Month: February 2022

Australia’s biggest coal-fired plant Eraring will close in 2025, seven years earlier than planned.

South Korea’s new daily Covid-19 cases topped 100,000 for the first time amid an Omicron outbreak, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said on Friday, though deaths have remained relatively low in the highly vaccinated country.Authorities announced on Friday they would slightly ease a curfew on businesses from 9pm to 10pm, but retain other measures such as a six-person cap on private gatherings, a seven-day quarantine for international arrivals, mask mandates in public spaces, and…

One of the Asia-Pacific’s longest-running military drills co-hosted by Thailand and the United States will take place from Sunday to March 5, but in scaled-down fashion given the spread of the Omicron Covid-19 variant.Some 3,460 personnel, about a third of the pre-pandemic figures, will take part in this year’s Cobra Gold, including 1,953 Thai troops and 1,296 Americans, it was announced at a Thai military press conference earlier this month joined by the US Chargé d’Affaires Michael Heath.Of…

For weeks, the intensifying backbiting within Malaysia’s Pakatan Harapan opposition alliance ahead of an impending state poll in Johor had supporters and analysts alike wondering if the event would mark the beginning of the end for the bloc.On social media and in media commentaries, lower-level lieutenants of the alliance’s three constituent parties sniped at each other over various issues, from seat allocations, the leadership of the bloc’s chief Anwar Ibrahim and the use of a common symbol…

A former Goldman Sachs partner testified on Wednesday that he and a colleague became “heroes” at the bank for bringing in billions in business from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, deals he said were cemented through bribes and kickbacks.Tim Leissner, the former chief of Goldman’s Southeast Asia operation, is a star witness in the criminal trial of Roger Ng, the bank’s former head of investment banking in Malaysia.Prosecutors have accused Ng, 49, of receiving millions of dollars in…

Built asset owners and construction companies must completely rework how construction procurement functions if they are to enjoy the productivity, efficiency, reliability and decarbonisation benefits of industrialised construction processes.

The Congress of the Philippines has ratified a bill to amend the Public Service Act (PSA) to allow up to 100% foreign ownership in the telecommunications, airlines and railways sectors.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to create land and sea connectivity via a global web of infrastructure projects that will facilitate the flow of people and goods. This vision of connectivity is shared by the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (Asean) states. It did not come from China alone.Asean countries themselves have ideas about connectivity. For instance, the idea of a pan-Asia railway did not originate from China but from Malaysia and Asean itself. Asean also has a master plan…

UK legislation has been updated to allow financial sanctions to be targeted at a greater number of businesses and individuals at short notice in response to the developing situation in Russia and Ukraine.

Philippine presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jnr said he wants his country to have a military presence in the South China Sea, “not to fire upon” vessels but to defend its waters in a long-running dispute with China.Marcos, son of the late autocrat of the same name, is leading in opinion polls ahead of the May 9 election and appears poised to complete a remarkable rebranding of the family name 36 years after a “people power” uprising ended his dictator father’s rule.In the first televised…