Lifestyle
Why didn’t Asia fare better in the football World Cup?
The 2026 World Cup has ended and Spain was triumphant. The final took place on 19 July, but for Asia it was over three weeks earlier when Japan lost to Brazil. Fans in China felt encouraged that their underachieving team, which dreams of adding to its 2002 sole appearance, was not that far behind regional rivals. There wasn't much happiness elsewhere on the continent in what has been a sobering summer. John Duerden considers why Asian teams did not perform better.
Can Asia hope to star at the football World Cup?
With World Cup football finals taking place in June and July in Canada, the United States and Mexico we asked football writer John Duerden what the chances are for the Asian teams taking part.
The politicisation of cricket in South Asia
Cricket, a sporting contest followed avidly across South Asia, is now increasingly shaped by political rivalries and state power, as Ashis Ray reports.
It Was Just an Accident, a film by Jafar Panâhi
Jafar Panâhi is an Iranian film-maker and actor whose films have frequently been banned or censored in the country and who has been imprisoned twice for ‘propaganda against the Islamic Republic’. Even under legal restriction, Panâhi continued to make films without permission, sometimes produced
Asia’s Pride and Prejudice with love in the shadows
Gay Asians of both genders were later than Americans and Europeans to campaign for LGBTQ+ rights. Now they lead forceful movements in several Asian countries. Rayeesa Daulah reports.When Asian American actor BD Wong won a Tony Award for his 1988 Broadway debut as a gender-bending Chinese spy in gay playwright David Henry Hwang’s M Butterfly, no one imagined that Wong was actually gay.
Most Viewed Articles
Trump, the nation builder
The China-fication of Vietnam
