When the Coalition of Hope (Pakatan Harapan) unveiled its first ever budget as Malaysia’s new ruling coalition, one of the key points that caught the attention of Malaysians was the taxing of imported services, including online services.In November 2018 – when Malaysia’s 2019 budget was tabled – the country’s Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng revealed that the government would impose and remit a tax on online services such as software, music, video and digital advertising beginning January 2020.

Even with the positive growth observed in various sectors for ASEAN, it is not without controversy. Leaders in ASEAN have been grabbing headlines on a range of topics that go from publicly turning down president Trump to a genocide trial. The Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, has been rippling diplomatic tensions by criticising India’s treatment in Kashmir and its new citizenship law as well as upsetting Saudi Arabia by hosting the KL summit for Islamic leaders.

A Nepalese worker was killed Monday after he fell into a meat-mincing machine in Malaysia's Malacca state, an official confirmed.The Malacca fire department's Zulkhairani Ramli told the media the 47-year-old man was working at a meat-processing factory near Masjid Tanah when the incident occurred."The victim was doing maintenance with three other workers when suddenly the machine was turned on," he said."The machine caught him at his waist.

Malaysia is on the verge of fully entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) as embodied by digitalisation alongside adopting the 5G technology pioneered by Huawei.

The vice-president and managing director of Sage Asia, Arlene Wherrett, was recently reported to have said in an interview with Bernama that “Despite the high level of awareness on the importance of digital adaptation in businesses, small-medium enterprises (SMEs) are still complacent in moving up or upskilling their workforce to adopt automation”.

While Malaysia’s male politicians continue to squabble over power, all the women seem to be left with are breadcrumbs.Recently, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its 2020 Global Gender Gap Report. While it was unsurprising that Nordic countries like Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden were the top performers, some ASEAN countries like the Philippines – which managed to secure the 16th spot out of 153 countries – didn’t do too shabby either.

With Chile withdrawing from its role as this year’s host of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), attention is now shifted towards the 2020 Summit which will be hosted by Malaysia. Whilst APEC has been an integral part of Malaysia’s regional and international credential and status, there are other smaller groupings which deserve attention. One of these is the Group of Developing Eight (D-8).Even though the D-8 has been in existence for some 20 years, the “output gap”, i.e.

Picture this: You spend years studying for a degree. After graduating, naturally, you start looking for a job so you can be your own person and not have to rely on your parents anymore. There aren’t many jobs available at the moment but you apply for the ones that are and that suit you – a graduate – and your newly acquired qualifications. Months pass and you still find yourself unemployed, not earning a salary.

By now many people around the world would have heard of the tragic fate of Franco-Irish teenager Nora Anne Quoirin who went vacationing with her family to the Southeast Asian country of Malaysia.

The quest to develop 5G capabilities is increasingly becoming this generation’s space race, sparking tensions among its aspiring pioneers.