Asian Legal Review

India and New Zealand on Monday signed a free-trade agreement to deepen economic ties and expand market access, as both countries navigate mounting global trade disruptions.
The deal comes as New Delhi moves to diversify export markets to offset the impact of steep tariffs imposed by the United States and instability in shipping and energy routes due to the Iran war. For New Zealand, the agreement is part of a broader push to reduce reliance on China, its largest trading partner.
The agreement…

Sweeping new rules by Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) in its updated exchange services rulebook, governing the trading of derivatives linked to virtual assets, marks a significant evolution of Dubai’s virtual asset regulatory regime following the successful rollout of a virtual asset derivatives pilot programme, according to experts.

A French teenager has been charged with mischief and public nuisance in Singapore for licking a straw and putting it back in an orange juice vending machine, court documents showed on Monday.
Didier Gaspard Owen Maximilien, 18, allegedly filmed himself “licking a straw and placing it back at the vending machine”, uploaded the video on Instagram knowing that it “would or would probably cause annoyance to the public”, according to the documents.
The teenager is studying in Singapore, according to…

Two US citizens were among 19 people killed in a raid on an alleged communist stronghold in the Philippines that has sparked a probe by the country’s rights commission, a government task force said.
More than 300 residents in the Toboso municipality of Negros Island fled their homes on April 19 as gunfire rang out in the remote sugar cane-farming region, the municipal disaster management office told reporters last week.
The number of people killed in the firefight, in which only one soldier was…

Watch a cheap commercial drone destroy a battle tank on the frontlines in Ukraine, or a cut-price Iranian Shahed menace Tel Aviv, then ask yourself why Southeast Asia’s defence ministries are suddenly very interested in unmanned aerial vehicles.
The answer was on full display last week at the Defence Services Asia (DSA) exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, where vendors from Abu Dhabi to Pretoria were chasing deals in one of the global arms trade’s hottest emerging markets.
“There is huge demand from the…

Hundreds of firefighters were battling wildfires in the forests of northern Japan on Saturday, as authorities urged more than 3,200 people to evacuate their homes, government officials said.
As of Saturday morning, blazes in the mountainous areas of Iwate region had burned about 700 hectares (1,730 acres) since breaking out three days ago, local government officials said in a statement.
A large column of smoke, which could be smelled 30km (20 miles) away, was seen rising up the valley near the…

Malaysia on Saturday appointed a former judge as its new anti-corruption chief in an unprecedented move, as the government seeks to calm months of political turbulence over alleged misconduct linked to the watchdog’s outgoing head.
Allies and opponents have hit out against Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim since February following reports claiming that Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) boss Azam Baki was involved in a share ownership scandal and the agency’s officers were allegedly working…

Australian mining giant BHP’s decision to adopt a yuan-denominated index for a major Chinese buyer poses a challenge to the US dollar’s long-standing dominance in iron ore pricing, delivering a hard-won victory for Beijing, analysts said.
But while the agreement marked a breakthrough in Beijing’s push to gain greater commodity pricing power at a time when the United States faces growing “geopolitical isolation”, analysts stressed that its broader efforts to reshape the old order remained far…

Firms operating in the UAE’s financial services market should welcome plans for the development of a single rulebook governing a range of regulated financial services, experts have said.

A suspected Chinese underwater drone hauled out of Indonesian waters this month has sharpened global focus on a security race that analysts say has been years in the making across South and Southeast Asia: undersea surveillance.
The torpedo-shaped device was found near the Lombok Strait, one of the few deepwater channels through which submarines can transit submerged between the Pacific and Indian oceans and a passage closely watched by the United States and Australia.
Beijing said it did not…