Southeast Asian pact exposes rifts [NY Times] Southeast Asian leaders signed a charter here today that was drafted as a watershed document to bind the region together as a European-style economic community but has instead exposed the sharp divisions over Myanmar and other issues among the signatories.Malaysia busts DVD lab in its biggest raid in 2007 [Reuters] Malaysia has raided a laboratory capable of churning out $52 million worth of pirated DVDs a year in......

Earlier this year, the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada suffered a huge diplomatic embarrassment at the inauguration of a US$40 million China-financed stadium built as a gift from Beijing when its police band decided it would perform the Taiwan anthem instead of the March of the Volunteers. This time, Japan has repeated the gaffe by playing the Taiwanese anthem at the ongoing Asia men's basketball championship in Tokushima. From the IHT: A Japanese diplomat in......

A Japanese website -- apparel-web.com -- has a section called Street Fashion Photo, with sections dedicated to Tokyo, New York, London and -- your guessed it -- Shanghai. They have pics organized by street: Nanjing Dong Lu, Nanjing Xi Lu, Huaihai Zhong Lu and Xujiahui. Worth a look. There's probably a lot more to it than pics, but we can't read Japanese.......

Via Wired :A Japanese-developed, adult-themed computer game has incensed some of China's online gamers who deem it a bawdy slur on the classic Chinese novel, Dream of the Red Chamber. Slaves of the Red Mansion, a fantasy game about girls sold into sexual slavery, has been denounced as "blasphemy" by some Chinese who have called for the game's designers to apologize and halt its production. "Turning Dream of the Red Chamber into a lewd game......

Can it be? An AIDS vaccine?. A journalism professor wins a defamation lawsuit against a blog host, one of whose blogs hosted comments that were critical of the teacher's teaching abilities. He won 1000 yuan and a public apology. Winning shows "personal dignity outweighs freedom of speech," the professor, Chen Tangfa, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency. Is it just us or does that sound like a moronic thing for a......

Shanghaiist greeted the news that Zhang Yimou had gone back to making touching humanistic films set in the backwaters of China with some trepidation. We hope, after the disappointment of Hero and the even more atrocious House of Flying Daggers that Zhang has gotten this whole slick martial arts fantasia thing out of his system, like Michael Jordan and his minor league baseball lark. Zhang even managed to get veteran Japanese actor Takakura Ken for......

Drew Taylor (aka KidPlastik) escaped Salt Lake City for a month last fall and visited China. He recorded some of his trip with a video camera, edited the results, set them to music and posted the whole thing on the internet for all to see. Ain't the internet grand! Mr. Plastik used Shanghaiist fave YouTube -- like Flickr for videos -- to upload his "The China Experience" movie, which, Shanghaiist believes, borrowed its soundtrack from......