On October 19, 2020, the Osaka District Court ruled against a cabaret owner suing a bar hostess for ¥2 million (US$15,200) for dating a coworker. The plaintiff had made male and female employees sign a contract prohibiting any romance between employees, stipulating that they pay that amount if they failed to observe the ban.
Residents across Banbhoolpura region of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand are holding candlelight marches, sit-ins, and collective prayers to resist a High Court order authorizing the demolition of over 4,500 homes, ostensibly to make room for a railway. Behind this legal battle, some critics believe there lay political motives aimed at sweeping away the Muslim minority.
Saddled with student debt and, in many cases, spending the early years of their professional lives working during the Covid pandemic, members of Generation Z–often defined as those born between 1997 and 2012–are proving to be the most pro-worker generation in the contemporary United States.
In recent years there has developed a shadowy competition for influence between Russia and France on the African continent, and Moscow seems to be winning.
A pair of nonprofit advocacy groups are suing a Texas company in a bid to stop it from generating so-called “forever chemicals” while manufacturing plastic containers. These are the same chemicals which have been leaking out of US military bases in Japan, contaminating nearby communities.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has announced the extension of the military draft to one year from the current duration of four months, citing the perceived need for increased military preparedness.
A long-term Non-Japanese resident friend, married with a Japanese husband and adult kids, recently told me about a new development in their relationship: Christmas was no longer to be celebrated in their household.
The agreement establishing the most rightwing government in Israel’s history now contains a provision that will lift a ban on parliamentary candidates who incite racism—an offense for which the incoming national security minister was once convicted.
US military bases spreading cancerous substances was originally seen as an issue primarily for Okinawans to grapple with, but recent discoveries at Yokosuka and Atsugi bases are making clear that it is a nationwide problem.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and other US lawmakers are demanding that the Pentagon stop its systematic undercounting of civilian deaths after more than two decades of the so-called Global War on Terrorism.