By: B A Hamzah Water fight!! With geopolitical tensions continuing to rise over seemingly irreconcilable claims of sovereignty on the South China Sea, it is time for Australia and Japan to reverse their progress toward involvement and step in as neutral participants to cool tensions. The strategic posture of the two nations, given their economic interest,… Read more ..read more

Hue headed for the fiery furnace? Sources in Hanoi say that police have arrested Nguyen Duy Hung, a young male relative of Vuong Dinh Hue, who has been tipped as the likely successor to Nguyen Phu Trong as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the country’s most powerful political position, at the 15th Party Congress in January 2026. Vuong is chairman of the Vietnam National Assembly and a former deputy prime minister supervising economic matters as well as former chief of the Hanoi Communist party. Nguyen Duy Hung, who is an aide to Hue as well as a relative, is said to have ..read more

By: Toh Han Shih The Vietnamese government has begun looking abroad, particularly in Hong Kong and other jurisdictions, for assets linked to the country’s biggest graft scandal involving Truong My Lan, the chief culprit, and her Hong Kong husband, Eric Chu Nap-kee. The 67-year-old businesswoman and her accomplices are accused of siphoning 304 trillion do… Read more ..read more

By: Jyoti Malhotra On April 14 in Lahore, Pakistan, two people knocked on the door of Amir Sarfaraz’s home in Islampura district, and when he opened it, pumped several bullets into him. Sarfaraz was taken to hospital where he died of his injuries. There were no claims or accusations about who killed whom, let alone why, but speculation runs rife. Those who really know, such as people in intelligence, usually don't say. But a fortnight ago, the London-based Guardian broke an exclusive story reporting on the Indian government’s policy to carry out targeted assassinations abroad against people ..read more

Lee: out to pasture. Photo from Bloomberg In a sudden announcement that rocked Singapore, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s office announced this morning that the 72-year-old Lee would step down on May 15 – in just a month – to be replaced by Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, only the third leadership transition in the island republic since its independence in 1965. Two of the premiers have been members of the Lee family, one of the most enduring political dynasties in Asia. There have long been rumors that Lee has been ill, and social media was rife with speculation, but there is no indic ..read more

By: Tim Daiss On the campaign trail. Photo from Marcos campaign Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has made healthy moves to attempt to shift his country away from reliance on fossil fuels, in December 2022 authorizing full foreign ownership in renewable energy projects, a nearly unprecedented move in Southeast Asia. Foreign investors can hold 100 p… Read more ..read more

By: Gregory McCann Snow leopards, the big cats found throughout 12 countries of the Himalayas, the Karakoram, and other high mountains throughout Central Asia, are facing unprecedented threat in the form of the Chinese and Indian competition for primacy in the high Himalayan mountains. Armies for both are punching in roads up to 8 meters wide that can ac… Read more ..read more

By: Shim Jae Hoon The opposition Democratic Party’s landslide victory in South Korea’s April 10 parliamentary elections casts a heavy shadow over President Yoon Suk Yeol’s remaining term in office, threatening to undermine his ambitious pro-business commitments and strong security posture on North Korea’s missile threats, and raising concerns in Washington over the possibility of a softening stance against both the North and China. Yoon, a business-oriented former public prosecutor, came into office in 2022 in a backlash against former President Moon Jae-in’s hesitancy in dealing with North ..read more

By: Jens Kastner Dogged by labor shortages and a plummeting birthrate, Taiwan recently has agreed to open its doors to up to reportedly 100,000 Indian workers despite xenophobic outbursts across social media platforms for what the islanders call “3K jobs (K stands for 哭, part of a range of words describing miser)” – dangerous, hard, and dirty. In doing s… Read more ..read more

By: Manuel L. Quezon III Photo from AFP Tomorrow, April 11, US President Joe Biden will host a tripartite summit in the White House with Fumio Kishida of Japan and Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. of the Philippines as guests. Announced at a time of escalating tensions in the South China Sea, the optics of the summit are as much about decline as they are about resurgence. On Biden’s part, the summit represents a potential handing-off of stewardship of the anti-China regional alliance to Japan, even as the summit is a means to stuff the gift stockings, so to speak, of allies such as Japan and the Phil ..read more