Kassy Cho is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Almost. She is based in Taipei, Taiwan. Email her at kassy@almostmag.co.
world
A giant sculpture of a whale’s tail in the Netherlands managed to stop an overground metro train from plunging into the ground after it failed to stop at the end of the line.
Impact
New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed a Māori woman as the country’s foreign minster for the first time in history.
Activism
Tens of thousands of people in Taiwan held the world’s biggest pride march since the COVID-19 pandemic began on Saturday, after the country reported more than 200 days without a local transmission of COVID-19.
Cute
For the second year in a row, Taiwanese online shopping platform, Shopee, held a “down-to-earth” Halloween party, where attendees could only dress up as normal people
LGBTQ
The Taiwan military’s first same-sex weddings saw two women marry their wives in another landmark moment for LGBTQ rights in Asia.
Activism
Thousands of women have taken to the streets across Poland for days in a row following a ruling that bans abortion for almost all cases.
world
Thailand’s oldest national park will start mailing trash visitors left back to them with a note saying, “You forgot these things at Khao Yai.”
Cute
The couple, Wan-ji and Sho-er, who run a laundry shop in Taichung, Taiwan, have gone viral on Instagram.
Activism
Starbucks’ first sign language store in Tokyo, Japan, is run by 25 staff members, 19 of whom are deaf or hard of hearing.
Women
Tshego Pule, 28, was reportedly eight-months pregnant when she was murdered and found hanging from a tree near Johanessburg, South Africa.
Impact
The law making child abuse illegal comes after Romina Ashrafi, a 14-year-old girl was allegedly beheaded by her father with a farming sickle.
Women
Vera Uwaila Omozuwa, a 22-year-old microbiology student, was raped and murdered in a church in Benin city in the south of Nigeria.