The General SOPs for areas undergoing the current Movement Control Order (MCO) have been updated. These updates include the number of passengers in a vehicle, movement for public and private operations and services, dining-in rulings, economic and business sectors allowed to operate, meetings, social activities and more.

States under the conditional and recovery movement control orders will be allowed to resume tourism, culture and arts activities, says Senior Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob. The Defence Minister said this means that attractions such as nature parks, museums and outdoor theme parks can welcome visitors and audiences once more but with strict standard operating procedures (SOPs) in place.

The Ministry of Human Resources has taken several initiatives in relation to employee accommodation compliance throughout the country to comprehensively and effectively control the transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of these initiatives is the drafting of the Emergency Ordinance (Minimum Standards on Housing, Accommodation and Employment Facilities) (Amendment) 2021 gazetted on 17 February 2021.

The Special Committee for Ensuring Access to COVID-19 Vaccine Supply (JKJAV), has outlined the strategy to ensure the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme runs smoothly, safely, effectively and in an orderly manner in the effort to curb and end the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia. A whole-of-Government and whole-of-society approach has been adopted, which involves numerous Ministries and Government Agencies, State Governments, NGOs, the private sectors and members of the community to ensure the programme achieves its target.

Businesses in Malaysia are looking forward to a resumption of business travel and enhanced workforce mobility following the implementation of the national COVID-19 Immunisation Programme, American Malaysian Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM) said.

Its Chief Executive Officer, Siobhan Das said an AMCHAM survey conducted earlier this month showed 42 per cent of the respondents needed more employees to return to the workplace.

The Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint, which will be launched today, aims to achieve 100 per cent household access to the internet. This will enable students to access online learning and create 500,000 new jobs by 2025. In 2019, only 90.1 per cent of all households had internet access and only 35.3 per cent households have access to fixed broadband in urban areas and even less in rural areas with only 11.7 per cent households having access to fixed broadband.

Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin today launched MyDigital — the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint. This blueprint depicts the global trends, state of Southeast Asia as a digital hub, why Malaysia should head towards a digital economy, Malaysia’s digital economy’s blueprint, initiatives and roadmap to achieve the target.

President Joe Biden’s nominee for U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, will get a confirmation hearing next week, a key step for the new administration to start rebuilding battered trade ties with U.S. allies. The Senate Finance Committee said in a statement on Thursday it had scheduled a 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) hearing for Tai on Feb. 25.

BMW Group Malaysia has taken the leadership position in the automotive premium segment in Malaysia, following its success with top-performing figures and customer satisfaction in 2020. In a statement today, the premium automaker said it rose above the challenges by introducing 25 model variants from across its three major brands -- BMW, MINI and BMW Motorrad -- in which four models were electrified vehicles (EV).

IBM announced plans to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to further its decades-long work to address the global climate crisis. The company will accomplish this goal by prioritising actual reductions in its emissions, energy efficiency efforts and increased clean energy use across the more than 175 countries where it operates.

The government has given conditional approvals for Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) to build and manage hyper-scale data centres as well as for the provision of hybrid cloud services. Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said the investments from these cloud service providers (CSPs) will total between RM12 billion and RM15 billion over the next five years.

In collaboration with the EU-funded programme WeEmpowerAsia of UN Women, LeadWomen is inviting Malaysian and Malaysian-based corporates to expand on their gender diversity efforts by joining the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs) Activators Malaysia Campaign. This will be the FINAL WEPs Awareness Training which will bring a wider consciousness of the WEPs and provide a toolkit to help identify your companies' strengths, gaps, and determine opportunities to improve their performance on gender equality, using the Gender Gap Analysis Tool.

Join the region’s largest AmCham event of 2021 from 9-11 March for a rare opportunity to engage with industry leaders and government representatives from the U.S. and across the Asia Pacific region.

All morning plenary sessions will be taking place virtually, with afternoon in-person industry breakout discussions for each of the 14 AmCham Committees to be held at Marina Bay Sands Singapore.

Purchase your virtual pass now. Tickets for the afternoon in-person events are pending government approval, and we will notify you once registration for the in-person tickets is live.

Before COVID-19, the largest disruptions to work involved new technologies and growing trade links. COVID-19 has, for the first time, elevated the importance of the physical dimension of work. In this research, we develop a novel way to quantify the proximity required in more than 800 occupations by grouping them into ten work arenas according to their proximity to coworkers and customers, the number of interpersonal interactions involved, and their on-site and indoor nature.