Beijing police detain the ex-boy band member after social media allegations of date rape
Chinese-Canadian pop star Kris Wu has been detained by Beijing police on suspicion of rape.
The 30-year-old former member of the Korean boyband EXO had previously been accused by a teenager of having sex with her while she was drunk. Wu denied the accusation.
Continue reading...The spiritual leader has mused that he may return as a woman. But his succession has turned into a political battle
A couple of years ago, during a meeting of Tibetan leaders in Dharamshala in India, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was asked about his reincarnation. Addressing the room of monks, religious teachers and Tibetan politicians, the Dalai Lama asked them to look into his eyes. “Do you think it’s time now?” he asked.
It was a meeting that would end with the Tibetan leaders agreeing that the issue of reincarnation was one that would be decided only by the Dalai Lama himself. But China, which annexed Tibet in 1951 and has retained tight control over the region ever since, has other ideas. It insists that the choice of the next Dalai Lama lies only with China, and have even enshrined this right into Chinese law.
Continue reading...Man allegedly also waved colonial-era flags while watching fencer Edgar Cheung’s medal ceremony at a mall
Hong Kong police have arrested a man on suspicion of insulting the national anthem, after he allegedly booed the Chinese national anthem while watching an Olympic event at a mall.
The 40-year-old man was detained on Friday after allegedly waving colonial-era Hong Kong flags and booing, while urging others to join him in insulting the song, according to a police statement posted on Facebook.
Continue reading...Samoa's first female prime minister Fiame Naomi Mata'afa in her first sit-down interview with foreign media since taking office this week says there was 'a lot of excitement' in the Pacific nation about her election among women and girls . She also opened up about Samoa's relationship with China, saying that while 'of course we know what's happening in the global context' with the US-China tensions Samoa needed to be 'very focused on how we navigate our way through international relations'.
Continue reading...Naval strike group is sailing through waters heavily contested between China and neighbouring countries
Britain has said it has no plans to stage a naval confrontation with China in the South China Sea and that it aims to send its carrier strike group in the most direct route across the contested body of water from Singapore to the Philippine Sea.
The cooling message emerged hours after China’s military and state media warned the UK against provocation as the group, led by Royal Navy aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, undertakes what had been expected to be a more assertive deployment.
Continue reading...Measures condemned by media and rights groups as attempt to shut down negative news reports
The Thai government has outlawed sharing news that “causes public fear”, even if such reports are true, as officials face mounting criticism over their handling of the pandemic.
On Thursday, the government tightened an emergency decree imposed more than a year ago that initially targeted false news. The latest constrictions forbid people from distributing “information causing public fear”, or from sharing “distorted information causing misunderstanding which affects national stability”.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Haiti to Pakistan
Continue reading...Proposed legislation would make it an offence to perform conversion practices on anyone aged under 18
New Zealand has introduced legislation to ban conversion practices, saying the practice is harmful and has “no place in modern New Zealand”.
Conversion therapy refers to the practice, often by religious groups, of trying to “cure” people of their sexuality, gender expression, or LGBTQI identity.
Continue reading...Analysis: Xi Jinping wants his country to appear more lovable, but critics say Beijing’s efforts are too superficial
China’s appointment of a new ambassador to the US has shone a light on the ongoing debate among analysts about how Beijing communicates with its biggest competitor, the future of its “wolf warrior” diplomacy and how Xi Jinping’s call to “tell a good China story” might work in practice.
The debate over the “wolf warrior” style – under which, as the Chinese ambassador to Sweden said on Swedish public radio in 2019, “we treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we have shotguns” – comes amid a burst of positive publicity that delighted Beijing’s propaganda officials: the foreign coverage of the herd of 15 wandering Asian elephants in southern China that captured the country’s imagination and led Chinese vloggers to travel hundreds of miles to take selfies with them.
Continue reading...Health experts say surge in cases amid Olympics could overload hospitals unless action taken
Health experts in Japan have warned that a recent surge in coronavirus cases in Tokyo, six days into the Olympics, could put hospitals under severe strain unless young people stop socialising at night and get vaccinated.
Tokyo reported 3,865 daily coronavirus cases on Thursday, up from 3,177 on Wednesday, as rising infections in the capital cast a shadow over the Olympics. Wednesday was the first time cases in Tokyo had exceeded 3,000 since the start of the pandemic.
Continue reading...Flights have reportedly been cancelled and checkpoints set up to verify travellers’ health status amid Delta
Health authorities in China have set up checkpoints and reportedly suspended flights in the eastern city of Nanjing in the country’s worst coronavirus emergency in months.
More than 170 people have been diagnosed with the Delta variant in the past 10 days. The main outbreak is centred on Nanjing, in Jiangsu province, but connected cases have reportedly been identified in Beijing and other provinces including Anhui, Liaoning, Sichuan and Guangdong.
