Japan’s top court on Wednesday ruled a law requiring married couples to have the same family name is constitutional, rejecting plaintiffs who sought the right to keep separate surnames, local media said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a three-hour meeting with 14 political leaders of Jammu and Kashmir yesterday, reportedly assured that he was committed to restoring statehood to the region.

G20 labour ministers have called for “more and better and equally paid jobs for women”, as the club of developed and emerging economies vowed to tackle gender inequality at work.

UN demanded an urgent investigation as an Ethiopian air strike on a market in the war-torn Tigray region killed at least 64 people and injured 180, an official of the rebel territory said.

The United Nations humanitarian agency yesterday said an estimated 230,000 people have been displaced by fighting and violence in Myanmar this year and are in need of assistance.

Indonesian police fired tear gas and water cannon at supporters of a hardline Muslim cleric jailed yesterday for spreading false information about Covid-19 after he held rallies that drew thousands.

Sri Lanka’s president pardoned 16 men linked to the Tamil Tiger rebels yesterday, as the country faced renewed pressure from the UN over detentions without charge under an anti-terrorism law.

The coronavirus pandemic is pushing more people into drug use, while illicit cultivation could also get a boost, the UN said Thursday, warning that the crisis’s fallout was likely to be felt “for years to come”.

The European Parliament on Thursday approved a landmark law to make the European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions targets legally binding, paving the way for a policy overhaul to cut planet-warming pollution faster.

Former Philippine president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, the reserved 61-year-old bachelor from one of Asia’s most famous political families, died yesterday, the country’s foreign minister and several officials said.

Anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee's lawyer said on Thursday he had seen no sign before the entrepreneur's death in a Spanish prison that he would take his own life.

The potent greenhouse gas methane is spewing out of natural gas infrastructure across the European Union because of leaks and venting, video footage made available to Reuters shows.

Britain's lack of policies to meet net zero emissions by 2050 is jeopardising its chance of meeting the target, the country's climate advisers said in a progress report on Thursday.

The United States has cautioned the Taliban that the world will not accept a government imposed by force in Afghanistan as an intelligence report warned that the current setup in Kabul could collapse within six months after the American withdrawal.

Apple Daily has apologised to its readers, hundreds of whom queued past midnight for one of a million copies of the final publication, for not meeting their expectations.

A Canadian indigenous group announced on Wednesday the "horrific and shocking discovery" of hundreds of unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school, just weeks after the discovery of other children's remains shook the country.

Iran said it foiled a sabotage attack yesterday on an atomic energy agency building in a mysterious incident that comes as the US blocked Iran-linked websites and as talks to revive a nuclear deal progressed.

Russia yesterday fired warning shots at a British Navy destroyer in the Black Sea after it violated the country’s territorial waters, the Russian defence ministry said in a statement to news agencies.

Four members of the Saudi hit squad that killed US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 had received paramilitary training in the United States that had been approved by the State Department, the New York Times reported late Tuesday.

The pandemic has helped rebuild a little of the confidence lost in the media, and pushed news companies even more towards digital, according to the annual Reuters Institute report published yesterday.