Asian Legal Review

ANALYSIS: Landowners and telecoms operators can expect the UK’s Electronic Communications Code (ECC) to be updated again in the coming months to support the government’s broadband ambitions, but can learn how the current ECC applies from two recent rulings.

Boeing issued a special bulletin on Wednesday addressing a sensor problem flagged by Indonesian safety officials investigating the crash of a Lion Air 737 that killed 189 people last week.
The planemaker said local aviation officials believed pilots may have been given wrong information by the plane’s automated systems before the fatal crash.
“The Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee has indicated that Lion Air flight 610 experienced erroneous input from one of its…

Australia’s concerns over internment camps in China’s far west, where rights groups say up to a million people are being held without charge, will be raised this week when the country’s foreign minister visits Beijing.
Marise Payne said on Tuesday she will register “serious concerns” over the huge facilities in Xinjiang, where activists say hundreds of thousands of Uygurs and other mainly Muslim minorities are detained in political re-education camps. The visit is…

ANALYSIS: There were thankfully few measures in the UK’s Budget extending the powers of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), but plenty targeting avoidance and ‘unfair outcomes’.

An Indonesian flight was grounded for an hour on Monday after passengers kicked up a stink about what was in the hold – dozens of sacks of durian, arguably the world’s smelliest fruit. Footage of the incident, uploaded to Facebook by a passenger named Amir Zidane, shows travellers milling around on the tarmac as aircrew unload the offending cargo, whose smell has been likened to rotten onions, turpentine and dirty gym socks. In the series of videos, which have since gone viral, a…

Thousands of Sri Lankans marched on Monday in support of a new government led by the country’s former strongman, highlighting the political polarisation in the Indian Ocean island nation.
The rally near parliament comes amid a constitutional crisis sparked by President Maithripala Sirisena’s move to oust prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, replace him with ex-leader Mahinda Rajapaksa and suspend parliament.
Wickremesinghe has refused to vacate his official residence, insisting he…

ANALYSIS: The Supreme Court has issued an important judgment on the interaction between the 1974 Athens Convention on carriage of passengers by sea and time bar provisions in Scottish domestic law.

The former chief minister of Sabah has become the latest high-ranking figure from Malaysia’s former ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional, to face corruption charges, in a sign the new government is expanding its anti-graft drive beyond the peninsula.
Musa Aman was on Monday charged with 35 counts of corruption for allegedly accepting bribes worth US$63 million in connection with timber concessions.
These dealings allegedly took place in Hong Kong and Singapore between 2004 – a…

The husband of a Pakistani Christian woman at the centre of a divisive blasphemy case has pleaded for international help to leave the country, saying he feared for his family’s safety.
The request by Asia Bibi’s husband Ashiq Masih came a day after he criticised a government deal with hardline Islamists that left her in legal limbo, and called on authorities to protect her.
Bibi – who had been on death row since 2010 on blasphemy charges – was acquitted by the Supreme…

Investigators succeeded in retrieving hours of data from a crashed Lion Air jet’s flight recorder as Indonesian authorities on Sunday extended the search at sea for victims and debris.
National Transportation Safety Committee deputy chairman Haryo Satmiko told a news conference that 69 hours of flight data was downloaded from the recorder including its fatal flight.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet crashed just minutes after take-off from Jakarta on October 29, killing all 189 people on board in…