Category Archives: Asia Pacific

‘Stand By Her’: China university students campaign to end period shaming

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Free sanitary pad dispensers installed on campuses in effort to counter ‘stigma of menstruation’ in the country

Chinese students have launched a program setting up free sanitary pad dispensers in toilets at universities across the country in a bid to end period shaming of young women.

“Sanitary pad support boxes” have been set up in almost 250 campuses following a campaign on social media by an advocacy group called Stand By Her. Those who take from the period support boxes are encouraged to help replenish its stock later.

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Russia and China silence speaks volumes as leaders congratulate Biden

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Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping stay silent while Iran waits to see how US will compensate for Trump sanctions

Most world leaders rushed to congratulate Joe Biden on his election, but Russia and China, two likely losers from the defeat of Donald Trump, remained silent, perhaps waiting for the outgoing president to concede defeat.

The president of the Maldives, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, is thought to be the first to have congratulated Biden, tweeting his welcome within 24 minutes of the US networks declaring Biden victorious. By contrast, Vladimir Putin, accused of collusion in Trump’s 2016 victory, and Xi Jinping kept their counsel.

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Joe Biden’s move to net zero emissions will leave Australia in the (coal) dust | Bill Hare

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Australia will be increasingly isolated as the US joins the club of countries, including China, with ambitious mid-century goals

The election of Joe Biden to the White House is likely to see Australia increasingly isolated as the world heads to net zero emissions, with quite fundamental implications for our economy.

Let’s have a look at what has happened in the last two months.

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What will President Biden’s United States look like to the rest of the world? | Timothy Garton Ash

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The future of a diminished superpower now lies in being part of a wider network of democracies

What is the best the world can now hope for from the United States under President Joe Biden, now that the election has been called for him? My answer: that the US will be a leading country in a post-hegemonic network of democracies.

Yes, that’s a, not the leading country. Quite a contrast to the beginning of this century, when the “hyperpower” US seemed to bestride the globe like a colossus. The downsizing has two causes: the US’s decline, and others’ rise. Even if Biden had won a landslide victory and the Democrats controlled the Senate, the United States’ power in the world would be much diminished. President Donald Trump has done untold damage to its international reputation. His disastrous record on handling Covid confirmed a widespread sense of a society with deep structural problems, from healthcare, race and infrastructure to media-fuelled hyper-polarisation and a dysfunctional political system.

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US removes shadowy group from terror list blamed by China for attacks

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State department says ‘no credible’ evidence the East Turkestan Islamic Movement exists

The United States has removed from its list of terror groups a shadowy faction regularly blamed by China to justify its harsh crackdown in the Muslim-majority Xinjiang region.

In a notice in the Federal Register, which publishes new US laws and rules, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said on Friday he was revoking the designation of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as a “terrorist organization.”

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Hong Kong informers’ hotline receives 2,500 tip-offs within hours

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Citizens urged to report suspected breaches of controversial security law

Hong Kong police have received more than 2,500 tip-offs since the launch of a hotline for people to report suspected breaches of the city’s sweeping national security law.

The multi-platform hotline, which opened on Thursday, allows Hong Kongers to report information directly to national security police via text message, email, or WeChat.

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Gimme shell-ter: Thai hermit crabs face housing crisis

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Population of crustaceans at one national park has exploded amid drop in tourist numbers

Hermit crab numbers in southern Thailand have boomed as foreign tourists have stayed away – so much so that the national park authority are appealing for the public to donate extra shells for them to live in.

The population of the crustaceans, which protect themselves by wearing and living inside the discarded shells of other animals, has exploded on some islands in the Mu Koh Lanta national park, and marine biologists believe the lack of tourists could be a factor.

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Japan to help cover IVF costs in attempt to avert demographic crisis

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Birth rate remains stubbornly low despite series of government initiatives encouraging couples to have bigger families

Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has given hope to couples struggling to conceive with a pledge to cover expensive fertility treatments with health insurance, but experts warn the change will do little to avert a demographic crisis.

Suga, who took office in September, identified depopulation as a major challenge for Japan during his campaign to succeed Shinzo Abe as PM and repeated his determination to tackle the low birth rate during his first policy speech in parliament.

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Vanuatu faces economic hurdles as natural disaster recovery continues – video

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Vanuatu is ranked by the World Bank as the world’s most at-risk nation to natural disasters. Over the last five years, the South Pacific nation has endured two major volcanic events and two category 5 cyclones including Cyclone Harold in April 2020. While it has escaped infection from the Covid-19 pandemic, the loss of tourism has left a devastating impact on the local economy

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Chinese-Australian community leader charged under Australia’s new foreign interference laws

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High profile figure Sunny Duong the first person to be charged under 2018 laws as relations between China and Australia deteriorate

A Chinese-Australian community figure who was pictured with federal minister Alan Tudge donating $30,000 in Covid-19 relief to a Melbourne hospital in June has become the first person charged with a foreign interference offence.

Di Sanh Duong, known as Sunny, appeared before the Melbourne magistrates court on Thursday charged with preparing for a foreign interference offence.

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Jacinda Ardern must use her mandate to tackle child poverty | Max Rashbrooke

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Covid has set back the PM’s modest progress on childhood hardship, meaning greater policy ambition is needed

As the New Zealand First party’s vote share evaporated on election day, so too did Jacinda Ardern’s last excuse for not making more progress on child poverty, her signature issue.

