Asian Legal Review

Tucked away in a refurbished factory building in southwest Singapore, Shopback’s headquarters houses only 50 people, just a quarter of its workforce. The affiliate marketing firm may only have a fraction of the employees that giants like Facebook and Google have, but Shopback has big dreams – to offer businesses a more efficient way of reaching their customers. In Southeast Asia, Shopback has gained traction thanks to its cashback app, with more than 8 million users and 2,000 merchants. When…

When Ahn So-young was 27, her parents became concerned about her all-consuming commitment to a fringe church group called Shincheonji. They enrolled her in a counselling programme to help her break her attachment to the group. Ahn became so dejected she tried to kill herself by swallowing soap and shampoo.Anh had been a member of Shincheonji for five years. She spent all her time with the group, even handing out surveys at university to attract potential new members, and eventually quit her…

The setting should have been one of pure, unadulterated, luxury – walking down from my poolside room at one of my favourite hotels, the Goodwood Park in Singapore, dropping my towel and slipping into the pool to swim lazy laps surrounded by tropical plants. Instead, the air was thick with a smoky haze and the hotel was deserted. This was June 2013, when millions of hectares of Sumatran forest were ablaze in the annual “slash and burn” to clear land for palm oil plantations.In Singapore,…

The International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) and the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA) have teamed up to produce a standard form contract and guidelines for underground construction work.

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has published a framework designed to help US and foreign businesses develop a sanctions compliance programme (SCP).

Former South Korean president Park Geun-hye was predicted to have good ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but less so with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. And South Korea should have reached the semi-finals at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, instead of being eliminated in the group stages. Why? Because South Korea is “tree” and Brazil is “water” by nature, according to the traditional Chinese philosophy of Wu Xing, which uses the interaction of elements to explain and predict everything…

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Friday rejected allegations the city state’s new law to combat fake news is aimed at stifling free speech, following criticism from rights groups and tech giants.The legislation, approved by parliament last week, gives government ministers powers to order social media sites such as Facebook to put warnings next to posts authorities deem to be false, and in extreme cases get them taken down.If an action is judged to be malicious and damaging to…

Former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke, one of the nation’s longest serving premiers, died on Thursday just days ahead of a federal election, the opposition Labor party said.Hawke, 89, served from 1983 to 1991 as the country’s 23rd prime minister.“With his passing, the labour movement salutes our greatest son … and Australians everywhere remember and honour a man who gave so much to the country and people he cared for so deeply,” Labor leader Bill Shorten said in a statement.Hawke was noted…

A Myanmar army general accused of masterminding genocide against the country’s Muslim Rohingya people has had his Twitter account suspended, following complaints about him using the social media platform for hate speech.Min Aung Hlaing, the Southeast Asian country’s top-ranking general, had his @sgminaunghlaing account taken offline this week.The move against the commander-in-chief, who claims his army did not use “excessive force” when about 700,000 Rohingyas fled Myanmar in 2017, was hailed…

ANALYSIS: Organisations managing over $350 billion in assets have signed up to the new operating principles for impact management (12 page / 308KB PDF), drawn up by World Bank subsidiary the International Finance Corporation (IFC).