Health ministry gives green light to two-step treatment made by British pharmaceutical firm Linepharma
The abortion pill will become available in Japan for the first time after the health ministry approved a drug used to terminate early-stage pregnancies.
Abortion is legal in Japan up to 22 weeks, but consent is usually required from a spouse or partner, and until now a surgical procedure had been the only option.
Continue reading...Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones faces up to five years in jail after he allegedly assaulted a fisherman who required 50 stitches for his injuries
Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones says he was not himself and felt “almost possessed” during an alleged drunken naked rampage that led to his arrest on an Indonesian island.
The 23-year-old Australian faces up to five years in jail if convicted over the alleged incident on Thursday on Simeulue, within the conservative Aceh province off the coast of Sumatra.
Continue reading...Kim Yo-jong’s broadside came after US and South Korea enhance nuclear cooperation and Biden warns Pyongyang an attack would end the regime
The powerful sister of North Korea’s leader has said her country will stage more displays of military might in response to a new US-South Korean nuclear deterrence agreement and compared Joe Biden’s comments about it as a “nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage”.
Kim Yo-jong’s broadside came after Biden attended a summit with the South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, on Wednesday. The US president said later that any North Korean nuclear attack on the US or its allies would “result in the end of whatever regime” took such action.
Continue reading...Starkly different approaches to 2,100-mile line of actual control on show as defence ministers meet in Delhi
India’s defence minister has accused China of border aggressions that have “eroded the entire basis” of their relationship, as negotiations over the line of actual control (LAC) remain deadlocked.
On Thursday, China’s defence minister, Li Shangfu, landed in Delhi for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit. It is the first visit to India by a Chinese minister since 2020, when 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers died in clashes along the Himalayan border in Ladakh and the two sides came the closest to war for almost 70 years.
Continue reading...Prime minister Fumio Kishida says diversity in listed companies is key to ‘achieving new capitalism and an inclusive society’
Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has said he wants almost a third of executive positions at the country’s top companies to be occupied by women by the end of the decade.
In an apparent attempt to address Japan’s poor record on gender equality ahead of the G7 leaders’ summit in Hiroshima next month, Kishida said more boardroom diversity would boost the world’s third-biggest economy.
Continue reading...‘Twin-tailed scorpion’ drone that entered air defence identification zone is touted as being capable of high-altitude, long-range missions
A Chinese combat drone that state media says can carry a heavy weapons payload has flown around Taiwan, according to the island’s defence ministry.
The ministry said a TB-001 drone was one of 19 military aircraft that had entered the island’s air defence identification zone in 24 hours.
Continue reading...Record figures for month recorded in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, China and South Asia
Asia is experiencing weeks of “endless record heat”, with sweltering temperatures causing school closures and surges in energy use.
Record April temperatures have been recorded at monitoring stations across Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, as well as in China and South Asia.
Continue reading...The Chinese leader’s surprise contact with his Ukrainian counterpart is suspected to be a corrective move
A long-awaited phone call between Xi Jinping and Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been cautiously welcomed, but China analysts say the timing suggests it could be partly an act of damage control after controversial comments by China’s ambassador to France.
Ambassador Lu Shaye, one of China’s “wolf warrior” diplomats with a history of fiery remarks, caused outrage across Europe this week when he denied the sovereignty of former Soviet states, saying they “did not have effective status”. The comments were roundly condemned, with several European nations summoning Chinese envoys for rebuke, and politicians suggesting it demonstrated China’s untrustworthiness as a neutral party in the Ukraine war.
Continue reading...Pascal Soriot says decline in startups across Europe differs markedly from ‘explosion’ of firms and clinical trials in China
The boss of Britain’s biggest drugmaker has said that the UK and the rest of Europe are falling behind China and the US in the creation of biotech firms and clinical trials of new medicines.
Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca, said that while China had seen an “explosion of biotech companies”, and a “rapid expansion of clinical trials” that puts it ahead of the US, the UK and EU had posted declines.
Continue reading...Authorities can swoop over anything they deem relevant to national security in toughening of law already used against expatriates or Chinese contacts
China has drastically broadened its anti-espionage laws in amendments that legal experts warn could further heighten risk to foreign individuals and organisations operating in the country.
The amendments were passed by Beijing’s rubber-stamp parliament on Wednesday afternoon. The long-foreshadowed changes broaden the law’s scope to encompass anything deemed by authorities to cover national security, and expand the search and seizure powers of authorities, as well as the implementation of entry and exit bans on individuals.
