Asia News fra SCMP

Ever since President Xi Jinping bent China’s retirement rules and allowed 70-year-old Wang Qishan, one of his most trusted allies, to become the country’s vice-president in March, Wang’s role and influence in Xi’s administration has remained a subject of constant speculation among China observers. Publicly, the traditional role of China’s vice-president is largely ceremonial, and the most public function is to receive visiting foreign dignitaries, as Wang has... […]

The United Nations asked the government of Sri Lanka on Friday to immediately repatriate the commander of its 200-strong contingent assigned to the UN peacekeeping force in Mali following a review of his human rights background. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the request for Lieutenant Colonel Kalana Amunupure to leave the troubled West African nation was made “based on recently received information”. He gave no details. A report in The Guardian newspaper in July quoted a... […]

In the background, a luxury goods shop, a stooped elderly cleaner sweeping its storefront; on one side of the bridge sits expensive condominiums, bars and restaurants, on the other, rental flats housing Singapore’s poorest. These scenes unfolded in a documentary titled Regardless of Class by Channel NewsAsia released on October 1, with a security guard revealing he felt as though he was not treated like a person. A cleaner said: “I know I’m invisible. I have to get used to... […]

Australia’s embattled conservative coalition was bracing for defeat as polls opened in a crucial by-election Saturday, with a loss set to snuff out its slim parliamentary majority. The by-election in the wealthy Sydney seat of Wentworth was triggered after former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was ousted in a party-room coup in August – the sixth change of leader in the last decade. Turnbull’s successor, Scott Morrison, is facing public anger about the leadership merry-go-... […]

The disappearance of dissident Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and his alleged killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a hit squad acting on orders from the highest levels of the royal family in Riyadh, could be a watershed moment for the country. Over the last year, Western media have largely been full of praise for Saudi Arabia’s young crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, hailing him as a bold reformer for permitting women to drive and allowing cinemas to reopen.... […]

Against the backdrop of rising protectionism and a raging trade war, two stout proponents of free trade have shown there is another way: a free flow of goods and services. The European Union and Singapore signed the EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement, which will boost services, improve market access, and see tariffs between both parties eliminated in five years. In signing the deal on Friday, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, President of the European Council Donald Tusk and... […]

The United States and South Korea are scrapping another major military exercise this year, a Pentagon official said on Friday, citing a push for diplomatic progress with North Korea. The top Pentagon spokeswoman, Dana White, said Washington and Seoul were suspending an air exercise known as Vigilant Ace “to give the diplomatic process every opportunity to continue”. It was the latest move aimed at trying to nudge North Korea, which despises such US-South Korean exercises, into... […]

A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 58 people and injuring dozens more, police said. The train failed to stop after the accident on the outskirts of Amritsar, a city in Punjab state, said the state governing Congress party politician, Pratap Singh Bajwa. Police Commissioner S. S. Srivastava said the police have found 58 bodies so far. The Press Trust of India news agency said two trains arrived from the... […]

Dozens of Hindu priests on Friday joined conservative protesters to block women of menstruating age from one of the world’s largest Hindu pilgrimage sites, defying a ruling from India’s top court to let them enter. The priests threatened to stop rituals and prayers in the Sabarimala temple in southern Kerala state if women ages 10-50 tried to enter the shrine. “We have decided to lock the temple and hand over the keys and leave. I stand with the devotees. I do not have any... […]

As democracy icon Anwar Ibrahim makes his way to the prime ministership promised to him by 2020, Malaysia’s largest trade partner has begun testing the waters to see if the leader-in-waiting will continue premier Mahathir Mohamad’s occasionally adversarial approach. In a recent interview, Anwar told Nikkei that on his trip to China next week, he would be meeting officials to speak on Malaysian rule of law and the future of China-Malaysia ties. “They want to know from me what... […]