Category Archives: Asia Pacific

Nursing homes win over Shanghai feng shui nimbys with baking lessons

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Pushback against China’s initiative to build 200 homes sparks creative response

Kang Jian Shouchang Fang nursing home in Shanghai has gone to considerable lengths to placate neighbours who wish it had never been built in the first place – laying on baking lessons, lectures on staying healthy and monthly meetings with neighbourhood representatives. Other such homes offer yoga and play areas for children.

Shanghai, like many Chinese cities, is facing a rapidly ageing population and few facilities to care for elderly people. But in recent years, it has also become the scene of a wave of “nimby” (not-in-my-backyard) protests pushing back against a government initiative to build 200 new community nursing homes by 2020.

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Hot blob: vast patch of warm water off New Zealand coast puzzles scientists

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Area of water in the Pacific Ocean is 6C hotter than normal, possibly due to a lack of wind in the region

A spike in water temperature of up to 6C above average across a massive patch of ocean east of New Zealand is likely to have been caused by an “anti-cyclone” weather system, a leading scientist says.

Appearing on heat maps as a deep red blob, the patch spans at least a million square kilometres – an area nearly 1.5 times the size of Texas, or four times larger than New Zealand – in the Pacific Ocean.

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Reasons to be fearful – the international news review of 2019

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This year world leaders struggled to manage the fallout from the erratic tenant in the White House – as China flexed its imperial muscles. We look back at the events that created the most turbulence

Click here for 2019’s reasons to be cheerful

A year of high anxiety was rendered more alarming by intensifying clashes of interest between world powers. As international cooperation declined, and nationalist agendas gathered strength, China, the US, Russia and Europe, and their respective allies, emulators and proxies, engaged in often dangerous competition.

The Chinese communist regime’s increasingly assertive behaviour at home and abroad, reflecting the authoritarian outlook of its paramount leader-for-life, Xi Jinping, produced head-on collisions with western countries, notably over Hong Kong, trade, technology and the repression of the Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang.

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Typhoon Phanfone: at least 16 killed in Philippines on Christmas Day

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Toll could rise as internet and mobile phone networks are still cut off in some badly damaged areas

A typhoon that swept across remote villages and popular tourist areas of the central Philippines on Christmas Day claimed at least 16 lives, authorities have said.

Typhoon Phanfone, with winds of 195km (120 miles) an hour, tore roofs off houses and toppled electric posts as it cut across the Philippines on Wednesday.

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Philippines typhoon brings Christmas Day misery

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People stranded in evacuation centres and at ports as Typhoon Phanfone passes over string of islands

Typhoon Phanfone has pummelled the central Philippines on Christmas Day, bringing a wet and miserable holiday season to millions. Thousands were stranded at shuttered ports or evacuation centres while others sheltered in rain-soaked homes as Phanfone crossed from one island to another for the second day.

The typhoon toppled houses and trees and blacked out cities in the Philippines’ most storm-prone region. More than 10,000 people spent the night in schools, gyms and government buildings hastily converted into evacuation centres as the typhoon made landfall on Tuesday, civil defence officials said.

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Indonesian bus crash: death toll rises to 28

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Thirteen other passengers injured after vehicle plunged into a ravine on winding road in South Sumatra

The number of people killed when a bus plunged into a ravine on Indonesia’s Sumatra island has risen to 28, police and rescuers have said, with 13 others injured.

The accident occurred just before midnight on Monday on a winding road in South Sumatra province’s Pagar Alam district when the bus’s brakes apparently malfunctioned.

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Stranded British woman resumes holiday after missing wheelchair part found

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Gemma Quinn, who is paralysed, can continue trip across Asia after Emirates finds part of her custom-built chair it lost

A woman who was left stranded in Singapore after part of her wheelchair was lost while travelling with Emirates from Manchester airport can now continue her holiday after the part was found.

Gemma Quinn, 35, who was paralysed from the neck down in a car accident as a child in 1992, booked a 19-day trip across Asia with her two carers at a cost of more than £15,000.

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Violent clashes in Hong Kong on Christmas Eve – video

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Police clashed violently with pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong after they stormed Harbour City mall in Tsim Sha Tsui on Christmas Eve.

Batons and pepper spray were used against thousands of demonstrators inside the shopping centre and on the streets as people inside the malls threw umbrellas and other objects at police.

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Hong Kong police fire teargas to disperse Christmas Eve protests

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Hundreds of officers guard main roads as thousands of shoppers and tourists look on

Hong Kong riot police fired rounds of teargas at thousands of anti-government protesters, many wearing masks and reindeer horns, after scuffles in shopping centres and a tourist district on Christmas Eve.

Demonstrators inside the malls threw umbrellas and other objects at police who responded by beating some with batons; one pointed his gun at the crowd, but did not fire.

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Star Wars: lesbian kiss cut from The Rise of Skywalker in Singapore

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Disney removes clip to avoid censor giving film higher age rating

A scene showing a lesbian kiss has been cut from the Singaporean version of the Star Wars film The Rise of Skywalker.

The country’s media regulatory body said Disney removed the clip to avoid the film being given a higher age rating. It is PG13, which means parental guidance is advised for children under 13.

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Single woman sues Chinese hospital for refusal to freeze eggs

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Teresa Xu says doctor told her to hurry up and get married before having children

At the end of last year, Teresa Xu visited a hospital in Beijing to discuss options for freezing her eggs. The doctor said she could not help Xu, a single woman, because it went against regulations. Then she gave the 31-year-old some sisterly advice: hurry up, get married and have children now.

