Asia

by Jerome TAYLOR / Jasmine LEUNG Hong Kong’s embattled leader abandoned a State of the Union-style speech on Wednesday after she was heckled by rowdy opposition lawmakers during chaotic scenes inside the city’s legislature. The speech by chief executive Carrie Lam was billed as an attempt to win hearts and minds after four months of […]

New pictures of Kim Jong Un riding a white horse through a winter landscape to the summit of Mount Paektu, a sacred peak for North Koreans, have fuelled speculation that the young leader may be set for a major policy announcement. The images released by the official KCNA news agency were accompanied by a gushing […]

Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday hit back at a US senator who said the city is becoming a police state, a day after a massive rally called on Washington to punish Beijing over sliding freedoms in the international hub. The territory has been battered by more than four months of pro-democracy protests — and increasingly […]

by Fiachra GIBBONS Once upon a time in children’s television land frogs were kissed but princesses only ever married princes. Now Prince Charming might just as easily ride off into the sunset with another man, as happens in the hit new Hulu cartoon series, “The Bravest Knight”, while the Disney Channel has just had its […]

A heart-broken pedicab driver could not take it anymore and killed a rival who was dating his lover, a woman whose husband lives in Kalimantan. 38-year-old, Budiono fell in love with Puji who has no children from her legal husband, but Puji was also dating Antok Aman who is 14-years younger than her. Antok’s full name […]

South Korea’s Navy is considering acquiring nuclear-powered submarines, it said Thursday in a surprise announcement which would change the balance of power in north-east Asia and is likely to upset several of its neighbours. Seoul is surrounded by three nuclear powers — China, Russia, and North Korea, which invaded its neighbour in 1950 — while […]

by Agnes Anya A suspected IS radical stabbed Indonesia’s chief security minister as he was exiting a vehicle Thursday, leaving two deep wounds in his stomach and injuring three others in an assassination attempt on one of the country’s most powerful political figures. Television images showed security officers wrestling a man and woman to the […]

A university lecturer from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture has been accused of financing a plot to petrol bomb Chinese-owned shops in Jakarta to spark a looting spree in Jakarta amid students rioting in the capital city last month. He was arrested on September 28 for the illegal possession of what was believed to be […]

by Jasmine Leung and Yan Zhao From doing homework by torchlight to hurling flaming molotov cocktails at riot police: the character of Hong Kong’s protests has changed dramatically in five years, with young demonstrators hardened by the failure of their peaceful Umbrella Movement. Then-student Bunny was one of thousands of Hong Kongers who camped out […]

The US is to blacklist 28 Chinese entities that it says are implicated in rights violations and abuses targeting Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region, the commerce department announced. The United States “cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China,” Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said, […]

by Dan Martin China on Tuesday pulled NBA exhibition games from television screens as the league faced an escalating punishment campaign in the lucrative Chinese market ignited by an American basketball executive’s pro-democracy tweet. However the National Basketball Association faced a counter-attack in the United States, where presidential candidates and influential senators accused it of […]

Sri Lanka’s election commission on Monday agreed to let the brother of former strongman Mahinda Rajapakse stand in the country’s presidential election, despite a string of corruption cases against him. Gotabhaya Rajapakse is frontrunner in the campaign for the November 16 election, even though his bid is widely seen as a front to get Mahinda, […]

by Jerome TAYLOR / Pak YIU Hong Kong’s government may censor the internet in a bid to contain months of increasingly violent pro-democracy protests, a cabinet member said Monday, after an emergency-law ban on demonstrators wearing face masks failed to quell the unrest. The warning came as the international financial hub remained partly paralysed from three […]

by Jerome TAYLOR The majority of Hong Kong’s subway stations remained closed Sunday as the city braced for more protests with pro-democracy activists vowing to hit the streets and opposition lawmakers trying to overturn a face mask ban. Thousands of protesters staged unsanctioned marches and flashmob protests at multiple locations on Saturday, a day after […]

Many high-profile names, among them women artists, are now in the Indonesian Parliament or DPR which also has another first – a woman as chairperson. This is not the only first in Puan Maharani’s appointment. She is also the daughter of former President Megawati Sukarnoputri and the appointment further consolidates her family’s grip on Indonesian politics. With this appointment, […]