Asian Legal Review

The first civil penalty imposed by an Australian court for serious breaches of the Privacy Act should be a strong reminder for businesses to prioritise the privacy and security of personal information.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that his country’s ties with North Korea were developing “as planned”, as he hosted North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui in the Kremlin.
Choe passed on “warm wishes” from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un after she had earlier hailed the “spiritual closeness” between Moscow and Pyongyang during a meeting with her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.
The visit is the latest in a flurry of diplomatic exchanges between the two countries and comes just…

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged Myanmar’s junta to focus on increasing aid to its struggling people instead of holding an election, which he said would be neither free nor fair.
Myanmar’s junta has been widely pilloried for pressing on with the election starting this December, while it continues to bomb civilians in a civil war that has killed thousands and displaced more than 3.5 million people.
Guterres, who was in Kuala Lumpur for a summit between the UN and…

Nepal’s Prime Minister Sushila Karki on Sunday expanded her interim cabinet which was formed in the wake of a youth-led uprising last month, inducting two ministers seen as popular among young people.
The unrest on September 8-9 was triggered by a brief ban on social media but fuelled by long-standing frustration over economic hardship and corruption.
Violence during the protests, which led to the collapse of the previous government, killed at least 73 people and left parliament, courts and…

The United States and Vietnam will finalise a trade agreement in the coming weeks that will maintain 20 per cent tariffs on most Vietnamese goods but lift duties on certain products that will be decided at a later stage, the White House said on Sunday.
In return Vietnam committed to offering “preferential access” for most all US goods.
The two countries have agreed to a framework for the agreement on “reciprocal, fair and balanced” trade between the two nations, the countries said in a joint…

For two years, Malaysian conservationists tracked a tiger named “Bulan” as she raised four cubs. Then a fatal traffic accident made her another statistic in the country’s dwindling population.
Malaysia’s national animal is in trouble.
Poaching, food loss and diminishing habitat have slashed the population from 3,000 in the 1950s to less than 150 roaming free today, according to official estimates.
The government said last month it was ramping up efforts to combat wildlife crime, introducing…

SteelAsia Manufacturing Corp. said it was ordered by the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute to take custody of 23 cargo containers allegedly containing radioactive zinc dust and rejected by Indonesia, adding it had no connection with the shipments.
The Philippine steel company said it was tagged as the source of the radioactive materials by PNRI, and ordered to entomb the containers in its Calaca scrap recycling plant in Batangas province, according to a statement on Saturday.
“The containers…

India trialled cloud seeding over its smog-filled capital for the first time, spraying a chemical from an aeroplane to encourage rain and wash deadly particles out of the air.
Cloud seeding is the practice of using aeroplanes to fire salt or other chemicals into clouds to induce rain.
New Delhi city authorities, working with the government’s Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, launched a test run on Thursday afternoon using a Cessna light aeroplane over the city’s northern Burari area.
“A…

A new scheme to make court case documents in England more publicly accessible, previously expected to begin this month, will now come into force in January 2026, allowing parties to litigation and their legal advisers more time to prepare, an expert has said.