SCMP Asia·Saturday, January 10, 2026

SCMP Asia - Saturday, January 10, 2026

10 stories~15 min

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Stories Covered

Singapore steps up migrant worker reforms amid calls for deeper change

The life of a migrant worker in Singapore is bittersweet. Ramesh, 29, came to the city state in search of a good job. He hails from Tamil Nadu, India, and earns just over S$600 (US$466) a month working as a technician at a large multinational firm. While this is double what he made in India and has helped put his sisters through college there, it is only about 10 per cent of the S$5,775 nominal median gross monthly income of Singaporeans. Grappling with an ageing population and a low fertility..

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Indonesia blocks Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot over AI porn concerns

Indonesia temporarily blocked Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot on Saturday due ‌to the risk of AI-generated pornographic content, becoming ‍the first country to deny access to the AI tool. The move comes after governments and regulators from Europe to Asia have ⁠condemned the app, with some opening inquiries into sexualised content. xAI, the start-up behind Grok, said on Thursday it was restricting image generation and editing to paying ‍subscribers as it tried to fix safeguard lapses that had ‍allowed.

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System failure at Malaysia-Singapore border strands thousands of travellers

Tens of thousands of travellers were left stranded at Malaysia’s two main land checkpoints with Singapore on Saturday after a major system failure shut down most automated immigration gates, causing hours-long queues at one of the world’s busiest border crossings. The worst congestion was reported at the Sultan Iskandar Building (BSI) Customs, Immigration and Quarantine Complex in Johor Bahru, where foreign visitors faced waits of up to two hours to clear immigration. The problem also affected..

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Soaring healthcare costs in the Philippines: are doctors’ fees to blame?

The Philippine government is exploring ways to cap doctors’ professional fees following public complaints about soaring hospital bills, a move that has drawn resistance from physicians who say they are being unfairly blamed for deeper failures in health financing. The Department of Health (DOH) said it was studying possible standards for doctors’ fees after patients took to social media to report unexpectedly high out-of-pocket expenses. But doctors’ groups argue that the real culprit is...

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Australia declares state of disaster as bushfires rip through Victoria: ‘leave, go’

Authorities in Australia declared a state of disaster on Saturday after bushfires destroyed houses and razed vast belts of forest in the country’s southeast. Temperatures soared past 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) as a heatwave blanketed the state of Victoria this week, with hot winds fanning some of the most dangerous fire weather since the “Black Summer” bushfires of 2019 to 2020. One of the most destructive bushfires ripped through almost 150,000 hectares (370,000 acres) near...

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‘No taste’: Malaysia’s Life of Pi and Squid Game artists warn against AI rush

Firdaus Hashim has spent nearly two decades breathing life into the impossible. The Malaysian visual effects (VFX) artist has won multiple accolades for his painstaking, frame-by-frame artistry and even contributed to an Oscar-winning film. But today, the 39-year-old finds himself confronted by a force shaking the very foundations of his craft: artificial intelligence. Since starting out in 2009, Firdaus has honed his skills through the laborious sketching of individual frames, developing an eye

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North Korea revives drone claims in rebuff to Seoul’s outreach

North Korea’s latest accusations that South Korean drones violated its airspace appear aimed at painting Seoul as a permanent enemy ahead of a key party congress, rather than addressing an actual security breach, analysts say. By reviving claims of cross-border incursions and threatening retaliation, the North is reinforcing its portrayal of inter-Korean relations as irreversibly hostile – just as South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung seeks to reopen channels of communication. Lee, who took...

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All aboard the cat train as Japan railway gets new feline stationmaster

A calico cat named Yontama was formally appointed stationmaster at Kishi Station in western Japan this week, stepping into a role that is at once whimsical and ceremonial but also important to the survival of a rural railway line. The appointment ceremony on Wednesday drew fans, photographers and local officials to the station in Kinokawa, Wakayama prefecture, where Wakayama Electric Railway President Mitsunobu Kojima placed a medal around Yontama’s neck as the crowd applauded. Yontama is the...

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Mystery ‘ghost ship’ discovery puzzles Japan. Fisherman, defector or spy?

A lone body discovered on a cold Japanese beach and a shattered wooden boat coated in black tar have stirred memories of the “ghost ships” that in past winters drifted across to Japan from North Korea. The body washed ashore on Wednesday in Ishikawa prefecture, while a Japan Coast Guard vessel later recovered the capsized boat nearby, local media reported. Authorities have yet to identify the man and are investigating whether he was linked to the vessel, which bore Korean characters and numbers.

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As India overtakes Japan in economic size, prosperity lags far behind

India ushered in the new year with a symbolic triumph as its economy edged past Japan’s to become the world’s fourth largest by nominal gross domestic product. The achievement unleashed a wave of national pride in New Delhi and among business leaders, but behind the celebrations lingers a question: can the world’s fastest-growing economy turn rapid growth into widespread prosperity? Economists warn that GDP figures alone cannot create jobs, lift incomes or bridge yawning inequality in a nation..

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