CHINA's Better Halves - An FP Slideshow

Photos of the Chinese first ladies who paved the way for Peng Liyuan.

SOUTH KOREA: No more miniskirts in Seoul?

Will K-Pop girl group Girls Generation have to ditch their microshorts? Will police patrol clubs in Gangnam with rulers to measure miniskirts? Is South Korea returning to its days of over-the-top censorship?

MALAYSIA’s looming election: Video nasties

WITH a tight election coming up, it is politics as usual in Malaysia—only more so. This month alone has seen the opposition accused of colluding in a foreign invasion of the state of Sabah in Borneo; the death of a private investigator, reviving stories of the grisly murder in 2006 of a beautiful Mongolian woman linked to a friend of the prime minister, Najib Razak; the leader of the opposition, Anwar Ibrahim, denying that he was one of two men appearing in grainy pictures online in an affectionate clinch; and a film shot on hidden cameras that appears to show large-scale corruption in the government of the other Malaysian state in Borneo, Sarawak.

Sailing blithely above the mud and filth that make ...

Sultan of Brunei flies himself to Washington, meets Obama

Sultan of Brunei flies himself to Washington, meets Obama: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Not everybody can say they met with the president of the United States. And hardly anybody can say they piloted their own 747 airliner halfway around the world to get to the meeting.

BRUNEI: Obama, Sultan of Brunei Discuss Asian Maritime Tensions

President Barack Obama met with the visiting Sultan of Brunei Tuesday to discuss mediation of maritime disputes between several Asian countries.

Obama praised the Sultan as “a key leader in the Southeast Asian region” and thanked him for trying to ease tensions between China and Japan and the Philippines over ownership of islands in the South China and East China Seas. China has recently increased patrols near those islands.

Obama said Asian countries involved in the maritime ...

Poison Air, Dead Pigs, and Cancer Rice: The Reform China Really Needs

The bad news doesn’t stop coming. First, Beijing residents learned that breathing their air on a daily basis was akin to living in a smoking lounge. Then Guangdong residents learned that Hunan rice sold in their province in 2009 was contaminated with cadmium, which is carcinogenic and can cause severe pain in joints and the spine. And just this past weekend, Shanghai residents watched more than three thousand diseased pigs float down part of the city’s Huangpu River.

The good news is that the Chinese people finally know what they are up against. The bad news is that addressing these problems requires not only the technical fixes that are typically proposed but also the proper policy environment for the technical fixes to work. These problems are emblematic of a systemic challenge, and nothing short of an overhaul in how the environmental protection is managed from top to bottom will suffice. Here are a few things that the Chinese people appear to be seeking.

AUSTRALIA: Harbour landmark fallout

One of Sydney Harbour's landmarks has become the battleground for two ugly disputes over its future uses.

CHINA: Calls for Global Hacking Rules

China Calls for Global Hacking Rules: Remarks by Yang Jiechi, the foreign minister, were China’s highest level response yet to intensifying accusations that the Chinese military may be engaging in cyber espionage.

CHINA: Main changes in China's government restructuring plan

BEIJING (Reuters) - China unveiled a government restructuring plan on Sunday, cutting the number of cabinet-level entities by two in the biggest reduction ...

JAPANA: Thousands in Japan anti-nuclear protest two years after Fukushima

TOKYO (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters marched in the Japanese capital on Sunday calling on the government to shun nuclear power, a day before the second anniversary of an earthquake and tsunami that triggered the world's worst atomic disaster in 25 years.

The Philippines and Malaysia: Intrusion confusion

FIGHTER aircraft gave covering fire as Malaysian troops mounted what their government hoped would be the final assault on a coastal village in the Malaysian state of Sabah, on the island of Borneo, on March 5th. Their mission was to end a three-week-old incursion by scores of Filipinos, some armed, who call themselves the Royal Army of the Sultanate of Sulu. But the intruders slipped away.

The intruders had occupied the village to stake a claim to Sabah by the man they recognise as the sultan of Sulu, Jamalul Kiram III, whose forebears once held sway over parts of Borneo and of what is now the Philippines, but who himself is a Filipino citizen living in Manila. After the assault, the sultan called for a ...

MALAYSIAN Forces Fight Philippine Armed Group in Borneo

Malaysian troops have killed at least 13 fighters believed to be a part of an armed Philippine group staking a decades-old claim to a southern territory.

