A Pakistani court has handed four death sentences to a man charged with raping and murdering a six-year-old girl, in a case that shocked the country and sparked major riots in his home district.
Imran Ali, 24, was on trial for killing Zainab Ansari in the eastern city of Kasur last month.
He faces further charges in the cases of at least seven other children attacked in the Punjab city – five of whom were murdered – in a spate of assaults that had stoked fears a serial child killer…
The museums behind the murmurs of a Southeast Asian renaissance
Museums have always been both window and mirror: they provide a lens into our society while also functioning as a way to reflect upon our own lives.
They have played an outsize role in shaping culture, often with political purpose; the National Palace Museum in Taipei forms part of Taiwan’s claim that it is the “real China”, while the Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts presents what it considers to be works exhibiting the “national character” of the country.
In…
Planned ‘pharma city’ to pump out cheap Indian drugs is making villagers sick with anger
Driving up the motorway from the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, smooth all-weather roads become wider. In the crisp February morning, factory chimneys raise their heads above the green landscape and roadsides are lined with cotton crops, waiting to be harvested.
Saraswati, a landowner of the Medipally village in Telangana province, of which Hyderabad is the capital, shudders to think that all this would soon be replaced by miles and miles of concrete factories manufacturing pharmaceuticals…
UK regulators to tighten rules around algorithmic trading
Financial firms engaged in algorithmic trading will be required to allocate oversight of this activity to named senior managers, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) has announced.
Fixing financial services deal central to overall agreement on Brexit, says Lougher
Agreement between the UK and the remaining 27 EU countries on the terms on which financial services institutions will be able to supply services across the two jurisdictions post-Brexit will be central to whether an overall deal on Brexit is reached, a legal expert has said.
Rise seen in data breaches reported to UK watchdog
The number of data breaches reported by organisations to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) rose by nearly a fifth in the last three months of 2017, according to the watchdog.
Borneo’s orangutan population plunged by 100,000 since 1999, new study finds
The most comprehensive study of Borneo’s orangutans estimates their numbers have plummeted by more than 100,000 since 1999, as the palm oil and paper industries shrink their jungle habitat and fatal conflicts with people increase.
The finding, which is to be published in the journal Current Biology, is in line with the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s 2016 designation of Borneo’s orangutans as critically endangered.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for…
A young Chinese Indonesian straddles modernity and tradition in Jakarta
Arifin Kurniawan towers over his 55-year-old father’s prostrate figure. With his hand placed firmly on the older man’s head, the blonde-haired son barks out instructions in Hokkien.
Only moments before, the 21-year-old Chinese-Indonesian had cut his tongue deliberately with a sword – using the blood to write Chinese characters on rice paper. Bathed in an eerie red light, with statues of countless deities lining the walls and the air filled with chanting, the Fat Cu Kung shrine…
Malaysian government mocked for featuring barking rooster in Chinese ‘Year of the Dog’ ad cock-up
Malaysia has apologised after a government ad in Chinese-language newspapers featuring a picture of a barking rooster to mark the Year of the Dog sparked a flood of mockery.
The full-page advert by the domestic trade, co-operatives and consumerism ministry showed a rooster emitting the word “wang”, used to represent a dog’s bark in Mandarin.
The advert, printed in Chinese-language newspapers in the multi-ethnic country on Thursday, also carried a message welcoming a “…
Many businesses are still at risk from tax corporate criminal offence
Four months after it became a criminal offence for a business to have an employee or other ‘associated person’ who facilitates tax evasion, many businesses have still not got the polices and procedures in place that could protect them, said Catherine Robins, a tax expert at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com.