HONG KONG (NYTIMES) – Jian Liu has kept 60 rolls of film hidden from public view for three decades. He was a 20-year-old fashion design student in Beijing in the spring of 1989 when a student-led pro-democracy movement drew thousands of supporters to Tiananmen Square. Captivated by the spirit of the movement, he photographed the […]
TOKYO (BLOOMBERG) – Japan’s major opposition parties submitted a Bill on Monday (June 3) calling for same-sex marriage in the world’s third-biggest economy, a move that comes weeks after Taiwan became the first place in Asia to legalise gay marriage. The Bill is unlikely to go far in Parliament, where the conservative ruling Liberal Democratic […]
JAKARTA (DPA) – Mount Merapi by Indonesia’s cultural capital of Yogyakarta spewed ash columns up to 3,000 metres into the sky over the weekend, local media reported on Sunday (June 2). Indonesia’s Geological Disaster Research and Development Centre said that by Saturday the country’s most active volcano had emitted 72 ash columns from its crater […]
Four British climbers who were rescued from an expedition in the Himalayas have joined an aerial search to find eight fellow mountaineers. Two Indian air force helicopters are searching the mountains for the missing group, made up of four Britons, two Americans, an Australian and an Indian. The mountaineers began ascending Nanda Devi on 13 […]
TOKYO (Reuters) – The yen brushed a more than four-month high against the dollar on Monday and the Swiss franc rose as U.S. President Donald Trump’s hard stance on trade broadened to countries beyond China, stoking investor demand for safe-haven assets. With trade issues remaining front-and-centre, investor appetite for risk has been dampened by fears […]
Tens of thousands of Pashtuns are demanding an end to extrajudicial killings and abductions they blame on the Pakistani state – and a charismatic young man has become their spokesman. A compelling, bearded tribesman in his late 20s, Manzoor Pashteen is the unlikely figurehead for protests that have now mushroomed into a wider movement that […]
India is reeling from an intense heat wave with temperatures crossing 45C in many parts of the country. Churu, in the northern state of Rajasthan, is India’s hottest city – temperatures there soared to 50.8C on Sunday, the meteorological department said. It has put Rajasthan and the central state of Madhya Pradesh on alert for […]
SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Yong-chol, a former North Korean spymaster and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s counterpart in recent diplomatic contacts between the North and the United States, resurfaced in public this week, undermining a South Korean newspaper’s report that he was banished to forced labor in a re-education camp. The conservative Chosun Ilbo, […]
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – U.S. financial services firm Jefferies will join the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) as a remote member, the Israeli bourse said on Sunday. Jefferies will become the second remote member of the TASE along with Merrill Lynch International. A remote member does not have a permanent representation or branch in Israel. It […]
The US-China trade war starts to bite For months, the US-China trade war was, for many, a largely intellectual exercise – with effects that while threatening, were not yet concrete. Since the collapse of talks and seemingly hardening of positions from both economic powers in early May, the once vague effects are starting to become […]