Asian Insider July 19: Hong Kong’s protesters, Malaysia’s political crisis and details on Japan’s deadly fire

In today's bulletin: Hong Kong protesters seek asylum in Taiwan, Malaysia's political split deepens, more details emerge from Kyoto's fire and more.

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A report from Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily today suggests that the saga over the extradition bill could potentially take a new explosive turn. It reports that about 30 protesters involved in storming the legislature have arrived in Taiwan to seek asylum with as many as 30 others planning to try soon. Taiwan's National Immigration Agency has reportedly not received any formal asylum applications though Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen had earlier said her administration would consider granting asylum to protesters based on humanitarian concerns.

Why it matters: Quite apart from the irony involved in seeking asylum in Taiwan, whose attempt to extradite someone from Hong Kong first sparked off the whole extradition bill saga, such a move drags Taiwan into a Hong Kong-China fight. It raises tensions between China and Taiwan at a time when the campaign for Taiwan's 2020 presidential election is heating up.

The report: Hong Kong protesters who stormed Legco seek asylum in Taiwan, Apple Daily says

The growing sex video scandal in Malaysia is crystallising factions in the largest party of the ruling coalition, with more and more party members now open declaring who they are casting their lot with. A day after 23 of the 64 members of the central leadership council chastised party president Anwar Ibrahim for saying party deputy president Azmin Ali should resign if he turns out to be one of the men in an explicit video, six of the party's state chiefs expressed their support for Mr Anwar.

The big picture: This entire saga looks to have done damage to both Mr Anwar and Mr Azmin - the two men who are said to be vying to be the next prime minister. Mr Anwar, who had been named as a successor to the current prime minister, will need to somehow reunite the party and dispel the impression that he was behind the efforts to take down Mr Azmin if he is to become an effective leader. With the fight having worsened every day this week, uniting this party looks like an impossible mission, regardless which contender prevails.

The circumstances surrounding yesterday's deadly fire at an animation studio in Kyoto - now Japan's deadliest mass attack in two decades - is slowly coming into focus today with accounts from eyewitnesses.

What we know: The blaze that killed 33 people and left another 10 in critical condition appears to be a planned attack. It started at around 10.30am local time. A 41-year-old man, identified as Shinji Aoba, reportedly doused the entrance of the Kyoto Animation headquarters with petrol and set it ablaze. An eyewitness said he was shouting something about how he had been plagiarised while being detained. Two cans, a rucksack and a trolley were found near the site and television footage showed what appeared to be five long knives laid on the ground outside the building.

Latest reports:

As the diplomatic and political row between South Korea and Japan over wartime labour continues to worsen, we wanted to see whether it was having any impact among ordinary Korean and Japanese. Did the people on both sides start to turn on each other and were calls for a boycott of goods actually being heeded. Our South Korea correspondent Chang May Choon and Japan Correspondent Walter Sim produces a pair of reports on what sentiments on the ground are like. They found that the impact has been different in both countries. While South Koreans are starting to buy more local goods, South Korean culture continues to be popular in Japan. Though a poll found that 70.7 per cent of Japanese supported trade curbs introduced by Tokyo, business in Japan's "korea town" have not reported a dent in earnings.

The special reports:

For the final item today, I thought we'd take a look at the popular new ageing app, FaceApp. While there are already dozens of apps that purport to make people look younger by applying filters that erase wrinkles, this one does quite the opposite. And it apparently does this quite well. The old-age filter produces quite believable pictures of people aged 50 years. It's been a hit online with many celebrities posting pictures of their old selves. Of course this would not be 2019 is there wasn't a sinister privacy angle to this. Because the app is made by a Russian-based company, there are now fears that it is a means for Russia to mine biometric data. FaceApp has rejected the idea that it is sending data to the Kremlin but US Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer is calling for a national security and privacy investigation.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi denied on Friday (July 19) that Iran had lost a drone in the Strait of Hormuz after the United States said that a US Navy ship had "destroyed" an Iranian drone.

Indonesia's Komodo Island, a popular tourist destination and home to the world's largest lizards, will be closed starting January next year. The year-long shutdown is intended for the environmental rehabilitation of the island and to improve the conservation efforts for the Komodo dragons, the tourism agency of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province where the island is located said on Thursday (July 18).

Singapore is returning $50.3 million to Malaysia seized in connection with a massive financial scandal that played a major role in the toppling of the corruption-plagued government of Najib Razak.

That's it for today. Look out tomorrow for our special report on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon mission and a deeper look at Malaysia's succession crisis on Sunday at straitstimes.com. Thanks for reading and have a good weekend. We'll be back on Monday.

Jeremy