Month: August 2018

A national minimum wage (NMW) back pay compliance scheme for care sector employers will continue to operate in its current form despite a recent court judgment on how staff should be compensated for overnight ‘sleep-in’ shifts.

Financial regulators in Singapore and Dubai have signed an agreement to work more closely together on fintech, including a mechanism which will allow each authority to refer innovative businesses to the other.

The Indonesian government has offered $13.2 billion worth of infrastructure projects to companies in China, holding a market-sounding event in Guangzhou of south China, attended by 90 potential investors.

Men are strictly banned at Femapalooza, a comedy show for Indian women where the punchlines range from breasts and bras to equal pay and censorship.
They are not allowed to attend, perform, or even check tickets at the most recent show at a New Delhi club.
For Femapalooza founder Jeeya Sethi, humour just for women is a way to make progress in deeply patriarchal India, where rape and gender bias are hot-button issues and women are widely expected to adhere to conservative stereotypes.
Sex, pork…

Throughout his 15-month incarceration and three-week espionage trial, Australian filmmaker James Ricketson has lived under appalling conditions, locked up in Cambodia’s notorious Prey Sar prison.
That stay was extended when after a bench of three judges found him guilty of spying for “foreign states” and sentenced him to six years behind bars.
It was the latest saga in an extraordinary era in Cambodian politics that culminated in Hun Sen winning all 125 seats in the National…

The High Court has discharged a $3 billion worldwide freezing order (WFO) granted in favour of the sovereign wealth fund of Angola due to “serious and substantial” breaches of its duty to provide full and frank disclosure of all material facts in the case.

A British court has ruled a man suspected of carrying out a rare bank robbery in Singapore can be extradited after the city state promised he will not be caned, officials said on Thursday.
The government in London will now make the final decision on whether David Roach, a Canadian citizen, will be sent to the city state to face justice, Singapore’s attorney general’s office and interior ministry said.
In a Singapore full of crazy rich foreigners, inequality is becoming ingrained…

As many as 85 villages were flooded in Myanmar after a dam failed, unleashing waters that blocked a major highway and forced more than 63,000 people from their homes, a state-run newspaper said on Thursday.
The disaster spotlights safety concerns about dams in Southeast Asia after last month’s collapse of a hydroelectric dam in neighbouring Laos that displaced thousands of people and killed at least 27.
Laos dam collapse: survivors tell devastating tales as blame shifts to government…

A controversial Malaysian former spy chief was remanded in custody on Wednesday over the alleged theft of funds intended to be used for May’s general election in May.
Hasanah Abdul Hamid, the former head of Malaysia’s External Intelligence Organisation, was an ally of former leader Najib Razak, who was unexpectedly ejected from office at the polls amid allegations he and his cronies stole huge sums of public money.
What Malaysia’s Mahathir really plans for China-backed…

Philippine authorities on Wednesday were hunting two men believed to have planted a bomb that killed two people, including a young girl, at a street festival in the nation’s south.
The blast late on Tuesday in the town of Isulan, which wounded 35 others, is the second bombing in less than in a month in the region where Islamist militants have waged a decades-long insurgency.
Chinese cash, American muscle, and Marawi’s discontents
A man left the improvised bomb in a bag near a…