Continue reading...Agricultural mogul Sun Dawu given 18-year sentence in case observers believe was politically motivated
Sun Dawu, a Chinese billionaire pig farmer and agricultural mogul, has been sentenced after weeks of hearings in secret to 18 years in prison and fined 3.11m yuan (£345,000) for a catalogue of crimes including “provoking trouble”, in a case observers believe was politically motivated.
The court in Gaobeidian, near Beijing, said Sun was guilty of crimes including “gathering a crowd to attack state organs”, “obstructing government administration” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a catch-all term often used against human rights figures and dissidents.
Continue reading...More than 100 patients have already been sent home as country faces its third and deadliest wave of coronavirus
Thailand has begun using sleeper trains to transport Covid patients out of Bangkok, where hospitals have been overwhelmed by a recent surge in cases.
The first train left the capital on Tuesday, transporting 137 patients who were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms to their home towns in the north-east of the country.
Continue reading...Pio Tikoduadua, president of the opposition National Federation Party, has won praise and followers with his faltering attempts to understand social media
A leading opposition MP from Fiji is delighting new social media followers with his wide-eyed discovery of Twitter, even as the country is experiencing heightened political tensions.
Pio Tikoduadua, who is the president of the National Federation Party, announced on Monday that while his Twitter account had been created a while ago, it had been run by his staff until now.
Continue reading...Ineos has been accused of using sports to ‘greenwash’ its reputation
New Zealand Rugby’s decision to sign a six-year deal with global petrochemical company Ineos has been criticised by Greenpeace, who said it fundamentally goes against the country’s “clean, green” values.
NZ Rugby announced the company will become the official performance partner for its seven teams from 2022. Ineos is a UK oil, gas and petrochemical conglomerate – the third largest company of its kind in the world. Its main shareholder is billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, and the company has lobbied to weaken green taxes and reduce restrictions on fracking.
Continue reading...Supporters fear Yidiresi Aishan will be extradited and say arrest is politically driven
Moroccan authorities have arrested a Uyghur activist in exile because of a Chinese terrorism warrant distributed by Interpol, according to information from Moroccan police and a rights group that tracks people detained by China.
Activists fear Yidiresi Aishan will be extradited to China and say the arrest is politically driven as part of a broader Chinese campaign to hunt down perceived dissidents outside its borders.
Continue reading...Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
A seductive encounter with past and present at the Olympic city shows that Tokyo practically invented modern art
Love hotels and cross-dressers make Tokyo’s nightlife eye-popping – and that’s just in 18th-century woodblock prints. The Ashmolean’s seductive overview of the Olympic city’s art sets these classics alongside images of contemporary Tokyo to create a thrilling and informative encounter with one of the world’s great art capitals.
Past and present meet for a sultry encounter in the night. A wall is lit up by Mika Ninagawa’s intensely coloured photos of blue- and pink-haired clubbers. They are so now – yet close by in the same gallery is a painted scroll from the 1600s that is just as provocative. It depicts the pleasure quarter of Edo, as Tokyo was then called, which became Japan’s capital when the Tokugawa shoguns united the country in the 17th century. It was famous for its pleasure quarter, “the floating world”, and the new art genre it inspired – ukiyo-e, “pictures of the floating world”. In the scroll, samurai warriors are seen visiting courtesans. But samurai were banned from the pleasure quarter so they wear straw hats pulled down to hide their faces. The comically phallic swords peeping out from their robes give them away.
Continue reading...Reporters from international outlets have suffered worsening intimidation while covering Henan floods
Press groups have expressed alarm at the worsening intimidation of foreign media in China, often driven by government officials and organisations.
As recovery and rescue efforts continue in Henan province after last week’s deadly floods, groups including Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) have condemned recent harassment and threats towards journalists covering the disaster.
Continue reading...Report says 10% increase in child poverty hit Māori and Pasifika children hardest
An additional 18,000 New Zealand children were pushed into poverty in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to new research, despite child welfare being one of prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s main concerns.
The Child Poverty Action Group – a group focused on eliminating poverty – put much of the increased poverty, inequity, homelessness and food insecurity down to government neglect as it created its policies during the pandemic.
Continue reading...Tong Ying-kit case seen as a departure from Hong Kong’s common law traditions, with accused denied bail and a jury trial
Three Hong Kong judges are expected to deliver a verdict on Tuesday in the first trial of a person charged under the national security law, a landmark case with implications on how the legislation reshapes the city’s common law traditions.
Former waiter Tong Ying-kit, 24, has pleaded not guilty to charges of terrorism and inciting secession, as well as an alternative charge of dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm. The acts he is accused of allegedly occurred on 1 July 2020 shortly after the law was enacted.
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