DENPASAR, Indonesia - Mifta'im An'am Maulana Habiburrohman is not your typical Muslim preacher.
Instead of a skull cap, he wears a Javanese head dress over his 1980s-style mullet. His sermons are delivered in nightclubs instead of mosques.
With an eye on rising intolerance of "vice" in the world's largest Muslim-majority country, Habiburrohman said he upholds the right of worship for people who feel unwelcome in their community mosque because they work in clubs and bars.
A large painting depicting "The Heroes" of this past summer's dramatic cave rescue in Chiang Rai has been installed at a memorial pavilion in front of the cave.
The 14-by-three-metre canvas was moved from Wat Rong Khun on Wednesday morning, along with another two paintings of the smaller size (each is 4mx3m) under the title "Nang Non"- one was created by National Artist Chalermchai Kositpipat and the other created by various northern artists.
The practice of open defecation in rivers and other open spaces is still rampant in West Jakarta, an official has said.
"If you look at [the rivers] closely, there are some yellow stuffs [faeces] in the river's currents. So, there are a still a lot of residents defecating in the open, including in rivers in West Jakarta," West Jakarta Health Agency head Weningtyas Purnomo Rini said on Wednesday as reported by wartakota.tribunnews.com.
CEBU CITY - An adult green sea turtle that had been rescued and tagged for conservation in Malaysia was no match to traders at Pasil fish market here, who butchered the marine creature along with other "pawikan" for their meat.
Agents of the Central Visayas regional offices of the National Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Cebu City government confiscated on Tuesday about 60 kilograms of pawikan meat from an eatery on Rallos Street here.
CHENNAI, India - A seven-year-old Indian girl has complained to the police to have her father arrested after he failed to build a toilet in their home as promised, police said on Wednesday (Dec 12).
Millions of Indians do not have access to sanitation and open defecation is a problem, even in developed, industrial states.
The girl, E. Hanifa Zaara, didn't want to go out in the open and won a promise from her father to build a lavatory indoors, said police officer A. Valarmathi.
Filipinos once again ranked number one among those who spent the longest time watching porn this year, as well having a fairly close number of male and female viewers, according to Pornhub.
In its annual "Pornhub Insights" report, released by the site's research and analysis team on Tuesday, Dec.11, it was stated that Filipino visitors spent an average of 13 minutes and 50 seconds on the adult site for the year 2018. This figure is 22 seconds higher from last year.
Completing the top five are South Africa, United States, Ukraine and Canada.
SEOUL - The second wife of North Korea's founder Kim Il Sung - the step-grandmother of Pyongyang's current leader Kim Jong Un - has died, the South's government said on Wednesday (Dec 12).
Ms Kim Song Ae, who was born in 1924, is said to have been sidelined in a power struggle decades ago and put under house arrest after failing to promote her own son Pyong Il - now the North's ambassador to the Czech Republic - as the founder's heir.
Japan on Wednesday selected the Chinese character for "disaster" as its "defining symbol" for 2018, a year that saw the country hit by deadly floods, earthquakes and storms.
Japanese TV stations broadcast the annual announcement live, with Seihan Mori, master of the ancient Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto, writing the character on a huge white panel with an ink-soaked calligraphy brush.
SEOUL - Soldiers from North and South Korea crossed into each other's territory peacefully for the first time on Wednesday (Dec 12), Seoul said, as they began checking the dismantlement of guard posts in the Demilitarised Zone.
The North invaded the South in 1950, triggering the Korean War, and Seoul went on to change hands four times as Pyongyang's Chinese-backed forces and the US-led UN troops supporting the South fought their way up and down the peninsula and back again.
BANGKOK - A French tourist was gunned down early on Wednesday (Dec 12) by an off-duty Thai cop after a drunken bar fight in a seedy Bangkok district, police said.
The 41-year-old Parisian was shot dead at a downtown apartment block after an altercation with the police sergeant major, who had approached the tourist's Thai girlfriend.
"They were drunk... They started to argue and then had a fist fight, but the policeman couldn't fight back," the chief of Thailand's Immigration Police Surachate Hakpan told AFP.
MANILA - The Philippine Congress approved a 12-month extension of martial law in the restive Mindanao region on Wednesday (Dec 12), after President Rodrigo Duterte argued for maintaining tough security measures to stop Muslim extremists from regrouping.
A joint legislative session voted 235-28 in favour of retaining military rule in Mindanao until the end of next year, prolonging what was already the country's longest period of martial law since the brutal 1970s era of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
