Asian Legal Review

A Chinese submarine has docked in Malaysia, the second such visit to the Southeast Asian country this year, as Western powers fret over China’s expanding reach in the South China Sea.
China claims nearly all of the disputed waterway, through which an estimated US$3 trillion in international trade passes each year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also have claims.
Tensions between China and Malaysia over their overlapping claims, however, appear to have eased after Kuala…

Twenty-four people, most of them students, were killed Thursday when a blaze tore through a Malaysian religious school, in what officials said was one of the country’s worst fire disasters for years.
The blaze broke out before dawn in the tahfiz – an Islamic religious school -in the heart of the capital Kuala Lumpur.
Firefighters rushed to the scene and the blaze was out within an hour but not before it wreaked terrible devastation.
Pictures in local media showed ash-covered, fire-…

A new ruling by the Court of Appeal has confirmed that it will not be as challenging for people to bring defamation claims before the courts in England and Wales under new defamation laws as many media organisations may have hoped, a specialist in media litigation has said.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has scrapped plans to attend the United Nations General Assembly later this month, her spokesman said Wednesday, as the Nobel laureate faces intense global scrutiny over the Rohingya refugee crisis.
“The state counsellor won’t attend the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly,” said government spokesman Zaw Htay, using Suu Kyi’s formal title.
The spokesman did not explain the decision but said the country’s vice-president…

Halimah Yacob, a former speaker of parliament, was declared elected as Singapore’s first woman president on Wednesday, after the returning officer announced she was the sole candidate to qualify for the contest.
Aiming to strengthen a sense of inclusivity in the multicultural city state, Singapore had decreed the presidency, a largely ceremonial post, would be reserved for candidates from the minority Malay community this time.
“Although this is a reserved election, I’m not a…

The main piece of legislation which will facilitate the UK’s exit from the EU has passed its first parliamentary test.

A South Korean child-monitoring smartphone app that was removed from the market in 2015 after it was found to be riddled with security flaws has been reissued under a new name and still puts children at risk, researchers said.
The app “Cyber Security Zone” is part of government efforts to curb what authorities consider excessive cellphone use by young people. Parents are required by law to install monitoring software on smartphones for all children 18 and under.
The app is almost…

As the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) turns 50 this year, the economic strides that have made the regional bloc the world’s seventh-largest economy will set it up for sustained growth, increased prosperity and exciting prospects for the next half century.
Technology, and how it will continue to change the way people live, work, shop, dine, travel and save, is perhaps one of the most fascinating advances in recent times, and one that presents vast opportunities ahead.
China…

Insurers will welcome government proposals to reform the way in which the ‘discount rate’ applied to lump sum personal injury payments is calculated following the dramatic change announced in February, an expert has said.

North Korea’s September 3 nuclear test was the country’s largest and prompted global outrage. The US is calling for an oil embargo on Pyongyang and assets freeze on leader Kim Jong-un.
What, when and where
■ The UN Security Council is set to vote on Monday afternoon (New York time) on a US-drafted resolution to impose new sanctions on North Korea. Last Tuesday, the US circulated a draft resolution proposing a ban on all oil and natural gas exports to the country and a freeze…