Asian Legal Review

By TN Alagesh
The video of a man and his son literally putting their lives on the line by crossing a collapsed suspension bridge in Kuala Lipis in Malaysia to get the boy to his first day of school, has gone viral.
Several video clips, showing the boy and his father gingerly making their way across the side of the 85-metre metal bridge while clinging on to a cable, were posted on Facebook by the boy’s mother.
It is learnt that the boy was on his way to attend pre-school at Sekolah Batu…

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States has “foolishly” handed Pakistan more than US$33 billion in aid over the last 15 years while getting nothing in return and pledged to put a stop to it.
“They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
“The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing…

Police entered the Bangkok house of Thai rock star Sek Loso and eventually arrested him for firing several gunshots into the air and the ground in front of the statue of King Taksin the Great in Nakhon Si Thammarat. At first Sek – real name Seksan Sookpimay – remained in his locked bedroom on the second floor of the house. The 43-year-old spoke to a police team led by Metropolitan Police Bureau deputy commander Sompong Chingduang via Facebook Live and asked them to show a search warrant…

Australia rang in the new year on Sunday with a spectacular display of rainbow-coloured fireworks cascading from Sydney Harbour Bridge.
About 1.5 million people packed the city’s foreshore to watch the pyrotechnics light up the sky above the historic bridge and the iconic opera house, the first major celebrations worldwide after New Zealand. “This is a fabulous way to see out 2017 – the year that four out of five Sydneysiders said a resounding ‘Yes’ to marriage…

A government investigator probing the blaze that led to the deaths of 37 people at a southern Philippines shopping centre said there are signs of fire safety lapses that may have contributed to the tragedy.
The December 23 blaze in Davao City broke out at a furniture and fabric store on the third floor of a shopping centre, the New City Commercial Centre (NCCC), and then engulfed the offices of US firm Research Now SSI on the fourth floor in choking smoke.
The only person among the 38 killed in…

In the first month of Donald Trump’s presidency, an American scholar quietly met North Korean officials and relayed the message that the new administration in Washington appreciated an extended halt in the North’s nuclear and missile tests.
But the North Koreans responded by saying the nearly four-month period of quiet wasn’t a sign of conciliation and supreme leader Kim Jong-un would order tests whenever he wanted. As if to emphasise the point, two days later Pyongyang…

A grainy photo that has gone viral on social media shows fugitive former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra shopping in London, according to Thailand’s NewTV, which first ran the image.
If it is Yingluck, then it would be the first sighting of the former leader since she fled Thailand in August right before the verdict hearing in her corruption trial.
According to the Bangkok Post, the photo was enough to prompt the Thai government to investigate.
There have been reports over the…

Cambodians come to Hong Kong to meet the increasing demand for helpers
Cambodia on Wednesday sent its first batch of maids to work in Hong Kong, which is scrambling to meet growing demand for domestic helpers after a series of abuse scandals. Hong Kong is home to more than 300,000 foreign maids, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia. But high-profile cases of abuse and forced labour have made headlines in recent years and threatened to stem the tide of migrant helpers. Hong Kong has turned…

Singapore’s state-backed corporate heavyweights – collectively known as “Singapore Inc” – will face tough questions in 2018 on their commitment to the Lion City’s vaunted anti-corruption ethos, observers say, as a shocked public comes to grips with a graft scandal that has engulfed oil rig builder Keppel Corp. One political observer went as far as to describe 2017 as “annus horribilis” for the city state’s corporate sector. That sentiment…

One third of US citizens support military action in North Korea and 40 per cent want to see Japan and South Korea armed with nuclear missiles, a new survey has revealed.
The poll of US and Japanese citizens was conducted by Japanese think tank Genron NPO and the University of Maryland, and shows a substantial proportion of the US is prepared to go to war.
However, the peacemakers are just about winning out in America, with 44.2 per cent of US citizens saying they are opposed to military action…