Asia in 3 minutes: From Aussie Formula One strippers in Malaysia to Indian call centre scammers

Australians freed after they ‘hurt the feelings of all Malaysians’

Nine Australian men who provoked anger in Malaysia by donning skimpy swimwear bearing the Muslim-majority country’s flag at a Formula One race were let off with no charges on Thursday. Four days after their arrest, the men were taken to a Malaysian court to face potential charges of public indecency and national insult. But after expressing remorse – and getting a strong reprimand from a Malaysian judge – they were released without charge. “Your conduct on October 2 was totally inappropriate by dressing down to your swimming trunks,” Judge Harith Sham Mohamad Yasin told them. “It hurt the feelings of all Malaysians to display the flag in such a manner.”

What next? Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had little sympathy for the men and issued a warning to Australians travelling abroad. “What might be seen as a foolish prank or Aussie ‘blokey’ behaviour in Australia can be seen very differently in another country,” she said.

Duterte tells Obama he’ll take arms from Russia and China, if not the U.S.

Not a week goes by without Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte creating headlines. Last week, Duterte publicly told US President Barack Obama to “go to hell”, claiming the United States had refused to sell some weapons to his country. No problem, Duterte claimed, because Russia and China are willing suppliers, waiting to do business. “If you don’t want to sell arms, I’ll go to Russia. I sent the generals to Russia and Russia said ‘do not worry, we have everything you need, we’ll give it to you’. And as for China, they said ‘just come over and sign and everything will be delivered’.”

What next? Duterte’s outbursts have done little to dent his popularity. Only 11 per cent of 1,200 Filipinos surveyed by the Social Weather Stations agency said they were dissatisfied with his performance after 90 days in charge.

S Korean film festival marred by boycott over artistic independence

The Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) kicked off on Thursday in the South Korean port city, but threatened to be overshadowed by a long-running and angry dispute over artistic freedom and a boycott of the event by high-profile local cineastes. The annual event has been embroiled in a bitter dispute with the Busan municipal government since a screening in 2014 of a controversial documentary about the Sewol ferry disaster. The film, Diving Bell, criticised the government’s handling of the sinking in 2014 that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 people, most of them schoolchildren. A subsequent flurry of official probes targeting organisers of the festival and an unprecedented cut in state funding last year were widely seen as acts of political revenge and an assault on the festival’s independence.