Every day after school, 15-year-old Inamul, usually clad in flip-flops, spends an hour or two wandering the giant landfill near his house. Ignoring the stench and the colonies of rats, he collects plastic bottles, cheap jewelry, glass, bits of wood and anything else that he can resell to a scrap...
Last year, on the eve of the Persian New Year, amateur cellphone video captured by hundreds of mostly young men showed a crowd beating a young woman, her face covered in blood. She pleaded for her life and denied their accusation — that she had burned pages from the Koran. After she was dead, they...
Yan has a harrowing reminder of how haters in Uzbekistan treat transgender people. "There's a scar left by a screwdriver next to my liver," the craggy-bearded and long-haired transgender man says, describing how his college classmates attacked him in 1997 in Tashkent, the capital of this former...
When most American troops departed Afghanistan in 2014 and the Obama administration helped install a unity government, it was supposed to set the country on a path toward self-sustainability after two decades of Taliban rule and foreign military intervention. Instead, Afghans are escaping their...
American Otto Warmbier weeks ago had tearfully begged his North Korean captors for forgiveness as he confessed to trying to remove a political banner from a hotel in Pyongyang, the capital. That request was denied Wednesday as North Korea sentenced the 21-year-old University of Virginia economics...
The prayers of a southern Indian village went unanswered Wednesday morning when Obama named Merrick Garland as his next Supreme Court nominee. Distant relatives and well-wishers of Sri Srinivasan, believed to be a likely pick for the nomination, had been holding services in his honor in the riverside...
A computer program ended its five-game match against the world’s top-ranked Go player with another win Tuesday, sealing a landmark achievement for artificial intelligence. The intricate game of skill had long stumped computers. The match was “the most mind-blowing game experience we’ve had so far,”...
A childhood friend of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was elected Tuesday as Myanmar’s new president, a major step for a country ruled or partially ruled by the military for more than half a century. Htin Kyaw, 69, the first civilian to hold the presidency, was selected by lawmakers in...
In December, the flamboyant Indian liquor baron Vijay Mallya threw a bash for 600 people to celebrate his 60th birthday at a five-star beach resort in Goa, where Enrique Iglesias was among the performers. At the same time, Mallya, known in Indian media as the “King of Good Times,” owed Indian state-owned...
The Taiwanese government published a study Monday showing that areas of eight cities and counties, including about half of the capital, Taipei, are highly vulnerable to structural collapse in an earthquake. The study was ordered last month after a mid-strength earthquake killed 116 people in a...
“Zootopia” is off to a roaring start at the Chinese box office, with the Disney film crossing the $100-million mark after 10 days in theaters and gunning for the all-time record for an animated movie on the mainland. The tale of a mammalian metropolis has grossed a total of $112.6 million since...
Joe Aguilar, who as chief creative officer of Oriental DreamWorks shepherded the Shanghai-based portion of production on “Kung Fu Panda 3,” is jumping ship to become chief executive of a new animation subsidiary of the Chinese studio Huayi Bros. In an announcement Monday, Huayi said the new subsidiary...
It took four tries, but the world's top-ranked Go player finally scored a win over Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo on Sunday, putting a dent in the artificial intelligence program’s surprising dominance in the ancient East Asian board game. Lee Sedol and AlphaGo have been facing off in a five-game match...
An insurgent group that has sometimes fought alongside the Taliban said Sunday that it would take part in peace negotiations with the government of Afghanistan. The announcement by the military wing of Hezb-i Islami, led by former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, comes weeks after the...
First went checkers, then fell chess. Now, a computer program has defeated the world's top player in the ancient east Asian board game of Go — a major milestone for artificial intelligence that brings to a close the era of board games as benchmarks in computing.At the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul,...
For more than four hours, Lee Sedol hunched over the game board, fidgeting from side to side as he stared at the black and white tiles, running through his dwindling options. Exasperated and tired, Lee — the world’s top-ranked Go player, whose prowess at the ancient game has cemented him as a legend...
