Asian Legal Review

The trial of four men charged with murder over the July 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 began on Monday in The Hague. The defendants did not show up in court but the sombre proceedings were watched by family members of the 298 victims who perished when the plane was shot down over eastern Ukraine.“As you can see, none of the four defendants has complied with the summons by the Public Prosecution Service to appear in court today,” said public prosecutor Ward Ferdinandusse.After the…

North Korea has fired three projectiles, Seoul’s military said Monday, a week after it launched what the South said appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles.Three devices were fired eastward over the sea from the Sondok area in South Hamgyong province, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.“The military is monitoring for additional launches and maintaining readiness,” it added.Monday’s launch was the North’s second weapons test in a week.After last week’s launch the…

Singapore on Sunday confirmed 12 new cases of the coronavirus, taking the total number of infections in the city state to 150.Nine of the new cases are linked to a private dinner at a function centre near Jurong Central Park on February 15. There now 30 cases linked to this cluster.Of the three other new cases, one is linked to a previous case, one is imported and one is currently unlinked, the Ministry of Health said.“Further epidemiological investigations and contact tracing have uncovered…

A man in his 80s died in a Sydney hospital after testing positive to COVID-19, becoming the third coronavirus-related casualty in Australia, state health authorities said on Sunday.The total number of coronavirus cases has topped 70 in Australia with state and federal health authorities fretting over the risk of more widespread community transmission.The outbreak has killed more than 3,400 people worldwide, spreading across more than 90 nations outside China.New South Wales Health said in a…

Malaysia on Saturday reported 10 new cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing the total number of infections to 93, as it turned away a cruise ship from a port in northern Penang state.Health director general Noor Hisham Abdullah said all of the cases had been identified and the patients were currently under treatment.“All the new cases recorded today are due to close contact with Case 33, where four cases, which are cases 85, 86, 87, and 93, were first-generation close contacts with Case 33,”…

Japan’s domestic tourism industry is facing a major test of whether it can withstand the ravages of the novel coronavirus, with the country’s two major airlines cancelling hundreds of domestic flights and the travel sector as a whole feeling the pinch as leisure and business travellers alike increasingly choose to stay at home rather than risk contracting the disease. On a daily basis, 35,000 foreign nationals entered Japan in February, compared with 85,000 a year ago. Japan Airlines said it…

Facebook said on Friday it was shutting its London office and part of its Singapore base for “deep cleaning” after an employee in the Asian city state was diagnosed with coronavirus.A staff member working at the US technology giant’s Marina One office in Singapore was on Friday diagnosed with Covid-19, a spokesman said.“We have immediately closed the affected areas for deep cleaning and advised employees based in the affected area to work from home until March 13,” he said in an emailed…

The global march of the new virus triggered a vigorous appeal from the World Health Organisation on Thursday for governments to pull out “all the stops” to slow the epidemic, as it drained colour from India’s spring festivities, closed Bethlehem’s Nativity Church and blocked Italians from visiting elderly relatives in nursing homes.As China, after many arduous weeks, appeared to be winning its epic, costly battle against the new virus, the fight was revving up in newly affected areas of the…

Serena Somsack said she did not know what she and her six children would do if her family was broken apart by deportation. Somsack, 32, a US citizen, would lose her husband. Her children would lose their father.“It would just be a tremendous loss for [any] of the families to lose a mum or a dad,” Serena Somsack said.Since taking office, US President Donald Trump has aggressively pursued deportations.In 2018, the Trump administration sanctioned Laos to pressure the Southeast Asian country to…

Japan has far more at stake than its athletes picking up medals in the upcoming Tokyo Olympic Games and Paralympics, which explains the government’s single-minded commitment to going ahead with the event in the face of the threat posed by the novel coronavirus.The Japanese government on Wednesday morning reiterated that the Games would go ahead in July as scheduled, with chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga declaring that preparations were continuing despite the spread of the virus worldwide…