Pushed to margins, women vanish from Bangladesh's political arena Despite helping to spearhead the uprising that led to the upcoming Bangladeshi elections, women are poised to be largely excluded from the South Asian country's political arena.

@timmiller.bsky.social and I covered a lot of ground with Sam Harris on Making Sense. Give it a listen here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlBZ...

Support for people with disabilities to live in the community remains lackluster despite recurring cases of abuse in residential facilities www.koreaherald.com/article/1067...

If American journalists want a guide on how to handle interviews with Trump apologists, then Lewis Goodall offers a very clear approach. Don’t let them off the hook. youtu.be/iv-6UN9zj30?...

Despite recognising the pitfalls of AI, young adults and children across South Asia continue to use it for emotional, academic, and professional support. But experts worry that without sufficient guardrails, this reliance could have a negative impact. www.asiandispatch.net/why-are-chil...

Seats Without Sway: Women in Indonesia’s Parliament Women’s presence in Indonesia’s parliament still falls short of the 30 per cent quota. They are also underrepresented in parliamentary bodies handling strategic issues and in their leadership ranks.

If you’re looking to support access to Asia-focused opportunities for young people of color during a moment of DEI rollback, consider donating to @usnabea.org usnabea.org/hong-bao-2026

An American news institution is dead. Help build the next great newsroom. At The Bulwark, we will always be honest and direct about this administration and what it’s doing to America. We will never back down. So ride with us @thebulwark.com: www.thebulwark.com/p/an-america...

Taiwanese women spent more than three hours per day on average providing unpaid care in 2024, only slightly less than five years before, with married and partnered women doing more housework than others, Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) data showed. www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/...

It took a long time to approve. But finally, after a three-year trial run, women in Japan can now buy the morning-after pill nationwide without a prescription. The move comes after years of opposition - including from men in Japan's medical community.

Changes must be made across a wide range of settings to overcome deeply rooted gender roles and achieve gender equality, Rengo head Tomoko Yoshino said in an interview.

Emergency contraceptives to help prevent unintended pregnancy became available over-the-counter in Japan for the first time, allowing the drugs to be purchased at about 5,400 pharmacies and drugstores nationwide. 👉 ebx.sh/VLPdSE

Women taking their husband’s last names is still popular among heterosexual couples in the U.S. and the U.K. But in China, Vietnam, Korea, Ethiopia, and Senegal women keeping their last name after marriage isn’t a law, it’s a cultural norm.

Taliban birth control ban: women ‘broken’ by lethal pregnancies and untreated miscarriages

Anyone else find Bridgeton season 4 ep. 1 so predictably dull?

Once again, we cancelled $86M in Dept of Education funding across all of America’s universities for area & foreign language studies - programs created during the Cold War expressly for national security purposes - because we were told we couldn’t afford it & it wasn’t a government priority anymore.

The Olympic Games are supposed to symbolize peace, cooperation, and shared humanity. Naturally, the United States looked at that tradition and said: You know what this needs? ICE.

Reminder that, as of the latest reports, Liam Ramos is still in prison in Texas - now for 5 days. His parents are legal asylum seekers with no criminal record.

In Emi Yagi’s surreal novel, statues can speak, so the story unfolds in a museum on Mondays when a girl is paid to be a conversation partner in Latin for a statue of Venus.

Pam Bondi just sent a letter to Minnesota officials saying ICE will leave if the state turns over its voter database to Trump. Guess what? This has never been about safety or immigration. It’s a pretext for Trump to take over elections in swing states.

they went to an emergency room seeking help for their 7 year old child. ICE arrested the 7 year old and her parents. the family is here legally. www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...

Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him. White. Hot. Rage.

Breaking news: Federal agents in Minneapolis fatally shot a man believed to be U.S. citizen. The victim was a 37-year-old White male, a resident of the city and appeared to lawfully own a gun, the police chief said. https://wapo.st/3M62eyV

Minnesota is the best of us.