High-speed rail opponents angry about billions of dollars in cost overruns and concerned about threats to Hong Kong's autonomy failed Friday in a final effort to halt an extension of mainland China's bullet train into the city. More than a dozen anti-rail demonstrators stormed the Legislative Council,...
About 30 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, 130 cats and three dogs live in a drafty old bed-and-breakfast. Cluttered but surprisingly calm, the Nyander Guard animal shelter was created in the aftermath of the March 2011 nuclear disaster here. As residents fled their homes, an...
Donald Trump called the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest a “riot” in a Republican presidential debate on Thursday night, responding to a question about a 1990 interview in which he said that the government’s massacre of protesters “shows you the power of strength.” China’s Communist party leadership...
Loveneet Singh Atwal was just a scrawny fifth-grader, still learning his way around the basketball courts of his native Punjab, when he persuaded his father to let him get a tattoo. The letters on his right biceps spell "N-B-A." ------------ FOR THE RECORD March 11, 8:15 a.m.: The headline on an...
By day, this town bustles. Trucks rumble through, carrying equipment to the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. A temporary supermarket has sprung up to cater to workers employed in the massive cleanup job at the plant; a ramen stand dispenses steaming noodles near City Hall. But a different...
Hiroshi Endo spent a decade building a robotic arm that Japan deployed to the International Space Station in 2010. But his next challenge made that one look easy. In 2011, Endo, a 61-year-old retired engineer at Hitachi, the Tokyo-based mega-corporation, began designing a robot to aid in decommissioning...
Earthquakes dwell deep in the Japanese imagination. No country may be better prepared for a major earthquake than Japan. Seismic standards for construction are among the strictest in the world. From a young age, Japanese learn to dive under desks to protect themselves in a quake. The nation has...
Environmental groups say an event planned in India this weekend by a spiritual guru will destroy the fragile ecosystem of the Yamuna River, a beleaguered waterway already under threat from nearby construction and waste. Dozens of farmers have gone on a hunger strike to protest the effect on their...
Los Angeles is now the eighth most expensive city in the world for tourists and foreign businesspeople, a study released Thursday said, as a rising U.S. dollar has pushed the City of Angels ahead of pricey metropolises including Tokyo and Shanghai. L.A. — which ranked 27th last year — is now only...
In late November, a 52,000-ton barge eased into this ramshackle port on the Bay of Bengal and came to rest on a wide, muddy beach. After nearly four decades crisscrossing the oceans for an American offshore engineering company, the DB-101 did not come to erect another oil rig or lay miles of undersea...
In China, it's not easy to become a “living Buddha.” First come the years of meditation and discipline. Then comes the bureaucracy. “The highest level of living Buddhas must be approved by the central government,” Phurbu Tsering, the abbot of Sera Monastery near Tibet's capital, Lhasa, said at...
At least 16 people, including two police officers, were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up Monday at the gate of a judicial complex in northeastern Pakistan, officials said. Senior police officer Saeed Wazir said the bomber was heading toward the main judicial compound in the town of...
The All-China Women’s Federation was founded by the Communist Party in 1949 to “protect women’s rights and interests.” But sometimes, it seems to be on the lagging, rather than leading, edge of the push for equal rights and opportunities for the female sex. It’s been criticized for, among other...
China’s filmmakers are using “farmers” to staff their makeup, costume and lighting departments, and a dearth of professional training is holding the industry back, prominent director and actor Feng Xiaogang said Monday. The “low quality” of below-the-line workers is “a big barrier to the development...
Elevator maintenance men returning to work after a month-long break for Chinese New Year made a horrific discovery last week when they opened the cab of a broken lift and found the body of a woman who had been trapped inside since late January and starved to death. The gruesome incident in the...
Want to succeed as a Chinese Communist Party official? Here are a few tips: “Build understanding of the Three Stricts and Three Honests.” “Build a moderately prosperous society in all respects.” “Hold high the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics." These were among the takeaways from...
