias poorest but most resource-rich state, Sabah. Former political secretary Shamsul Iskandar Mohd Akin was accused of receiving 176,829.03 ringgit (US$42,930) in...

Singapores highest court has upheld a S$14,000 (US$10,820) fine handed to opposition leader Pritam Singh for lying to a parliamentary committee. In February, the Workers Party (WP) chief was found guilty of two counts of giving false testimony to a committee scrutinising a lie told by Raeesah Khan, a former member of parliament for the party. Singh, who pleaded not guilty, received the maximum fine of S$7,000 for each charge following a 13-day trial. The 49-year-old appealed against the...

A Malaysian businessman escaped from the clutches of a job scam syndicate in Cambodia after his wife lodged a police report and a 6,000 ringgit (US$1,456) ransom was paid, but some 700 others are still trapped there. Many are facing torture in captivity, said Muhammad Syafiq Pubalan Abdullah, 40. The victims aged between 17 and 35 were often beaten up, he said. He, too, was beaten up daily during his first week there. They would beat the women with a belt. I heard a female victim was raped by...

A former Indonesian minister has dismissed claims of giving preferential treatment to Chinese firms and wooing investors with policies undermining the countrys sovereignty, amid furore over an airport inside a major industrial cluster that risks becoming a state within a state. Luhut Pandjaitan, a key architect of ex-president Joko Widodos mineral downstreaming strategy, said Chinas technological prowess and deep pockets made it an ideal partner for propelling the local economy as others...