By Iman Muttaqin Yusof A well-intentioned US embassy post featuring a satellite image of Malaysia has sparked a distinctly local burst of self-deprecating humour, with social media users quipping in response to the picture: “Sorry, we don’t have oil.” On Friday, the embassy in Kuala Lumpur posted a 2016 photograph taken from the International Space […]
Read MoreBy Dewey Sim in Beijing and Zhao Ziwen in Hong Kong China has “more to lose” compared with Venezuela if Iran’s rulers should fall, according to diplomatic observers, but it is expected to avoid direct intervention. The country is facing a wave of anti-government protests fuelled by economic hardship in which hundreds, if not thousands, […]
Read MoreBy Dannie Peng in Beijing Human migration is as old as history and as current as today’s headlines of law enforcement operations and tragedy. Amid the encounters, the question remains: how do strangers become a single people? Today, more than 90 per cent of China’s population identifies as Han Chinese, despite centuries of migration and […]
Read MoreBy Alan Robles and Raissa Robles A Philippine army colonel relieved for his anti-Marcos stance has “voluntarily” returned to his unit and will face charges and psychiatric evaluation, according to his superior. Audie Mongao was on Friday discharged from command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Training Support Group after he publicly withdrew support […]
Read MoreBy Jeoffrey Maitem Japan’s top diplomat is heading to the Philippines this week for talks expected to focus on maritime tensions in the South China Sea and Tokyo’s strategic role in the region. Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi’s stop in Manila on Thursday is part of a nine-day diplomatic tour of the Middle East and Asia […]
Read MoreBy Jeoffrey Maitem The Philippines is stepping up efforts to protect undersea cables – the unseen backbone of digital communications – as a string of regional and global incidents has sharpened concerns that seabed infrastructure could be targeted for sabotage or espionage. Officials and analysts say the moves signal that so-called grey-zone activities – coercive […]
Read MoreBy Seong Hyeon Choi in Hong Kong and Sylvie Zhuang in Beijing US President Donald Trump’s proposal to boost next year’s military budget to US$1.5 trillion aims to blunt China’s global influence, a move analysts said could push Beijing to speed up its own military build-up with “greater urgency”. On Wednesday, Trump wrote on social […]
Read MoreBEIRUT: The Lebanese army declared on Thursday that progress on the second phase of a plan to place all weapons under state authority depends on external factors, highlighting constraints facing the state. These include continued Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory, the occupation of several Lebanese sites, the establishment of buffer zones, repeated violations of the […]
Read MoreThailand accused Cambodia of violating a 10-day-old truce today (6 January), saying cross-border mortar fire wounded a soldier, while Phnom Penh said a “pile of garbage” exploded, injuring two of its own troops. A decades-old border dispute between the Southeast Asian nations erupted into military clashes several times last year, with fighting in December killing […]
Read MoreBy Zhao Ziwen The recent US strike against Venezuela is likely to deepen the Iranian leadership’s concerns about further intervention from Washington but analysts do not expect the leadership will be targeted directly in the same way as Nicolas Maduro. They pointed to the higher geopolitical stakes in the Middle East compared with Latin America […]
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