Continue reading...Senior MPs say attendance of Han Zheng, accused of breaching Sino-British treaty with Hong Kong crackdown, would be insult
Senior Conservative MPs have labelled the expected attendance of China’s vice-president at King Charles’s coronation as “outrageous”.
Han Zheng, who was recently appointed as president Xi Jinping’s deputy, is expected to represent China at the May event, Politico reported.
Continue reading...Yoon Suk-yeol meets Joe Biden in Washington amid concerns in South over North’s nuclear buildup
The US and South Korea have reaffirmed their alliance, agreeing that nuclear-armed submarines would resume port visits and threatening a “swift, overwhelming and decisive response” to any North Korean nuclear attack, including retaliation in kind by the US.
The South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, said that response would include US nuclear weapons, making explicit an element of the alliance that normally remains unspoken.
Continue reading...News outlet obtains camera of Kenji Nagai, who was reporting on Saffron Revolution when he was shot
The family of a Japanese journalist killed while reporting on Myanmar’s 2007 Saffron Revolution have released his last pictures, sharing footage from a recently obtained video camera missing since his fatal shooting 15 years ago.
The final pictures from 50-year-old Kenji Nagai during an anti-government protest were obtained by Myanmar-focused news outlet the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), which returned the camera on Wednesday to Nagai’s family in Bangkok.
Continue reading...Growing number of social media users find using Korean American actor Ma Dong-seok’s image as avatar gets better response
Chinese social media users are turning to a Korean American action star for help in their daily lives, with a growing trend of swapping out their online avatar for Ma Dong-seok’s photo to get better responses from landlords and customer service agents.
In recent weeks a growing number of Chinese people have changed their profile photos to shots of Ma, who also goes by the name Don Lee and has starred in horror-action film Train to Busan and Marvel’s The Eternals, saying “it makes life easier”.
Continue reading...Freedom to use devices could curb prostitution, divorce and sex-related crimes, says Democrat party politician
A conservative Thai political party has backed the legalisation of sex toys as it seeks to revive its appeal before a looming general election.
The Democrat party representative Ratchada Thanadirek said sex toys were being smuggled into Thailand regardless of laws that prohibit their sale, and that the government was missing out on collecting taxes and regulating such products.
Continue reading...Hakuto-R may have miscalculated altitude, says company after losing contact with spacecraft
Japan’s ispace said its attempt to make the first private moon landing had failed after losing contact with its Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) lander when it unexpectedly accelerated and probably crashed on the lunar surface.
The startup said it was possible that as the lander approached the moon, its altitude measurement system had miscalculated the distance to the surface.
Continue reading...Europe accused of ‘neocolonialism’ for using vassal small island states to sway policy and continue ‘disgraceful plundering’ of distant waters
More than half of the EU’s delegation to a crucial body of tuna stock regulators is made up of fishing industry lobbyists, the Guardian’s Seascape project can reveal, as Europe is accused of “neocolonial” overfishing in the Indian Ocean.
The numbers could shed some light on why the EU recently objected to an agreement by African and Asian coastal nations to restrict harmful fish aggregating devices (FADs) that disproportionately harvest juvenile tuna. Stocks of yellowfin tuna are overfished in the Indian Ocean.
Continue reading...Japan’s criminal syndicates have increasingly targeted the marine animal which is considered an expensive delicacy
Police in Japan have arrested several people for allegedly poaching a huge haul of sea cucumbers – an unsightly but expensive delicacy that has attracted the attention of the country’s crime syndicates.
The five men were arrested for stealing more than 600kg of the marine creates in seas off Fukuoka, south-east Japan, in what local media are calling one of the largest sea cucumber-poaching incidents since the echinoderms achieved coveted status among criminals several years ago.
Continue reading...Tangaraju Suppiah was hanged despite international pleas to reconsider capital punishment for drugs offences
Singapore has hanged a prisoner for conspiracy to smuggle one kilogram of cannabis, authorities said, ignoring international protests and concerns that he lacked full access to a lawyer or interpreter.
The United Nations Human Rights Office had called for Singapore to “urgently reconsider” the hanging and British tycoon Richard Branson had urged the city state halt it.
Continue reading...Meeting will bring together leaders of the US, India, Japan and Australia at the Sydney Opera House
The Sydney Opera House will be the focus of a major security operation when the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, welcomes the US president, Joe Biden and the prime ministers of India and Japan for a key diplomatic event.
Albanese said on Wednesday that “Australia’s most recognisable building” would be the venue for the Quad leaders’ summit on 24 May.
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