Asian Legal Review

The European Commission has fined Scania €881 million after concluding that it broke EU antitrust rules.

Vanuatu on Thursday ordered the compulsory evacuation of an entire island where a huge volcano rumbled to life over the weekend, threatening a major eruption.
All 11,000 people on the island of Ambae – in the Pacific archipelago’s north – will be evacuated by October 6, Prime Minister Charlot Salwai’s office said.
Vanuatu’s National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) said it was the first time in living memory that an island’s entire population had been moved…

The leader of Thailand’s military junta said on Thursday that Yingluck Shinawatra, the prime minister he ousted three years ago, was in Dubai, having fled there last month to avoid being jailed over a rice subsidy scheme that lost billions of dollars.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the army chief who led the coup, said Thailand would pursue Yingluck through diplomatic channels and police cooperation using Interpol.
His remarks came a day after a court found Yingluck guilty of criminal…

New funding worth £5 million will be made available to support oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, the UK government has announced.

Popular Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike on Wednesday vowed a break with old-school politics as she officially launched a new party she hopes will shake up the upcoming snap election in Japan.
Pledging to bring back “hope” to the Japanese people, Koike said the party aimed to “reset” the country, which is expected to go to the polls on October 22.
“Now is the time for us to carry out reforms that are un-tied to” vested interests, she told a nationally televised…

By Teoh Pei-ying A 27-year-old Malaysian woman died in Istanbul on Monday from suspected spider bite. This was confirmed by the management of IBC Tours Corporation Sdn Bhd, which was in charge of the victim’s trip to Turkey. The deceased Noor Azmeera Sahudin was on a holiday to Turkey with her family members from September 16 to Sept 24 when she was admitted to a hospital in Istanbul. IBC Tours Corporation Sdn Bhd director Mohammad Rizal Narusuddin said she was bitten on her…

ANALYSIS: Changes to industrial relations law mean trade unions are facing a very different legal landscape from the ‘winter of discontent’ 40 years ago, despite recent threats of illegal strike action over public sector pay.

US President Donald Trump will host Thai junta chief Prayuth Chan-ocha at the White House next Tuesday, in a personal coup for a Thai autocrat who was shunned by Barack Obama’s administration for his regime’s poor rights record.
Ties between the long-time allies were strained by Prayuth’s 2014 coup, which ushered in Thailand’s most authoritarian government in a generation.
But Trump’s administration has started to reset relations with the junta government. Since he…

Myanmar’s UN ambassador insisted on Monday that there is no “ethnic cleansing” or genocide taking place against Muslims and objected “in the strongest terms” to countries that used those words to describe the situation in Rakhine State.
Hau Do Suan used his “right of reply” at the end of the six-day gathering of world leaders at the General Assembly to respond to what he called “irresponsible remarks” and “unsubstantiated allegations…

The Labour Party has promised to introduce a cap on credit card interest payments should it come back into power, saying it will apply the same rules for credit cards as for payday loans.