Testifying at their trial Friday, student leaders of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Umbrella Movement accused the government of clamping down on their right to demonstrate, which they said had driven them into civil disobedience in order to fight for democracy. “We know neither the central government...
In the Chinese capital, Beijing, it’s that time of year again: a time of motorcade-induced traffic jams, stepped-up security, and round-the-clock coverage of dour-faced, dark-suited political representatives discussing — and often fawning over — the policy guidelines of their superiors. On Thursday,...
The 15-member United Nations Security Council voted unanimously Wednesday to impose sweeping new sanctions on North Korea, including mandatory cargo inspections and a ban on exports of most natural resources, in response to its recent nuclear and ballistic missile tests. The penalties were approved...
Indonesia lifted a tsunami warning issued Wednesday after a powerful earthquake off Sumatra sent islanders rushing to high ground. The U.S. Geological Service said the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.8. It was centered at a depth of 15 miles undersea, it said. Shallow earthquakes are more likely...
A mermaid, a panda and a monkey king helped China rack up more than $1 billion in movie ticket sales in February, outpacing the United States for the second year running. February is prime movie-going season in China with the nation marking the Lunar New Year or Spring Festival holiday. Last year,...
They have disrupted movie screenings, scuffled with fellow students and briefly held a liberal journalist hostage. And in recent weeks, the political activism of the student organization Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad has become even more controversial in India. Activists with the ABVP – which...
Angela Gui always heard from her father on her birthday, even as he was busy running a booming book publishing business in Hong Kong. But when she turned 22 last week, there was only silence. Her father, Gui Minhai, a naturalized Swedish citizen, had been missing for more than four months, along...
Three former executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. were indicted Monday on charges of failing to take measures to prevent the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011, the Tokyo prosecutor’s office announced. The accident resulted in a triple meltdown that displaced...
Student leaders of pro-democracy sit-ins in Hong Kong that attracted thousands in 2014 went on trial Monday for their involvement in what became known as the Umbrella Movement. Joshua Wong, 19, founder of high-school activist group Scholarism and the best-known face of the movement, is charged...
A Pakistani filmmaker’s second Oscar victory prompted celebration in her home country Monday and renewed the spotlight on so-called honor killings, which claim thousands of women’s lives every year in the South Asian nation.Honor killings are deeply embedded in South Asian culture, where arranged...
Two suicide bombings Saturday left at least 25 people dead and dozens more injured in eastern Afghanistan. The first blast took place in Asadabad, the capital of Kunar province, bordering Pakistan. According to the provincial governor, Wahidullah Kalimzai, an assailant on a motorcycle detonated...
In a crowded convention hall, young entrepreneurs practically shouted their ideas: an online marketplace for yoga instructors, an app to share songs in 30-second snippets, a mobile lunch delivery service aimed at office workers.For any veteran of the go-go era in Silicon Valley, the buzz at the...
With China’s backing, U.S. diplomats unveiled what they described as a plan for the toughest international sanctions in two decades against North Korea in response to its recent nuclear and ballistic missile tests. The sanctions are part of a resolution submitted Thursday to the United Nations...
When the Chinese took over the Las Bambas copper mine here in the Andes Mountains in 2014, Beto Chahuayllo at first barely noticed the change. He kept on painting buildings at the mine, a job he’d been doing for four years in hopes of saving enough to leave his village and his dirt-floor hut and...
Wearing a white sweater and a blue blazer, her eyes framed by round spectacles, Eun Soo-mi looked more like a librarian than a political saboteur as she approached the podium in South Korea’s parliament at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday. With the quiet resolve of an endurance athlete, the 52-year-old member...
Imagine nationwide demonstrations, mobilized primarily via a Chinese social media platform and involving tens of thousands of people, spanning more than 40 cities on the same day. Such a scenario is unthinkable in mainland China, but it's precisely what happened over the weekend. China's Internet...