In CHINA, Water You Wouldn’t Dare Swim In, Let Alone Drink

 Jin Zengmin was in a betting mood. Last month, the eyeglass entrepreneur from eastern China’s Zhejiang province announced that he would offer a $32,000 reward to the chief of the local environmental protection department if he dared to swim in a nearby river for a mere 20 minutes. Jin’s wager, which was announced on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like social media service in China, turned viral on the Internet. The environmental cadre, unsurprisingly, declined to swim in the polluted water. After more than three decades of economic prosperity, China faces serious environmental challenges that are sure to be discussed during the National People’s Congress, the annual conclave currently underway in Beijing. Air pollution blankets hundreds of cities and the soil in vast parts of the country is contaminated. Thousands of rivers, too, have been ruined by China’s rapid urbanization and industrialization, such as the waterway in Jin’s hometown, Rui’an, a small city near Shanghai that is home to more than 100 shoe factories. “When I was a child, people swam or washed vegetables in the river,” Jin told TIME. “But those factories use chemical raw materials to make shoes and dump their industrial waste directly into the river.” (PHOTOS: Root of the Nation: Zhang Kechun Photographs China’s Yellow River) In photographs posted by Jin on Sina Weibo, the river surface is covered by floating rubbish. What lies beneath could be even more dangerous. The smell, Jin alleges, is putrid. On Dec 8, Jin’s sister died of lung cancer at the age of 35. He blames water pollution for her death. “When my sister received medical treatment in big cancer hospitals in Shanghai,” Jin says, “we found that many patients there are from my hometown. They have various cancers, and what is astonishing is that most of the cancer patients are in their 30s to 50s. They are still young. I realized these cancers may have something to do with the water pollution in our hometown.” After Jin’s sister died, he called the local environmental protection department and asked them to check

CHINA: Shanghai to move up rich list

LONDON and New York remain the top cities for the super rich, but Shanghai and Beijing are expected to join the top 10 list by 2023 at the expense of Geneva and Paris, according to a report by Knight Frank and Bank of China International Ltd.

The two are 24th and 15th on this year's list which defines those with US$30 million or more in net assets as high-net-worth individuals.

The factors that make a city important to the rich include economic activity, political power, quality of life and knowledge and influence.

Knight Frank's Liam Bailey said that major cities in China were set to achieve new heights in worldwide rankings."

HONG KONG: Why To Visit Hong Kong Now

Last week we announced the 2013 Forbes Travel Guide Star Awards and 27 new hotels, restaurants and spas received the highest honor in the hospitality industry—the Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star rating. While there were 139 Five-Stars awarded in North America, China and Singapore, only one city rises above the rest when it comes to Five-Star hotels—Hong Kong. Seven hotels in Hong Kong received the Five-Star rating—the most in any single city this year. Between the lengthy list of Five-Star awards and hotels celebrating milestone anniversaries and renovations, our Startle.com editors think now is the time to take advantage of Hong Kong’s stellar hospitality scene.

CHINA: On Eve of People’s Congress in China, Vows of Change and Raised Hopes

Communist leaders are hoping that the meeting, which begins Tuesday, will help persuade a skeptical public that they are serious about cleaning up pollution and corruption.

PORT OF AIRLIE BEACH: Whitehaven named best beach in Australia

WHITEHAVEN Beach has again made the cut as one of TripAdvisor’s top five beaches in the world.

AUSTRALIA: Mud flung but not from refugees

Many Australians baulk at the Coalition's tough stance on asylum-seekers.

HONG KONG's Creeping Interventionism

Government's share of the economy keeps climbing.

AUSTRALIA: Diggers accused of killing children

AUSTRALIAN soldiers in southern Afghanistan have been accused of shooting dead two children tending cattle according to local officials.

NORTH KOREA: Pilgrims and Idiots

How celebrities should handle visits to authoritarian countries in today's world.

SOUTH KOREA: Jeju Island, An Escape From The Metropolis

In many corners of the world, winter offers nothing but a biting cold that demands we stay indoors until the flowers start to bloom. But with spring stretching its legs, it's time we start to do the same. The best way to mentally prepare for spring and summer is to reminisce about trips from the past and to plan a new travel adventure built around shorts and sandals.

Here in Korea, Jeju Island is one of the first places that come to mind when seeking warm weather travel. A popular honeymoon destination, Jeju Island is a small, volcanic isle just south of the Korean peninsula, famed within Korea for its beaches, seafood, unique mountains and tangerines. It'll be hard to miss the tangerines; they are sold everywhere on the island and are in anything that you'd consider edible.

A sparsely populated, laid-back island, Jeju is the perfect escape from the Seoul megapolis.

JAPAN: Adventures in Osaka

JAPAN'S culinary capital offers myriad treats for all tastes.

CHINA: Unique Experiences in…Beijing

Four oddball things worth slowing down for in China's frenetic capital.

JAPAN: Two U.S. servicemen imprisoned for rape in Japan

A Japanese court Friday sentenced two American servicemen to prison for a rape committed last year while they were on duty at a U.S. military base in Okinawa.