Asia/Oceana

Australian Lingerie's Relaxed Image.  [Australia]  Australia, women dress the body rather than wear the clothes and we are very advanced with intimate apparel that shows the body in a relaxed way," says Sue Morphett, managing director of Bonds, the biggest selling underwear brand in Australia.  "European lingerie displays the body more in a boudoir sense.  We talk bodies."  Renowned for generations for its ubiquitous men's undershirts and dowdy women's briefs, Bonds transformed its image when it became a major sponsor of the Sydney Olympics in 2000.  The company that had not sold a bra before the turn of the 21st century is now a market leader in the women's and youth market with colorful, sporty, mix-and-match bras, camisoles, hipster briefs, lady boxers and even women's undershirts, or chesty singlets as they are known in Australia.
Cervical Cancer Vaccine Proves Effective: Test Results.  [Australia]  Final-stage clinical trials of a cervical cancer vaccine developed by University of Queensland (UQ) scientists, have shown the drug to be 100 per cent effective.  The vaccine is called Gardasil™ and it is expected to be submitted for approval by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) within the next two months.
China Simplifies Procedures for Marriage, Divorce.   [China] Chinese couples planning to get married may soon do so without a letter from their employers testifying to their unmarried status and without first having a health examination, according to a new regulation issued by the State Council Monday.  The regulation, to take effect Oct. 1, consists of six chapters, or 22 items, which will annul the old version that was in effect for nine years.  An adult male and female will be able to marry each other legally by only providing their ID cards and residence documents, and by signing a statement that they are single and not related, the new regulation said.
Losing the Gift of Tongues.  [China] Sept. 20 last year, the news went round the world of the death of Yang Huan-yi, a resident of Jiangyong district in China's Hunan province.  She was in her 90's.   She had acquired fame, and not merely with a few academic linguists, as the last surviving woman who practiced from childhood in the Nushu system of writing.  Nushu is not a language, but a recently discovered script developed over centuries by women in that remote provincial area as means of sharing thoughts and feelings between close friends.  It emerged from a long oral tradition of women's storytelling and performance.  Fortunately, enough academic ink has been spent on the subject of Nushu to ensure a record survives of its 1,000 or so graphs and their phonetic relationship to local Chinese dialect.  "Nushu country" has even become a tourist attraction, heightened by the misleading portrayal of Nushu as a "secret women's code" unreadable by men.
Most Japanese Support Female Royal Succession – Poll.  [Japan< span style="font-family:Arial">] A record number of Japanese want a law on imperial succession changed to allow a woman to succeed to the throne, an opinion poll showed.  The Tokyo Shimbun newspaper said on Sunday the poll showed 84 percent of respondents approved of the idea that an Empress could rule Japan, which the paper said was the highest proportion it had ever recorded in such a survey.  The question of succession to the thr one now occupied by 71-year-old Emperor Akihito is gaining urgency because no boys have been born into the Imperial household for four decades.   The poll comes weeks before an advisory panel to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is expected to issue recommendations on whether to revise the 1947 law limiting accession to males and their descendants.
Throne Should Be Open to Women, Panel to Say .  [Japan] A government advisory panel will recommend allowing women and their descendants to succeed to the Japanese throne, one of the world's oldest monarchies, the head of the panel said Tuesday.  If the recommendation becomes law, it would resolve a looming succession crisis.  Emperor Akihito, 71, has two sons, but no boys have been born into the royal family in 40 years.  Only males can ascend the throne.  If succession rules are changed, Princess Aiko, Akihito's 3-year-old granddaughter, could one day become Japan's first reigning empress since the 18th century.  The move might, however, spread discontent among conservatives.
Sick of Their Husbands in Graying Japan.  [Japan] In Japan, retirement has become a risky business for many wives, who are finding the stress of their husband's presence at home unendurable.  Though after-retirement stress is a common problem in most developed countries as husbands and wives try to balance relationships in their twilight years, analysts say Japan has become extraordinary for myriad reasons -- including the fact that one-fifth of Japanese are now over 65, the highest percentage in the world.   Even as gender roles have changed for younger people here, with women entering the workforce in record numbers, older Japanese have remained far more rigid.   Part of the problem is that the nature of Japanese family life has changed dramatically over the past two decades.  The tradition of retired parents living with their married adult children is rapidly disappearing, with new generations remaining single well into their forties and modern young couples choosing greater privacy.  As older couples are forced to spend more time alone together, the divorce rate among those married more than 20 years -- a group that includes most of Japan's married senior citizens -- is now the fastest-growing in the country, more than doubling to 41,958 divorces in 2000 compared with 20,435 cases in 1985, according to government statistics.

 Obituary: Endon Mahmood, Wife of Malay Leader.  [Malaysia] Endon Mahmood, the wife of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, died Thursday after a nearly four-year battle with breast cancer.  She was 64.  Endon, a publicly beloved figure who recently underwent intensive chemotherapy, passed away surrounded by her family at their official residence Thursday morning in Putrajaya, Malaysia's administrative capital, said Endon's son, Kamaluddin Abdullah.  Endon, whose mother was Japanese and father was among Malaysia's first successful modern businessmen from the Malay Muslim majority, discovered she had cancer in 2002 after her twin sister, Noraini, was earlier diagnosed with the disease.  Noraini died in 2003.  Endon had been deeply involved in awareness programs for breast cancer, the main cause of illness-related death for Malaysian women.  She has said she refused to feel sorry for herself, and felt fortunate she could obtain the best medical treatment.

Back