Asian Legal Review

The Philippines’ top police chief who oversaw a bloody war on drugs that has killed thousands of Filipinos hinted on Monday at a possible run for the presidency.
Ronald Dela Rosa, a stocky, celebrity-like general nicknamed “Bato” (Rock), who retires in 2018, has flagged his political ambitions, saying he was open to running for the Senate.
But in a speech after a flag-raising ceremony at police headquarters, Dela Rosa for the first time publicly suggested he may have his…

A year of official mourning for Thailand’s late King Bhumibol Adulyadej drew to an end on Sunday after a lavish five-day funeral embroidered with pageantry and religious ritual.
Bhumibol, a beloved king who died last October aged 88, was cremated on Thursday after a day charged with emotion that brought Thailand to a standstill.
At his death he was the world’s longest serving monarch, striding over seven decades of Thailand’s turbulent modern history, to depart as the kingdom…

Military songs rang out across downtown Yangon on Sunday as tens of thousands rallied in defence of Myanmar’s army, an institution accused by the global community of driving Rohingya Muslims from the country.
More than 600,000 Rohingya are said to have fled western Rakhine state to Bangladesh since late August when raids by militants from the minority group were met by ruthless army “clearance operations”.
The United Nations has led global condemnation, calling the crackdown a…

China’s high-stakes Belt and Road project in Pakistan has sucked it into the vortex of a power struggle between Pakistan’s elected government and its military on the one hand and an increasingly bitter geopolitical row on the other as the United States and India join forces.
While pushing the US$62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in a massive vote of confidence in its “all-weather ally”, Chinese officials have quietly encouraged their Pakistani partners…

The Bangladesh government says it is planning to introduce voluntary sterilisation in its overcrowded Rohingya camps, where nearly a million refugees are said to be fighting for space, after efforts to encourage birth control failed.
More than 600,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh since a military crackdown in Myanmar in August triggered an exodus. The latest arrivals have joined hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled in earlier waves from Myanmar’s Rakhine state,…

MEPs have given their backing for final negotiations to begin on the wording of new EU laws on privacy and electronic communications.

Innovative financial technology (fintech) businesses in Hong Kong or Singapore are set to benefit from a new cooperation agreement that will help them expand their operations into the other jurisdiction.

When Cindy was 15, she saw a killing in front of her school in broad daylight. A group of gangsters got into a fight and the victim, a young man only slightly older than her, was stabbed to death. No one lifted a finger to help.
“It was gangster business, you didn’t interfere if you knew what was good for you”, she explains.
“By the time the police arrived, there was only a corpse.
“Moments like that make me remember what my mother told me: ‘Trust in Allah….

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s budget speech on Friday was supposed to be his chance to underscore the country’s resurgent economy and tout multibillion dollar pre-election goodies, but instead the show stealer was his snarky rejoinder to critics’ claims that he was “selling” the country off to China.
The premier – expected to dissolve parliament within months – started the widely anticipated speech in the legislature by light heartedly…

ANALYSIS: It is increasingly uncertain whether the proposed new Unified Patent Court (UPC) in Europe will come into operation in its current form.