Japan Continues Transgender Sterilization Requirement

It seems BTS did not only take k-pop by storm but also fashion. The K-pop group walked Louis Vuitton’s FW21 runway as their global ambassadors. The pop icons graced the show in a fashion film directed by Jeon Go-woon.

Long lines of unemployed relying on free food across Bangkok, scrambles for cash handouts and fishing in fetid canals — Thais are getting increasingly desperate as the pandemic destroys the economy and the government struggles to respond.

Myanmar’s mixed martial arts star Aung La N Sang — known as the “Burmese Python” — has spoken out in support of a fellow fighter injured in a bomb blast in their coup-hit homeland.

For years, Shanghai artist “Cracks” has kept her diagnosis of bipolar disorder hidden from all but her closest friends and family because of a Chinese cultural stigma surrounding mental illness.

Among the sea of faces on Hong Kong’s streets on Sunday were more than one hundred people wearing quirky over-sized animal masks — a band of activists bringing popular protest internet memes to life.

Salvage crews raced against time Monday to prevent a second disastrous oil spill off the picture-perfect coastline of Mauritius, with a damaged tanker carrying thousands of tons of fuel at risk of splitting apart.

On the tarmac of a dark Hanoi street, motorbike taxi driver Pham Quoc Viet mops the bloodied knee of a fellow rider, one of the hundreds of traffic victims he’s tended to in the chaotically congested Vietnamese capital.

The coronavirus outbreak has led to a 900 percent uptick in hate speech toward China and Chinese people on Twitter, according to a report by a tech startup.

Australian star Cate Blanchett hailed the “miracle” organization of this year’s Venice Film Festival on Wednesday as the prestigious Italian cinema event prepared to open.

The Cambodian tourist town of Siem Reap has banned the dog meat trade, a victory for animal rights campaigners who describe the area as the “lynchpin” of an industry that slaughters millions of creatures each year.

Big oil producers are pinning their future growth on the world’s insatiable appetite for plastic, researchers said Friday, in a “bet” on society’s failure to tackle disposable consumption that risks stranding billions of dollars in petrochemical investments.

Naho has played a crucial role in fighting Japan’s two deadly coronavirus waves this year, the worst the country has faced since the pandemic began.

Cambodian dog meat traders drown, strangle and stab thousands of canines a day in a shadowy but sprawling business that traumatises workers and exposes them to deadly health risks like rabies.

China’s central bank on Friday said all financial transactions involving cryptocurrencies are illegal, sounding the death knell for the digital trade in China after a crackdown on the volatile currencies.

Foreign fans starved of baseball are tuning in to Taiwan’s often-overlooked league as the island basks in the glow of being one of the few places in the world hosting live sports.

Hundreds of travel-starved diners ate lunch and watched seat-back films aboard two parked Singapore Airlines jets turned into pop-up restaurants on Saturday.

A Japanese woman whose campaign against mandatory high heels in the workplace won broad public support has stepped up her fight against strict corporate dress codes including a de-facto ban on women wearing glasses.

Hundreds of people have been arrested across Asia for posting purported false coronavirus information, according to an AFP investigation, deepening concerns that growing government efforts to combat “fake news” will target the wrong people and silence dissent.

Vietnam is looking to increase control over livestreaming on popular social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, according to a draft government decree, as the country aims to tighten its grip on cyberspace.

A stolen poetry scroll written by Mao Zedong and valued at hundreds of millions of dollars has been recovered, Hong Kong police said Wednesday — but not before it was cut in half.

Animated films from Japan’s Studio Ghibli, including Oscar winner “Spirited Away”, are coming to streaming giant Netflix, delighting many fans but leaving US subscribers disappointed as they will miss out.

Cheaper than a coffee but powerful enough to keep him riding Bangkok’s streets without sleep, Soonthorn puts a flame to a methamphetamine tablet wrapped in foil and inhales the intoxicating vapours.

The 91-year-old billionaire said small and medium-sized businesses would benefit from the fund, worth HK$1 billion (US$128 million), which will be distributed in partnership with the government.

Fans of K-pop megastars BTS raised and donated $1 million to the Black Lives Matter movement, matching the septet’s donation of the same amount within 24 hours, organizers said Monday.

