ASEAN News

Malaysia’s Parliament will be convened for only one day on May 18. A 10-week pushback from the original date (March 9), the May 18 seating has to happen for one reason. If not reconvened, the Parliament will stand dissolved by June 5, six months from Dec 5, 2019 when it was last in session. That’s the constitutional mechanism in Article …

Metro Manila – Veteran filmmaker and one of Philippine cinema’s greats died on Thursday morning. He was 76. Ricky Gallaga, his brother, told Visayan Star Daily that the award-winning director passed away at the Riverside Medical Center this morning due to “complications arising from past health conditions”. Peque Gallaga Movies: Magic Temple, Batang-X, Magic Kingdom and Oro Plata Mata Gallaga …

HO CHI MINH – Vietnam’s success in their fight against the coronavirus has been a significant factor to assess possible risks in business as foreign investments are shifting their business to Asian countries including Vietnam. According to global consultancy McLarty Associates managing partner Kellie Meiman Hock, the companies are evaluating how countries are managing and responding to the pandemic as …

MANILA – Solicitor-General Jose Calida said on Wednesday that Congress and not the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) should be blamed for the network’s shutdown. “Why blame NTC when they are only following the law?” Calida, the Solicitor General said in a statement to the media. “Without a valid and subsisting franchise from Congress, the NTC cannot allow any broadcasting entity …

To secure rice stocks, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has instructed to open new rice fields in Central Kalimantan. The target is that 900 thousand hectares (ha) of new rice fields will emerge. The plan was again discussed in a limited meeting that discussed foodstuffs today. There are already around 200 thousand hectares in Central Kalimantan ready to be used as …

PHNOM PENH – The Ministry of Health confirmed zero Covid-19 cases for 24 days in a row, keeping the national count at 122 since Monday evening, with no deaths. 51 Cambodians, 40 French, 13 Malaysians, 5 British, 3 Chinese, 3 Vietnamese, 2 Americans, 2 Indonesians, 2 Canadians, and one Belgian were among the recorded cases. No new recovered patient was …

METRO MANILA – ABS-CBN, the country’s largest broadcast network, has been ordered to stop broadcasting immediately after the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) issued a cease and desist order against the Lopez-led firm. The leading media network in the Philippines received a cease-and-desist order one day after the media giant’s broadcast franchise has been expired. Just before its main channel went …

Noting so far that the current governing coalition had not displayed true coherence, Everyone should have come together to prevent disunity, which was one of the big shortcomings of PH. In view of this, political observers have played down PPBM president Muhyiddin Yassin’s possibility of bringing the party back to Pakatan Harapan (PH), the alliance that he abandoned before joining …

The government has decided on a ban on homecoming or ‘mudik’ during the Covid-19 pandemic to prevent the spread of the virus from April 24 to May 31. The ban is for regions that have implemented large-scale social restrictions (PSBB), red zones of coronavirus spread, and agglomeration of PSBB. A number of vehicles that are found to be heading to …

Authorities on the Island of Koh Phangan in Southern Thailand have arrested 7 Russian tourists for violating the emergency decree. All 7 Russians were caught partying and drinking on Sunday night, police said. Acting on a complaint filed by local residents on Koh Phangan, police raided a house at Nai Wok village shortly after midnight. According to the Bangkok Post, neighbours …