Cities across China have rolled back some Covid-19 restrictions, requiring less testing and allowing people to isolate at home instead of in quarantine centres. The authorities have been careful not to send any signal that the relaxing of rules were in any way a response to rare displays of public discontent. For more, we speak to Nathan Law, a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist who was a prominent student leader during the 2014 Umbrella Movement and now lives in exile in London.
Meanwhile, four decades after it was discovered, the fight against HIV/AIDS continues across the world. In India, there are 2.4 million people living with HIV today, according to government data. The pace of infections has significantly slowed down since the epidemic's peak in 2000, but health experts are calling for more adequate testing methods. Our team on the ground reports.
Finally, Japan is the only country among the G7 industrialised nations that does not legally recognise same-sex marriage. But a court ruling was recently delivered by the district court in the capital Tokyo. While the judges stopped short of deeming the ban downright "unconstitutional", they said that the lack of legal protection for same-sex families posed a serious threat to their personal dignity guaranteed by the constitution.