A breakfast restaurant, a bike shop, and a brewery: these are some of the hundreds of businesses across Minnesota closing their doors Friday as part of a general strike to push Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of the state.

English debates “they.” Japanese debates “I.” This week we look at how pronouns, names and suffixes encode gender — often in opposite ways.

I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.

[Breaking] Ex-PM gets 23 years in prison as court calls 2024 martial law an insurrection www.koreaherald.com/article/1066...

New — I wrote about ChongLy Scott Thao, the elderly Hmong American wrongly arrested and forced out of his home by ICE in his underwear during the punishing Minnesota winter, what witnesses saw, and DHS's racist claim that he fit the description of another Asian man they were looking for. My story:

Spent last week in D.C. working with 24 students from the U.S., Japan, China, and South Korea on gender, power, and international affairs. For many, it was their first time applying a gender lens to diplomacy—and they met it with rigor.

“Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Canada are sending troops to Greenland amid continued threats from U.S. President Donald Trump to annex the territory, multiple outlets reported.” Good.

A few months ago, ICE hired me I didn't sign and submit any paperwork. I almost certainly failed the drug test. I'm real outspoken about my opposition to the Trump administration, and I am extremely googlable And yet, there it was, in plain English. "Welcome to ICE!" My latest for Slate

I saw this photo right before bed and thought it was AI. But this morning, the South Korean presidential office released video and it is definitely real. They jammed to BTS and “Golden”

It's amazing to watch US paramilitaries stomping through retail stores in America like this. After the Gwangju Uprising, I spent months in South Korea under the vicious dictator Chun Doo Hwan. I rarely saw ROK security forces deployed in public like this until the regime began to crumble in 1987.

Minneapolis Is in Mourning. It’s Also Very, Very Pissed Off In the hours after an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, the city came together — and found a difficult balance of grief and rage.

Sexual harassment has officially become a criminal offence in Thailand following the enforcement of an amendment to the Criminal Code, which took effect on Dec 30. www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/gen...

They Answered an Ad for Surrogates, and Found Themselves in a Nightmare Dozens of Thai women traveled 4,000 miles — only to be trapped by the dark side of the global fertility industry. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/m... Archive link: archive.is/bcdQ

If you throw out the year of COVID, the average of 48,667 jobs added per month in 2025 is the lowest monthly job growth since 2010.

South Korea’s search for 'gender discrimination against men' It is an ironic policy focus in a country with one of the worst records on women’s rights in the industrialized world and one that is consistently criticized for making insufficient efforts to address gender inequality.

@chrislhayes.bsky.social: “A 37-year-old American citizen, the mother of a young child is dead tonight. She was shot in the face by an agent of the federal government, and that government has spent the day telling despicable lies about her.”

Officially, the new tax, passed in 2025, is called the Child and Child-Rearing Financial Support System (こども・子育て支援金制度). It’s intended to fund financial stipends to encourage people to have kids. Social media users have taken to calling it the “Bachelor Tax.” buff.ly/ch754Vh

Her name is Renee Nicole Good, and she was executed in broad daylight by the domestic terrorist organization known as ICE.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is strengthening its support for improving accessibility to the arts for people with disabilities.

Nearly 60 women lawmakers in Japan, including Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, submitted a petition calling for more toilets in the parliament building to match their improved representation. 👉 ebx.sh/4mxOAP

If you want to understand the underbelly of gender tensions in Korea, the Burning Sun documentary is a good place to start. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EEp...

Feels relevant

China social media thrashes one-child policy after population control czar dies State media praised Peng Peiyun, ex-head of China's Family Planning Commission, as "an outstanding leader" in her work related to women and children. The reaction on Chinese social media to her death was less positive.

China to hike tax on condoms in attempt to boost falling birth rate From 1 January, contraceptives will be subject to a 13% VAT rate – part of a carrot-and-stick approach by the government to increase births.