Australian pop hit “Dance Monkey” is topping global charts and has spent a record 16 weeks at number one Down Under, propelling teenager Toni Watson from busking obscurity to instant fame.

Once seen as lowly members of Singaporean society, cooks in the city-state’s bustling “hawker” centers are rejoicing this week after the United Nations recognized their food as a cultural treasure.

Cathy Freeman’s triumphant Olympic moment two decades ago officially became part of Australia’s genome Friday, with the nation’s archivists using synthetic DNA data storage to preserve the footage.

In this era of relative peace, do we really think Asian countries like Taiwan and South Korea still has the need to impose force conscription on its young men and women?

Browsing the internet as a young policeman in China, Ma Baoli recalls the sheer volume of web pages telling him he was a pervert, diseased and in need of treatment — simply because he was gay.

Tucked away in the dazzling neon lights of Seoul’s nightlife district, Club MWG, one of the capital’s oldest underground music venues, closed its doors last weekend as the pandemic crunch begins to bite South Korean nightclubs.

The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) stated its opposition to a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics on Wednesday, saying athletes should not be used as “political pawns.”

The US government said Friday that Myanmar citizens stranded by the violence following the country’s military coup would be able to remain inside the United States under “temporary protected status.”

Goods imported from Hong Kong must be marked “Made in China” to be sold in the United States as part of Washington’s punitive response to a sweeping clampdown on the city, US customs authorities were set to announce Tuesday.

Studio Ghibli, home of the masters of Japanese animated film, has decided to take the plunge into 3D under the direction of founder Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro — though he is far from ready to put away his colored pencils.

Major technology firms including Dell, Microsoft and Google have joined a new initiative aimed at creating a circular economy for electronics by 2030, amid mounting alarm over the world’s ballooning e-waste problem.

Seungri and Jung Joon-young’s scandals shine a light on the rising cases of victim blaming and women abuse in South Korea.

Thousands of doctors across India wore black armbands on Tuesday calling for the arrest of a hugely popular guru who has claimed yoga can prevent Covid-19 and that conventional medicine has killed thousands of coronavirus patients.

Chinese regulators hit e-commerce giant Alibaba with a record 18.2 billion yuan ($2.78 billion) fine on Saturday over practices deemed to be an abuse of the company’s dominant market position.

A Japanese pensioner has been arrested after ringing a phone company 24,000 times to complain they had violated his contract, police and local media reported.

Female assassins who lured an Afghan security official to his death with promises of sex before shooting him and dumping his body at a cemetery are among thousands of Taliban criminals freed as part of a fragile peace plan.

The main architect of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war said Monday he would rather be “convicted and even hanged” by a Filipino court than a foreign one for his role in the deadly crackdown.

More than a dozen diplomatic missions in Afghanistan on Monday called for “an urgent end” to the Taliban’s ruthless military offensive, saying it was at odds with claims they want to secure a political deal to end the conflict.

Long maligned as job-stealers and aspiring overlords, robots are being increasingly relied on as fast, efficient, contagion-proof champions in the war against the deadly coronavirus.

Japanese fans and public figures rallied in support of tennis star Naomi Osaka on Tuesday, offering sympathy after she withdrew from the French Open and opened up about her battles with depression.

Young players have been physically abused and left without schooling at NBA basketball academies in China, which were described as “sweat camp(s) for athletes”, an ESPN report said.

An Indian landowner has willed most of his land to two elephants he said saved his life from gun-toting criminals, a decision that has upset his wife and children.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the controversial policy that has reigned in China for an entire generation. Now no longer in effect, a look back at the way in which this policy has shaped the course of the country provides a range of insights into the development Chinese culture has achieved as a response.

At least 20 turtles were dead and dozens more were rescued Sunday after being entangled in plastic waste washed ashore on one of the world’s longest beaches in Bangladesh, officials and conservationists said.

A rare uncensored app that had attracted Chinese internet users to freely discuss taboo topics, including the mass detention of Uighurs, democracy protests in Hong Kong and the concept of Taiwanese independence appeared to have been blocked on Monday night.

Indonesia is beginning to change its face of tolerance, to one of repression and radical Islamism.

Moderna said Wednesday that tainted batches of its Covid-19 vaccine sent to Japan were contaminated with stainless steel particles, but the company did not expect it posed “an undue risk to patient safety.”