It will be months before a verdict is reached in the corruption case brought against ex-Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is accused of siphoning money from a former unit of the state-owned 1MDB development fund. (He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.) But his arrest this week is more significant than many people outside the region may realize.

In the face of growing economic protectionism, undergirded by a trade tiff between the United States (US) and China, Southeast Asian economies are bracing for the impact from a possible economic fallout.

On 12 May this year, Timor-Leste held parliamentary elections for the second time in under a year. The elections saw the Alliance for Change and Progress (AMP), a coalition of three opposition parties win an absolute majority of 34 out of 65 seats in parliament. The elections were preceded by a political deadlock which lasted nearly a year. In the parliamentary elections in July last year, leftist party, FRETILIN narrowly emerged as the largest party in parliament.

Cambodia and China recently marked 60 years of the establishment of diplomatic relations with a grand gala dinner. Presiding over the event were Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Sen and Chinese ambassador to Cambodia, Xiong Bo. Both countries established formal diplomatic ties in July 1958 and have since elevated ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Cooperation in 2010.

Malaysian authorities have charged former leader Najib Razak with corruption and criminal breach of trust in connection with a multibillion-dollar scandal surrounding state fund 1MDB.Najib faces three counts of criminal breach of trust, which carry a punishment of up to 20 years in jail and whipping, along with a possible fine.

In May last year, two men were flogged 83 times in the Indonesian province of Aceh in front of a crowd of thousands. Their crime – being gay. The two men were apprehended a few months back for allegedly having same sex relations and a Sharia court later convicted them of sodomy. Aceh is the only Indonesian province to enforce strict Islamic law for criminal offences.

12 boys and their football coach trapped in a flooded Thai cave for nine days were found alive late Monday after a painstaking search by specialist divers who finally discovered the emaciated group on a mud embankment. There had been no contact with the boys, aged between 11 and 16, since they went missing with their 25-year-old coach on 23 June.

A pro-independence movement in Indonesia’s easternmost province of Papua is slowly simmering with recent attacks by armed assailants in the wake of gubernatorial elections in the country last Wednesday. Papua, was formerly a Dutch-controlled colony and had since been annexed by Indonesia in 1963. However, strong separationist sentiments still prevail on the Indonesian half of the island and the freshly concluded elections there served as a catalyst for this recent spate of violence.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s two years in office in the Philippines have been marred by controversy, but with one big success: a booming economy.

United States (US) intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has increased its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months, NBC reported, citing unidentified American officials.The NBC report quoted US officials who said they believe that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may try to hide those facilities as he seeks more concessions in nuclear talks with the Trump administration.NBC said the intelligence assessment, which had not previously been reporte