Pro-democracy protesters challenging China’s rule of Hong Kong on Thursday choked the city for a fourth straight working day, firing arrows at police, barricading roads and disrupting transport links, as schools and businesses closed. The territory has entered its sixth month of protests, which have morphed from mass rallies into a “blossom everywhere” campaign of […]
by Shaun TANDON Uighur activists said Tuesday they have documented nearly 500 camps and prisons run by China to detain members of the ethnic group, alleging that Beijing could be holding far more than the commonly cited figure of one million people. The East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, a Washington-based group that seeks independence for […]
One of Hong Kong’s best-known charity events was cancelled Wednesday, organisers confirmed, as a result of increasingly violent pro-democracy demonstrations in the city. The 100-kilometre (62-mile) Oxfam Trailwalker, which stretches over the hills of the New Territories on the mainland side of the territory, had been due to go ahead on Friday, and usually draws […]
New Zealand lawmakers voted Wednesday in favour of making euthanasia legal, paving the way for the issue to be put to voters in a referendum next year. The law, enabling terminally ill people to request a medically assisted death was passed 69-51 at its final reading, ending years of passionate debate in parliament. Prime Minister […]
with Holly Robertson in Sydney Australians on Wednesday began sifting through the ashes of hundreds of bushfires that have ravaged the country, relieved that their worst fears were unrealised — but wary of a long and brutal summer ahead. Firefighters were still battling around 140 blazes across the country’s eastern seaboard, but a respite from […]
by Amal JAYASINGHE Police stepped up security across Sri Lanka on Wednesday over fears of violence on the final day of campaigning for the fiercely contested presidential election, officials said. Elite police commandos reinforced police as the two frontrunners in Saturday’s vote Sajith Premadasa and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa held rival rallies in and around Colombo. “There […]
An Australian tourist who fly-kicked a motorcyclist and assaulted a man in his own home during a drunken rampage was jailed for four months on Tuesday. The ruling comes after Nicholas Carr’s antics were caught in a viral video that saw him carry out a campaign of destruction in Seminyak, a popular tourist area on […]
More than 50 people, mostly children, were injured by a man who broke into a kindergarten in southwest China and sprayed them with corrosive liquid, local authorities said Tuesday. The suspect, a 23-year-old surnamed Kong, entered the kindergarten by climbing a wall before spraying victims with sodium hydroxide, said local authorities in Kaiyuan city, Yunnan […]
Hillary Clinton said Tuesday it was “shameful” that the British government had not published a delayed parliamentary report into possible Russian interference in British politics ahead of December elections. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has previously rejected claims it was suppressing the report to avoid a scandal ahead of next month’s snap poll. “Every person […]
