Month: February 2019

The political party that stunned Thailand with its now-vetoed nomination of King Maha Vajiralongkorn’s sister as its prime ministerial candidate has resumed campaigning following a temporary suspension, with its leaders putting up a defiant front ahead of a court ruling over the contentious move.Chaturon Chaisang, one of the Thai Raksa Chart party’s top leaders, said this week that he and his colleagues would continue to campaign as usual until the Constitutional Court decides their fate. The…

Trade bodies considering drawing up new codes of conduct to govern data privacy practices in their sector will be required to meet admissibility requirements before those codes will be assessed for their compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a data protection watchdog has said.

At least 56 people have died in a huge fire that tore through residential buildings also used as chemical warehouses in an old part of the Bangladeshi capital, a fire official said on Thursday.Dozens of people were trapped in the buildings, unable to escape onto narrow streets clogged with traffic, as the highly-combustible stores of chemicals, body sprays and plastic granules erupted in flames.Bangladesh’s fire service chief Ali Ahmed said the death toll was expected to rise. “The number of…

The American at the centre of Singapore’s HIV data leak scandal ran education-related businesses in Hong Kong, charging as much as HK$8,000 for each assessment of a child with special needs, the South China Morning Post has found.Mikhy Farrera Brochez, 34, who claimed to be a child prodigy and used fake credentials to obtain teaching jobs in at least two tertiary education institutions in Singapore, is listed on the website of a Hong Kong centre called Guia Education as its executive director…

The European Medicines Agency (EMA), which has relocated to Amsterdam as a result of the UK’s vote to leave the European Union (EU), cannot use Brexit as a reason to break its multi-million pound lease in Canary Wharf, the High Court has ruled.

Slash defence spending and end conscription? Such proposals from Thailand’s leading anti-junta political party have had the country’s citizens cooing in agreement ahead of the first elections since a 2014 coup, but some industry analysts say the drastic policy move will be hard to implement amid a military spending binge among the kingdom’s neighbours.Another stumbling block, they say, is the fierce opposition likely to come from the influential pro-military establishment that will stay in…

Malaysia is making progress in talks with China to revive a high-speed rail project that Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s government said it would cancel, according to Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah.China is willing to reduce the US$20 billion price tag for the East Coast Rail Link project and talks are “in the last mile,” Saifuddin said in an interview on Tuesday at his office near Kuala Lumpur. Discussions have been led by Daim Zainuddin, an adviser to Mahathir, with the aim of reaching…

The regulation of telecoms markets in the UK needs to be “flexible” and “forward-looking” to account for the convergence of fixed and mobile networks, the government has said.

In January, thousands of North Korean students travelled to Mount Paektu, a sacred mountain where the ruling family claims its roots and where leader Kim Jong-un is building a massive economic hub at the alpine town of Samjiyon.It is one of the largest construction initiatives Kim has launched, part of his campaign for a “self-reliant economy” even as he seeks to convince US President Donald Trump to lift economic sanctions at their second summit later this month.State media painted an…

ANALYSIS: It is highly likely that the EU’s highest court will be asked to consider the legality of radio stream ripping services in future after their compatibility with copyright rules was assessed recently in two cases in Germany.