Asian Legal Review

Roblox, a gaming platform popular with kids, announced Thursday that children under 16 in Indonesia will be required to undergo facial scans to verify their age to comply with new restrictions on minors’ use of social media and digital platforms in the country.
Nicky Jackson Colaco, Roblox’s vice-president and global head of public policy, announced the changes in a press conference in Jakarta, describing them among the strictest that the company has implemented anywhere in the world.
She said…

A viral appearance in the swimsuit round by a male beauty pageant contestant in the Philippines has sparked a wider debate about male beauty standards and whether pageantry is ready to make room for people who do not fit its traditional ideals.
RJ Perkins, 21, drew widespread attention after a video showed him strutting across an outdoor stage during the swimwear segment of Mister Pampanga, held in the province of Pampanga, north of Manila.
Unlike the chiselled bodies typically associated with…

A series of targeted relief measures are being rolled out in Qatar to support businesses amid the ongoing Middle East conflict.

The pace of tropical forest destruction slowed in 2025 after record losses the year before but remained at worrying levels equivalent to 11 football fields per minute, researchers said Wednesday.
The world lost 4.3 million hectares (10.6 million acres) of tropical primary rainforest last year, down 36 per cent from 2024, said researchers from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland.
“A drop of this scale in a single year is encouraging – it shows what decisive…

Perched on the bow of his long-tail fishing boat, 75-year-old Sukjai Yana untangled a handful of small fish from his net, disappointed by his catch and fretting over whether he can sell them.
Some days Sukjai earns nothing: demand for fish is falling due to worries over contamination of the Mekong River and its tributaries by toxic run-off from rare earth mines upstream that is threatening millions who rely on those waters for farms and fisheries.
Chiang Saen, a fishing hub in northern Thailand,…

All energy companies licensed to operate in Britain will be subject to “baseline” cybersecurity requirements – with higher standards imposed on the most ‘critical’ operators – under proposals set out by the UK government and energy regulator Ofgem.

Social media posts of Singapore politicians taking public transport amid the global energy crisis have divided public opinion online, with some users hailing the move as leading by example while others call it showmanship.
Cabinet ministers, members of parliament and even a retired defence minister have followed with their own public transport posts after Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong urged Singaporeans in an April 7 ministerial statement in parliament to take public transport as part of…

Jakarta’s move to press on with importing 150 million barrels of Russian oil despite latest EU sanctions against an Indonesian port underscores a growing divide between Western efforts to isolate Moscow and Asia’s push for energy security.
On Thursday, the European Commission announced its 20th package of sanctions against Russia, which includes Indonesia’s Karimun Oil Terminal for its “connections with the shadow fleet and circumvention of the oil price cap”.
The sanction on Karimun, located in…

UK and European sports organisations must be careful or risk falling foul of data protection rules as they adopt AI to help with player recruitment, experts have warned.

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…