Tag Archives: Asia

Reuters reports: Hong Kong’s top court partially approved on Tuesday a landmark appeal by an LGBTQ activist for recognition of same-sex marriages, calling for new regulations for gay couples to protect their basic social needs. The ruling by Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal followed a five-year legal battle fought by jailed democracy and LGBTQ rights activist Jimmy Sham. It …

The New York Times reports: India is on its way back to the moon after a rocket lifted off from Sriharikota, a launch site off the country’s East Coast, on Friday afternoon local time. The mission, Chandrayaan-3, is largely a do-over after the country’s first attempt at putting a robotic spacecraft on the surface of the moon nearly four years …

The Guardian reports: The leader of Thailand’s pro-reform party, which won the most seats in May’s election, has been blocked from taking power by a parliamentary vote that includes military-appointed senators, a move likely to provoke street protests. Pita Limjaroenrat, leader of Move Forward, a progressive party that has a strong youth support base, won the most votes and most …

The Associated Press reports: LGBTQ+ rights activists and couples in Nepal on Thursday were celebrating an interim order issued by the country’s Supreme Court enabling the registration of same-sex marriages for the first time. The Supreme Court issued the order on Wednesday allowing for the temporary registration of marriages for same-sex and non-traditional couples. It was not clear when the …

CNN reports: More than 51 million people in South Korea awoke on Wednesday to find themselves a year or two younger – at least, according to the law. Under legislation that came into effect Wednesday, “all judicial and administrative areas” across the East Asian country will adopt the “international age” system used by most of the world, ending years of …

Reuters reports: The frontrunner to be Thailand’s next prime minister joined a Pride parade in Bangkok on Sunday, promising to pass a law that would allow same-sex marriage and gender identity rights if he becomes premier. Thousands of LGBTQ+ people, their allies and political leaders marched through central Bangkok, marking Pride month and promoting gender equality in the second official …

Bloomberg News reports: A prominent LGBTQ+ center in China is closing down after 15 years, another sign of the tightening of space for sexual orientation-focused organizations under President Xi Jinping. In a statement on its WeChat account on Monday, the Beijing LGBT Center said it was terminating its operations effective immediately, saying only that the closing was due to a …

The Japan Times reports: Japan’s leading opposition party submitted to parliament on Monday a bill to legally recognize same-sex marriage in an effort to spur debate on the issue. The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan’s bill proposes amending wording in the country’s Civil Code that has been written on the premise that marriage is a union between partners of different …

The Associated Press reports: China on Saturday reported nearly 60,000 deaths in people who had COVID-19 since early December following complaints it was failing to release data, and said the “emergency peak” of its latest surge appears to have passed. The toll included 5,503 deaths due to respiratory failure caused by COVID-19 and 54,435 fatalities from other ailments combined with …

Reuters reports: In more than three decades of emergency medicine, Beijing-based doctor Howard Bernstein said, he has never seen anything like this. Patients are arriving at his hospital in ever-increasing numbers; almost all are elderly and many are very unwell with COVID and pneumonia symptoms, he said. “The hospital is just overwhelmed from top to bottom,” Bernstein told Reuters at …

The Daily Beast reports: China’s National Health Commission announced that it will cease publishing national daily COVID-19 case figures amid a surge of infections. Earlier this month, China loosened its stringent “zero-COVID” policy after mass protests. Although the country has narrowed its definition of a COVID death and reported fewer than 10 deaths in the past two weeks, a health …

Bloomberg News reports: Nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with Covid-19 on a single day this week, according to estimates from the government’s top health authority, making the country’s outbreak by far the world’s largest. As many as 248 million people, or nearly 18% of the population, likely contracted the virus in the first 20 days …

Reuters reports: A Shanghai hospital has told its staff to prepare for a “tragic battle” with COVID-19 as it expects half of the city’s 25 million people will get infected by the end of next week, while the virus sweeps through China largely unchecked. Infections in China are likely to be more than a million a day with deaths at …

Reuters reports: Future generations of New Zealanders will be banned from purchasing tobacco as part of a package of new anti-smoking laws that passed parliament on Tuesday and are among the most strict in the world. The suite of new laws include bans on selling tobacco to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2009, punishable by fines up to …

The Associated Press reports: Indonesia’s Parliament unanimously passed a long-awaited revision of the country’s penal code on Tuesday that criminalizes sex outside of marriage for citizens as well as foreigners, prohibits promotion of contraception and bans defamation of the president and state institutions. Rights groups criticized some of the revisions as overly broad or vague and warned that adding them …

The BBC reports: A Tokyo court has upheld a ban on same-sex marriage in Japan, but also said that the ban was a violation of human rights. The compensation case was brought by four couples who claimed the law was discriminatory. Japan is currently the only G7 nation that does not recognise same-sex marriage. Campaigners have welcomed the ruling as …

Bloomberg News reports: India’s Supreme Court has agreed to examine a petition that seeks legal recognition of same-sex marriage, in a development that could build on a string of rulings expanding protection for the LGBTQ community. The petition, which was filed this month by a couple, evoked India’s Special Marriage Act, a law that originally legalized interfaith unions. The petitioners …

Reuters reports: The death toll from a foot bridge collapse in India rose to 134 on Monday, including many children, as police detained nine people as part of a criminal investigation into one of the deadliest accidents in the country in the past decade. CCTV footage from just before the collapse showed a group of young men taking photos while …

The Associated Press reports: North Korea on Tuesday conducted its longest-ever weapons test, a nuclear-capable ballistic missile that flew over Japan and could reach the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam and beyond, forcing the Japanese government to issue evacuation alerts and halt trains. The South Korean and U.S. militaries responded by launching fighter jets which fired weapons at a target …

Agence France-Presse reports: North Korea has passed a law allowing it to carry out a preventive nuclear strike and declaring its status as a nuclear-armed state “irreversible”, state media said Friday. The announcement comes at a time of crumbling ties between the North and South, with Pyongyang blaming Seoul for the outbreak of Covid-19 in its territory and conducting a …