Asian Legal Review

Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission has launched a consultation on a new code of practice which will give employees the right to disconnect outside normal working hours.

Malaysian politician Tengku Adnan Mansor has been found guilty of graft, two weeks after a separate corruption trial involving the member of parliament was halted following a prosecutor’s call for a discharge not amounting to acquittal.The Monday verdict came just days after Malaysia’s hotly debated 2021 budget was narrowly passed, raising questions as to whether Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s slim two-vote parliamentary majority will now be further weakened.Tengku Adnan was on Monday…

Manila teenager Rose Alvarez was 13 when she started having sex with a man who was more than twice her age. That would be statutory rape in most countries, but not in the Philippines.The Catholic-majority country has one of the lowest ages of consent in the world, allowing adults to legally have sex with children as young as 12. Congress now looks set to approve a bill to raise the age to 16.Children’s rights activists have lobbied for decades to increase the age – enshrined in the penal code…

It’s another day at work for M. Veeralakshmi, whose name means “the brave girl”. Siren and red lights flashing, the 29-year-old expertly navigates her ambulance through the crowded streets of Chennai, India, to pick up a patient. She is the state of Tamil Nadu’s first female ambulance driver. Veeralakshmi, a commerce graduate, learned by observing her husband, who is a driver, and was given vocational training by ANEW, a women’s welfare association in Chennai which trains and helps…

Scientists in protective clothing work in a hi-tech laboratory at a pharmaceutical plant in Singapore, whose coronavirus-hit economy has received a shot in the arm from robust global drug demand.The city state is on course for its worst ever recession this year but factory activity has held up, thanks partly to countries rushing to stockpile medicines during the pandemic.The nation just half the size of Los Angeles has become a centre for drug makers and is home to more than 50 factories, owned…

From genital warts to masturbation, taboo-breaking Singaporean podcaster Nicole Lim tackles topics that may make some squirm but has won a following in socially conservative Asian societies.With her series Something Private, she has tapped into a growing appetite for more open discussion about sensitive issues affecting women in the city state and beyond.It has featured interviews on subjects ranging from domestic violence to disabled women’s dating experiences and intimate relationships…

He is not the first reality television star to fall from grace and is unlikely to be the last, but when the young celebrity Islamic “preacher” Syed Shah Iqmal was charged with rape, unnatural sex and outraging the modesty of one of his female followers, it seemed like half of Malaysia had an opinion.Syed Shah Iqmal Syed Mohammad Shaiful, 25, more commonly known as Da’i (a term for those who invite people into the religion), had grown immensely popular following his stint in the show Da’i…

A recent decision by the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) for England and Wales clarifies an operator’s unrestricted right to share and upgrade equipment on a site, according to experts at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.

The UK government must be careful not to drive British consumers to unregulated gambling markets by imposing overly strict constraints on regulated providers of online gambling services, experts in gambling licensing and regulation have said.

Plans for how the UK energy system will support the transition to a ‘net zero’ economy, shift from fossil fuels and decarbonise the power sector have been published by the government.