Malaysia is scrambling to protect its assets as the descendants of the last sultan of the remote Philippine region of Sulu look to enforce a US$15 billion arbitration award in a dispute over a colonial-era land deal.
In 1878, two European colonists signed a deal with the sultan for the use of his territory in present-day Malaysia an agreement that independent Malaysia honored until 2013, paying the monarch’s descendants about US$1,000 per year.
Now, 144 years later after the original deal, Malaysia is on the hook for the second-largest arbitration award on record for stopping the payments after a bloody incursion
The Covid-19 pandemic and, subsequently, the Russia-Ukraine conflict have unleashed a crisis in the global electricity industry which has been hit by soaring prices of fossil fuels, namely coal, natural gas and petroleum