Xu was shocked and disappointed. “I had no way to express my anger,” she said. She felt like she was being treated like a wayward child. “Like I was an intruder, delaying other couples … like my demands were too much. I felt powerless and depressed.”

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New Zealand would be honoured to take Behrouz Boochani. Australia be damned | Morgan Godfery

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The moral case for the former Manus island detainee becoming a citizen is as simple as ‘asylum is a human right’

I wonder if it winds up Peter Dutton to know that Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish-Iranian journalist, award-winning author and former Manus Island detainee, is a free man in the continent’s orbit. Boochani, the best-known witness, critic and victim of Australia’s offshore “processing centres”, remains in New Zealand after his 30-day visa came to an end. No one quite knows what the No Friend But the Mountains author is planning next, but it seems safe to assume that sooner or later he’ll lodge an application for asylum in New Zealand. A permanent reminder to Dutton, his predecessors and the country’s immigration detention system that they are not as close to vanishing the “boat people” problem as they might have thought.

For their part New Zealand’s policymakers fear as much with headlines suggesting if Boochani’s hypothetical asylum application is successful it could “fuel tensions with Australia”. The problem is Behrouz Boochani, New Zealander, would enjoy free movement between his new home and his old incarcerators, unless Dutton and the gang insert new exceptions in the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement. This is the “back door” the Coalition government in Canberra is so afraid of, and the political problem preventing Scott Morrison from taking up Jacinda Ardern’s invitation to resettle the last remaining detainees on Manus.

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Fight to become Japan’s gyoza capital gently simmers

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Utsunomiya’s culinary obsession with dumplings dates back to the end of the war, but the city has a new rival

Pan-fried, deep-fried or simmered in boiling water, the humble gyoza is venerated in Japan, but nowhere more so than in Utsunomiya, whose residents have the tiny parcels of pork and cabbage to thank for rescuing their city from obscurity.

The city of just over half a million, 60 miles (100km) north of Tokyo, has built an entire tourist industry around its association with the dumplings, drawing 9 million visitors a year with the sole purpose of eating Utsunomiya’s contribution to Japanese cuisine.

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Sonny Bill Williams follows Mesut Özil in support of Uighur ethnic group

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  • Williams risks backlash from China with his political tweet
  • ‘Sad time when we choose economic benefits over humanity’

Sonny Bill Williams has tweeted his support of the minority Uighur ethnic group, mirroring the stance of football star Mesut Özil which drew an angry response from China. Cross-code star Williams may further provoke Chinese officialdom with his social media post, which denounces the treatment of Uighurs.

In his tweet on Monday, Williams echoed the belief of Arsenal playmaker Özil, who is also a practising Muslim, that more countries should speak out against China’s reported actions of detaining Uighur people in “re-education camps”.

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New Zealand volcano eruption: death toll rises to 19

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Police said on Monday that another person died at an Auckland hospital overnight

The death toll from this month’s volcanic eruption in New Zealand has risen to 19 after police said that another person died at an Auckland hospital on Sunday night.

There were 47 people visiting the tourist destination of Whakaari, also known as White Island, when the volcano erupted on 9 December, killing 13 people initially and leaving more than two dozen others hospitalised with severe burns. The latest victim is the sixth person to die in hospitals in New Zealand and Australia in the two weeks since the eruption.

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The lesson from my trip to China? Solomon Islands is not ready to deal with this giant

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After my nation switched allegiance to China, it took journalists on a ‘look and learn’ tour

The invitation from the prime minister’s office came in mid-November, almost exactly two months after the event referred to as “the switch” – the day the government of Solomon Islands, after more than 30 years of diplomatic allegiance to Taiwan, unceremoniously switched recognition to China.

“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] want to take SI [Solomon Islands] media on an ‘Look and Learn’ tour of China,” the email said, “you’re on the list.”

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Tesco withdraws Christmas cards from sale after forced labour claims

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Supermarket halts production in China after six-year-old girl finds plea for help inside card

Tesco says it has suspended production at a factory in China alleged to have forced foreign prisoners to help make charity Christmas cards and also withdrawn them from sale.

The allegations came to light after the Sunday Times reported that Florence Widdicombe, aged six, from Tooting, south London, opened a box of charity Christmas cards from the supermarket and discovered a plea for help inside one of them.

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Housing, inequality, climate: what the Guardian’s New Zealand readers asked Jacinda Ardern

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As an election year approaches, several key themes emerged from questions you sent in for the prime minister

As New Zealanders count down to the end of tumultuous year and look ahead to the election in 2020, the Guardian asked readers which questions they would like to pose to Jacinda Ardern.

We will publish the prime minister’s answers on Monday, but here we lay out the topics that people in New Zealand felt were the most pressing.

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Dead rats, putrid flesh and sweaty socks: rare orchid gives UK botanists their first whiff

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The plant has flowered for the first time in Britain, but the climate crisis is making such events rarer than ever

It is famous for smelling like “a thousand dead elephants rotting in the sun”, its petals resemble decaying flesh, and it is so rare that outside its natural habitat in Papua New Guinea, few botanists in the world have ever seen it in flower.

Now this highly pungent orchid – Bulbophyllum phalaenopsis – is in bloom for the first time in a glasshouse at Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

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New Zealand police say 56,000 guns and 194,000 parts handed over in buyback

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Authorities say nearly 3,000 guns made lawful under new scheme, as expiry to hand over firearms ended at midnight on Friday

New Zealand police have confirmed that more than 56,000 guns were handed in as part of the buyback and have praised gun owners for their response to the scheme, which ended at midnight.

“As of midnight, 20 December 2019, 56,240 firearms and 194, 245 parts have been handed in,” said deputy police commissioner, Mike Clement.

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