Asia News fra SCMP

A horrific train crash that killed 16 passengers on the outskirts of Jakarta has prompted Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto to pledge 4 trillion rupiah (US$230 million) to overhaul level crossings across Java after officials identified one such intersection as a key point in the chain collision. The pledge targets one of the key weaknesses in Indonesia’s rail network: crossings that are unguarded, poorly maintained or haphazardly created by local communities. Transport analysts said the...

Asia’s gold rush is starting to lose some of its lustre, as surging oil prices due to the Iran war dampen rate-cut hopes that recently helped fuel one of the metal’s strongest rallies in years. A surge in energy costs has revived inflation concerns and made central banks less likely to cut rates, and this has made interest-bearing assets more attractive, according to analysts. Gold prices fell by 12 per cent from US$5,247.90 per troy ounce on February 27 to US$4,620 on Friday morning. The metal...

A viral video of three elephants sent from Malaysia to a zoo in Japan has sparked public anger after online users said the animals appeared distressed when visitors called their names in Malay – which many viewers interpreted as a sign of homesickness. The footage showed the three pachyderms – Dara, Amoi and Kelat – responding to the Malaysian visitors, while another widely shared clip led social media users to claim one of the elephants appeared to be “weeping”. Other clips and images...

Hundreds of protesters clashed with Australian emergency services workers in a remote town following the arrest of a man suspected of murdering a five-year-old indigenous girl, police said on Friday. Australia’s prime minister, the Northern Territory’s police commissioner and a spokesperson for the victim’s family all appealed for calm after an angry crowd of roughly 400 indigenous people gathered on Thursday night at the hospital where ‌the suspect was taken after being beaten unconscious by...

Japanese police arrested a man for allegedly incinerating his dead wife at the zoo where he worked, officials and local media said on Friday, following the discovery of human remains. Police arrested Tatsuya Suzuki on Thursday evening on suspicion that he “transported the victim’s body to a tourist facility” in the northern island of Hokkaido and “destroyed it through incineration there”, a local police official said. The victim, 33-year-old Yui Suzuki, was identified by local media as his wife....

Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has sought to reassure workers amid concerns about the AI revolution, vowing that the city state will carve out fresh opportunities even as the new technology renders some jobs obsolete. In the annual May Day rally on Friday, Wong acknowledged the anxieties but urged workers and firms to build artificial intelligence capabilities and harness its benefits. Demand would rise for AI-savvy workers, and new doors would open as global companies expanded their...

A government-backed water rave in Kuala Lumpur has earned the wrath of Malaysia’s culture war brigade, pitting religious objections against tourism goals, as critics decry the vulgar import amid growing conservatism. The uproar over the three-day Rain Rave Water Music Festival in Bukit Bintang comes as Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s government tries to promote the country as a youthful, experience-led travel destination, even as it manages a traditionalist pushback against concerts, pop culture...

Three Chinese nationals who travelled to Singapore to break into houses and steal expensive items after they saw multiple videos on social media about wealthy Singaporeans were sentenced to jail on Thursday. The three men, Yang Chao, Zhou Qifa and He Jiao, conspired to target vulnerable properties in Singapore, break into the houses, steal valuables and leave the country with them. Both Yang, 42, and He, 38, were sentenced to five years and three months in prison, while Zhou, 37, was sentenced...

Japan’s shrinking youth population is forcing a reckoning in higher education, with the finance ministry pushing for the closure or merger of hundreds of private universities as campuses struggle to fill classrooms. University insiders broadly agree that Japan has too many small, private tertiary institutions battling enrolment shortfalls and financial pressures, but they also argue the education ministry’s own policies contributed to the problem. “The number of universities they are talking...

More than 15 per cent of hospitals and long-term medical care facilities across Japan have recorded cases of sexual assault or abuse of patients, according to a new government report, as concerns mount that the actual figures may be higher. The Children and Families Agency released the results of the survey – the first of its kind – on Tuesday, with 1,113 institutions of the 5,000 invited to take part providing responses. Many of the incidents involved medical staff in psychiatry and...