Recently, Apple has been at the heart of many controversies in China. This latest story involves kidneys. Five people, including a surgeon, have been arrested after a teen sold his kidney to buy an iPad. The teen is now suffering from renal failure. The group, which made US$35,000 for the...

Officials in Japan say that about 12 tonnes of radioactive water has leaked into the Pacific Ocean from Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This is the latest of several leaks, contradicting the government’s claim that the Fukushima reactors were now under...

Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy party has won by a landslide in by-elections, winning 44 of the 45 contested seats. Although critics have complained about fraud and irregularities in the election, support and turnout was unprecedented. More...

Japan says it will shoot down North Korea’s planned rocket launch next month if it passes over Japanese territory. The news comes shortly after Pyongyang announced it will put a satellite into orbit between 12-16 April to mark the centennial of founding leader Kim Il-sung. But the US and...

Billionaire brothers Raymond and Thomas Kwok, who run Sun Hung Kai Properties, one of Asia’s largest real estate developers, were arrested on suspicions of corruption in Hong Kong. Rafael Hui, a former No.2 official in the government, was also arrested. No details have yet been divulged. The...

Hollywood film director James Cameron became the first person to reach the bottom of the Marianna Trench – Earth’s deepest point at 11km below sea level. Cameron’s torpedo-shaped sub, named Deepsea Challenger, took over 2 ½ hours to reach the depth, where its 3D cameras filmed the alien...

China has announced that it will phase out the use of condemned prisoners as a source for transplant organs and will institute a national donation system over the next 5 years. This comes as good news for human rights groups, which alleges that China pressures death row inmates into donating...

New Zealanders are in a bit of a jam. A Marmite shortage has hit the nation and people are rushing to stockpile their favourite bread spread. The factory that produces Marmite was damaged by an earthquake last year and will not resume production until July. Existing stocks will run out in...

A year ago today, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan, resulting in a devastating tsunami and level 7 meltdowns at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima. In all, around 20,000 people were killed or went missing. More than 100,000 still remain displaced from towns near...

Zookeepers in Tokyo are on a frantic search for a penguin that pulled off an impossible escape. The 1-year-old Humboldt penguin somehow managed to scale the sheer rock face of his enclosure, navigate out of the zoo, find his way to the river and swim iron-man style toward Tokyo Bay. An...

North Korea has agreed to suspend uranium enrichment and missile tests in exchange for 240,000 metric tonnes of food aid from the United States. The agreement was reached after breakthrough negotiations were held in Beijing. This agreement may also indicate that North Korea is a step closer...

The Chinese characters for ‘Occupy Obama’ President Obama’s Google+ page was inundated with hundreds of comments from users in China over the past few days, thanks to a glitch in China’s Internet censorship system. Inexplicably, these Chinese users were drawn to Obama’s page in...

The death toll has exceeded 20 on the 5th day of violent protests in Afghanistan over NATO’s inadvertent burning of Korans. NATO claims the Korans were seized from a detainee library because they contained inscriptions of “extremist communications.” The Korans were then accidentally...

A recent IPO filing by Guizhentang Pharmaceutical, a Chinese firm that produces bear bile, has sparked protests from animal activists and the public. Activists are crusading against the use of bear bile in traditional Chinese medicine, claiming that the extraction process is inhumane....

The Chinese city of Nanjing has cut official ties with its sister city of Nagoya, Japan, after Nagoya’s mayor denied that Japanese troops raped and killed 300,000 Chinese during WWII. While hosting a high-level official from Nanjing on Monday, the mayor of Nagoya said he believes only...

In a dramatic last-minute miracle, Hong Kong’s legendary Sunbeam Theatre has been saved from closure after a mysterious man and a playwriting feng shui master intervened. The Sunbeam, known for 40 years as ‘Hong Kong’s Grand Palace for Cantonese Opera’, was to be turned into a shopping centre...

Apple may have mistakenly bought the iPad trademark from the wrong owner – and that could cost them dearly. In an escalating dispute, a China-based company has asked authorities to ban Apple’s iPad from being exported from China, where it is manufactured. Technology company Proview registered...

With a Velcro checkmark so it’s easy to change answer! Henry Tang, a candidate for Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive, is once again implicated in a scandal. This time, it involves an illegally constructed basement in his upscale home. A few days ago, a tabloid printed an alleged floor...

Here’s a very different kind of love story. Changmao the ram and Chunzi the doe have tied the knot at a zoo in China. The Yunnan Provincial Wildlife Park arranged the ceremony as a Valentine’s Day event. The inseparable pair have been affectionate towards each other for quite some time, with...

A group of Hong Kongers launched a newspaper ad that refers to Mainland Chinese as locusts. The ad protests the influx of Mainland mothers who come to the city to give birth so their children may live in Hong Kong. The issue at hand is resources. Many Hong Kongers feel that Mainlanders are...

When we read about Novak Djokovic’s victory over Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open, we were reminded of this quote: I always turn to the sports section first. The sports section records people’s accomplishments; the front page nothing but man’s failures. – Earl Warren...

Activists in South Korea released 5 huge gas-filled balloons filled with 1,000 pairs of warm socks over the North Korean border as air-borne care packages. The socks can be worn during the harsh winter or sold for food. Reportedly, warm socks are so rare in the impoverished country that a...

Talk about a political misstep. After a comedic series of events, protestors returned a shoe that was lost by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard the day before. The incident began when protestors from the Aboriginal Tent Embassy surrounded a restaurant where Gillard was attending a...

If you thought E is for elephant, you wouldn’t be alone. This majestic creature has so captured our collective imagination that it would be hard to imagine someone who doesn’t know what it is. Sadly, for one species of elephant, the E could soon stand for extinction. The World Wildlife Fund...

Stylised calligraphy of Chinese characters for “Returning Home” Think your holiday rush is bad? Tomorrow is the Chinese New Year. And with it comes the world’s largest human migration. More than 230 million migrant workers will journey from the cities to their homes in rural...

In a recent survey of 24 countries, Australia ranked number one in the world for bullying on social networks like Facebook. The Ipsos Social Research Institute noted that among all cyber-harassment cases in Australia, 9 out of 10 parents reported that the bullying occurred on these websites....

Apple is suspending sales of its new iPhone 4S at its China stores after fans desperate to get their hands on it fought with a security and threw eggs at an official outlet. The decision was made following an incident at its Beijing store in the upmarket Sanlitun district. Fans who had lined...

It’s Friday the 13th and police in Hiroshima, Japan are telling people to lock their doors. A prisoner escaped from a penitentiary wearing nothing but white underwear. Li Guolin, a Chinese national serving 23 years for attempted murder, apparently stripped off his prison garbs yesterday and...

More than 1,000 people protested outside a Dolce & Gabbana store in Hong Kong on Sunday after the store’s security guard told pedestrians on the street that photographing the store is forbidden except to Mainland Chinese tourists, who are known for their high-spending.D&G claims the...