CHINA
Birthrate continues to fall
The country’s birthrate last year dropped to its lowest level since 1949, adding to concerns that an aging society and shrinking workforce will pile pressure on a slowing economy. The birthrate last year stood at 10.48 per 1,000 people, National Bureau of Statistics data released yesterday showed. The number of births has now fallen for three consecutive years. There were 14.65 million babies born last year, after 15.23 million in 2018 and 17.23 million in 2017. Still, the population stood at 1.4 billion by the end of last year, increasing by 4.67 million from the year before, but the workforce continued to shrink. There were 896.4 million people aged between 16 and 59, a drop from 897.3 million in 2018, the bureau said, marking the eighth consecutive year of decline and the workforce is expected to decline by as much as 23 percent by 2050.
JAPAN
Suicides reach record low
The number of suicides in the nation last year fell to a record low, the government said yesterday, as it tackles one of the world’s highest suicide rates. Preliminary data released by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare showed that 19,959 people died by suicide last year, a 4.2 percent drop. About 70 percent of those were men, the data showed. Final data are to be released in March, and the figures are likely to be slightly higher, after police confirm whether deaths recorded in the final months of the year were linked to suicide. However, officials said that the final figure was still expected to be a record low since data collection began in 1978. The number of suicides peaked in 2003 at 34,427 and the average surpassed 30,000 between 2004 and 2011, but has been falling steadily since then. Japan “must face the fact that 20,000 people still took their own precious lives,” Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Katsunobu Kato told reporters.
NEPAL
Menstruation huts torn down
Authorities are knocking down tiny huts where women have been exiled during menstruation and exposed to cold weather and threats from animals, and even sexual assaults. Government officials accompanied by police officers and local politicians were going to villages and towns in Kanchanpur District, tearing down the sheds mostly made of mud walls and covered by straw roofs, Chief District Officer Sushil Baidhya said yesterday. Many menstruating women are still forced to shelter in huts or cow sheds until their cycle ends. The custom — called chhaupadi — continues in many parts of the country, despite being made illegal, especially in the western hills. Several women and girls have died during their exile. A major cause of the deaths is smoke inhalation, because they lit a fire to keep warm in the tiny huts in hilly or mountainous areas.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the