No longer able to blame inaction on her one-time conservative coalition partner, and possessing an absolute majority, the Labour leader now has a free hand on an issue dear to her heart. She may have labelled climate change her “nuclear-free moment”, referencing the 1980s Labour government’s famous opposition to nuclear weapons, but it is child poverty reduction, not climate change, that she has always taken as her “extra” portfolio.

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North Korea bans smoking in public places to safeguard ‘hygienic living’

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Measure comes despite more than 43% of the country’s male population being smokers, including leader Kim Jong-un

North Korea’s supreme people’s assembly has introduced smoking bans in some public places to provide citizens with “hygienic living environments”, state media KCNA reported.

The tobacco-prohibition law aims to protect the lives and health of North Koreans by tightening the legal and social controls on the production and sale of cigarettes, KCNA on Thursday quoted the legislature as saying.

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PNG police chief raises fears officers may have been raping women inside station

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New provincial commander says he is concerned by allegations of rape and sexual assault by officers in Alotau Town

Two policemen have been charged with rape allegedly committed inside a police station in Alotau Town, in Papua New Guinea’s south-east, but the city’s most senior officer said he fears others sexual assaults may have been committed by police, with victims too afraid to report attacks.

“I can honestly say that this practice may have been going on for a while,” Milne Bay provincial police commander Peter Barkie told the Guardian. “I’ve heard about it but since taking office I can only confirm two [alleged] cases, who were charged during my time.”

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Canada makes plan to evacuate its citizens from Hong Kong

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Consul general in territory says contingency arrangements in place to bring 300,000 home

Canada has drawn up plans to evacuate hundreds of thousands of its citizens from Hong Kong if necessary, but officials have cautioned they can do little for pro-democracy activists seeking refuge from the Chinese authorities.

Jeff Nankivell, Canada’s consul general in Hong Kong and Macao, told a parliamentary committee the federal government had drafted plans to assist nearly 300,000 Canadians living in in the territory if the security situation deteriorated.

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China changes school curriculum to reflect Beijing’s positive Covid narrative

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Content added to classes will say the state ‘aways put the life and safety of its people first’

Chinese government-endorsed content about the pandemic and the “fighting spirit” of the country’s response will be added to school curriculum, the country’s ministry of education has said, in a move to enshrine the country’s narrative of success against the virus.

The content will be added to elementary and middle school classes in biology, health and physical education, history, and literature, and will “help students understand the basic fact that the Party and the state always put the life and safety of its people first”, the ministry said on Wednesday.

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Tsai Chin: ‘What was it like being in bed with Sean Connery? Fine’

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From Bond girl to badass grandmas, Tsai Chin has had an extraordinary career. She talks about her battles with racism, predatory producers – and farting leopards

‘I have lived on my own since 1963,” says Tsai Chin down the phone from her home in Los Angeles. “It doesn’t mean I haven’t had a sex life.” But it does mean that the 88-year-old actor brings something special to her latest role as a beguilingly irascible, chain-smoking widow who faces down triad thugs over stolen money in the comedy Lucky Grandma. Apart from the smoking, Grandma Wong is my new role model.

“I’m tough but my heart is very soft,” she says. And that is the key to Grandma Wong, a woman who projects to the world the opposite of what she is inside. In the film, she has a shrine to her late husband in her meagre Chinatown apartment in New York. She’s alone and impoverished but isn’t quite ready to give up her independence and move in with her sweet if bougie son in his brownstone.

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New Zealanders coming home for Christmas warned quarantine hotels may be full

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Military says Kiwis will be disappointed if they haven’t prebooked a place as hotels approach capacity

New Zealand’s quarantine hotels are approaching capacity as the military warns there may not be room to house Kiwis planning to return home for Christmas.

Some 65,000 people have passed through New Zealand’s quarantine hotels since the borders closed in mid-March. Despite the facilities generally being four- and five-star establishments, there have been multiple escape attempts from them, and they have been denounced by a conservative US television host as “Covid camps”.

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Australia’s economic dependency on China ‘will not change’, says former ambassador to Beijing

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Geoff Raby argues the suggestion Australia can turn to other markets is ‘nothing other than wishful thinking’

Australia is likely to keep suffering economic harm from “repeated rounds of Chinese economic coercion” and needs to find a way to reset the relationship, a former ambassador to Beijing has warned.

Seafood exporters are the latest industry group to report disruptions in accessing the Chinese market and Geoff Raby, the Australian ambassador to China from 2007 to 2011, said Australia needed China more than the other way around.

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Rotten river: life on one of the world’s most polluted waterways – photo essay

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Indonesia’s Citarum is relied upon by millions, but decades of pollution have choked it with chemicals and rubbish

  • Words and pictures by Andrea Carrubba in Dayeuhkolot

The smell is the first thing that hits you on the banks of the Citarum River in West Java, Indonesia. The odour is dense: rubbish rotting in hot sun mixed in with an acrid tone of chemical waste.

Some 9 million people live in close contact with the river, where levels of faecal coliform bacteria are more than 5,000 times mandatory limits, according to the findings of the Asian Development Bank in 2013.

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Voting opens in New Zealand’s beloved Bird of the Year competition

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What started 15 years ago as a modest promotion to draw attention to native birds, many of which are endangered, has become a phenomenon

Normally on a post test-match Monday in New Zealand, the talk is all about the national rugby team’s latest performance. But this week, while the All Blacks’ destruction of the Wallabies was on everyones’ lips, there was another topic of conversation: birds.

Voting began on Monday in the hotly contested and brutal election of New Zealand’s Bird Of The Year.

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