Asian Legal Review

More than 200 people living near a Tokyo base of the main successor to the Aum Shinrikyo cult took to the streets on Saturday demanding the group disbands, with the execution of its guru and a number of former disciples seemingly imminent.
The residents marched around the Adachi Ward compound owned by Aleph, led by Adachi Mayor Yayoi Kondo who held a banner saying, “Absolutely against Aum.”
The demonstration was planned to coincide with the recent 23rd anniversary of the 1995 sarin…

Young orangutan Utu clings to one of his rescuers after he is freed from the wooden box that has been his home for five years.
The tiny primate, covered in fuzzy auburn hair, is one of three Bornean orangutans saved in Indonesia over the past two weeks.
Environmentalists and local officials rescued Utu and another youngster, Joy, from tiny cages where they were kept as house pets in West Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. A third orangutan named Tomang was moved from a village in the same…

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has set out its intention to take a more aggressive approach to enforcement, while developing closer links between its supervisory and enforcement functions.

Brexit negotiators have reached agreement on “a large part” of the arrangements that will govern the UK’s “orderly withdrawal” from the EU, both sides have announced.

Multi-employer ‘master trust’ pension schemes now have sufficient detail to prepare for the new authorisation and supervision regime following the latest publication by the government, an expert has said.

Residents startled awake by loud noise and smoke signalled for help with lit mobile phones and crawled onto cranes from their balconies to escape a fire early on Friday at a large condominium complex in southern Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City. At least 13 people were killed and 28 injured, with police saying it was unclear whether anyone was missing.
State media quoted the city’s police and fire service as saying police rescued more than 100 people while more than 1,000 escaped the fire…

Malaysia’s veteran former leader Mahathir Mohamad said on Friday that missing flight MH370 might have been taken over remotely in a bid to foil a hijack, reviving one of the many conspiracy theories surrounding its disappearance.
The Malaysia Airlines plane disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people – mostly from China – on board while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. No sign of the Boeing 777 jet was found in a vast search of the southern Indian Ocean and the Australian…

Internet giants Facebook and Google on Thursday testified before a parliamentary committee in Singapore as they warned the city state against introducing new laws to combat “fake news”, saying that existing legislation is adequate to address the problem.
Their warnings were made to a parliamentary committee which is examining possible measures, including legislation, to tackle false online information which the government says could threaten national security.
Executives from…

A Malaysian police investigator said on Thursday the absence of four North Korean suspects believed to have orchestrated the killing of their leader’s half-brother didn’t cause prejudice against the two women who are on trial.
Defence lawyers say Doan Thi Huong of Vietnam and Siti Aisyah of Indonesia are scapegoats in the death of Kim Jong-nam at Kuala Lumpur’s airport on February 13 last year. Prosecutors say four North Korean suspects recruited the women and provided them…

The employer under a standard form construction contract is not under an absolute obligation to obtain planning permission or conservation consent before the works can go ahead, the Court of Appeal has ruled.