Amy Hawkins

It was a mortifying moment. Crouched in a bush, Katie was confronted by a dog owner whose hound had discovered her al fresco lavatory. The woman remonstrated loudly that (pooch practices notwithstanding), Katie shouldn’t relieve herself in a public place. “It was quite embarrassing and awkward as I was mid-pee, and I just tried to explain it was a desperate situation,” she recalls.

THERE IS an island 180km off the coast of China. Its democratically elected leaders say they run a country called the Republic of China. To the Communist government in Beijing the island is “Taiwan, China” or “Taiwan Province, China”. International organisations, desperate not to offend either side, struggle to name it at all—many opt for the deliberately ambiguous “Chinese Taipei”, after its capital city. To most it is just “Taiwan”,

Late in 1990, when Paul Kagame was hiding on the Congolese side of the Virunga Mountains preparing to invade Rwanda, his army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, were not the only formidable inhabitants of that densely forested volcanic range.

Pity the pangolin. With its hard covering and ability to roll into a small ball when threatened, the scaly anteater, as it is also known, has an advantage over most predators. But it cannot repel humans. Pangolins, which are endangered, are the most trafficked wild mammals in the world. Most end up in China.

Zhang Yali remembers the pains of living in the Chinese countryside when she was growing up. On the mountainside in rural Shanxi, the northern province where her family lived, snakes and scorpions lurked. If they did not bite, the mosquitos cert

ZHANG SHIMO is popular in the afterlife. He died in mainland China in January 2012, a few months shy of his 100th birthday, but he has not been forgotten. His profile on Wa Heaven is one of the most visited on the Chinese online-memorial website. He ha

When Michelle Fisher was a teenager, money was tight, and she had to ration the number of tampons she used. Despite experiencing extremely heavy periods, she would use only one or two a day. Once, she bled through onto a chair at school. “Even to this day when I’m buying products it still feels like I need to ration myself as an after-effect of being so restricted growing up.”

Antoinette, a rough sleeper in the Finsbury Park area of north London, doesn’t feel safe going to the toilet. The one public toilet nearby is often dirty, she says, and people take drugs in there. A pub near the underground station allows non-customers in, but men use it for another kind of relief. She prefers a branch of Costa, a coffee chain, but the door requires a passcode that is handed out only to customers. So she relies on friendly baristas slipping her the code.

The death of Anucha Thasako was supposed to change everything. After several sharp blows to the head during a Thai boxing bout in 2018, the scrawny 13-year-old fell to the floor, unconscious. The referee rushed to his side, to no avail. There was no doctor in attendance. Anucha died soon afterwards from a brain haemorrhage. He had been boxing since the age of eight, and had taken part in around 170 fights.

A romance and two years of dating, Emma and her girlfriend, Han, have tied the knot (see picture). They invited about 100 people to their wedding on January 18th in the south-western city of Kunming. It involved a ceremony, with the two women in matching white wedding dresses, followed by a banquet and an after-party. Emma says she was both excited and nervous. The wedding meant “commitment and responsibility” and “the courage to spend the rest of my life with the one”. She is looking forward to

TAIWAN’S VOTERS go to the polls on January 11th to elect their president and parliament (called the Legislative Yuan). If opinion surveys are any guide, the current president, Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which supports eventual independence, will beat Han Kuo-yu of the Kuomintang (KMT), which advocates closer ties with China. That would rule out any near-term prospect of a thaw in relations across the Taiwan Strait.

Teenagers in Hong Kong are applying for places at Taiwanese universities as fears grow that they could be blocked from studying at home if they are linked to the pro-democracy protests. Hong Kong is officially part of China, under the “one country, two systems” framework; Taiwan is self governing, but is claimed by China as sovereign territory.

China is expanding its coal power infrastructure despite pledges to curb carbon emissions. Analysis reveals that the amount allocated to large infrastructure projects by Beijing has doubled this year, with airports and high-speed rail lines among 21 schemes allocated a total of £83.9 billion.

Uighur women have been coerced into appearing in fashion shows and beauty pageants to make them “look more Chinese”, according to a research paper into a government initiative. About a million Uighurs and other Muslims are held in detention camps in Xinjiang but some women who live outside the camps have been encouraged to take part in fashion shows and “longest-hair competitions” organised by the Chinese government under its Project Beauty initiative.

A brutal hammer attack on a prominent Hong Kong activist has raised fears that gangs backed by Beijing are trying to stop pro-democracy demonstrations by targeting protest leaders for “political assassination”. The last time Beijing faced a mass uprising on Chinese territory, in Tiananmen Square in 1989, it sent tanks to crush dissenters. Today, in Hong Kong, with the world watching, protesters claim different tactics are being employed.

There were chaotic scenes in Hong Kong’s parliament yesterday, with members dragged out by security guards after heckling Carrie Lam with demands for an inquiry into a brutal attack on a prominent protester. Hong Kong’s chief executive was forced to abandon the territory’s legislative council chamber for a second consecutive day.

A court case in Japan has shown the lengths to which stalkers will go to track their victims. Hibiki Sato, 26, was arrested in Tokyo on suspicion of stalking and sexually assaulting Ena Matsuoka, 21, a singer with Tenshi Tsukinukeni, a pop group.

Carrie Lam’s annual policy address was scuppered this morning by protests from pro-democratic legislators. Hong Kong’s chief executive had been scheduled to give her speech inside the Legislative Council at 11am. However, she was forced twice to leave because of the chaos in the chamber. Her speech was eventually delayed to 12.15pm and given via video link. Several members of the legislative council were thrown out by its president for being unruly.

President Xi has warned that those who seek to divide China will suffer “crushed bodies and shattered bones”, in a thinly veiled threat to protesters in Hong Kong. “Any external forces backing such attempts dividing China will be deemed by the Chinese people as pipe-dreaming,” he said during a state visit to Nepal on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of people have gathered in the streets of Hong Kong to call on the United States to pass legislation supporting the pro-democracy cause in the territory. The protests in the city centre came before an address by Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, who is expected to announce housing and social welfare reforms but no concessions to demonstrators calling for more democracy.