Asia-Pacific

As China embarks on the greatest rail-building investment since the U.S. built its transcontinental railroad, this article points to the urgent need to reform its state-controlled pricing system, both for freight and passengers, to make it effective.

Russia's economic transformation due to its oil wealth is well-known, but not so the state of its public health which shows an alarming contrasting picture.

Construction on architects TR Hamzah & Yeang's EDITT Building (Ecological Design in the Tropics) is underway in Singapore

40 years of marriage was apparently too many, as a man in Cambodia cut his home in two, moving his half to his parents' property.

A stray cat born and raised at a Japanese train station has been named its official stationmaster -- and become a tourist attraction that's successfully boosted the local economy by more than $10 million.

The Cambodian city of Siem Reap is a hotbed of tourist activity -- and of tacky hotels. Many say this sprawl of hotels is a major problem in the city, but new designs are making the city a cooler place to visit and live.

Tokyo finds solution to commuter bicycle parking shortage by building high-tech robotic garages.

One man's personal quest to save the beauty of Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor from rampant development.

Toyota has hired two firms to build solar panels to augment the diesel engines on their car-carrying behemoths. The result will be a cut in CO2 emissions of 1 to 2 percent per year, or about 20 tons.

After a 16-year hiatus, construction has resumed on a gigantic North Korean hotel that some architects and engineers fear is so poorly built that it will never be occupied.

MarketWatch reports on the rise of contactless smart cards in public transit and banking, and speculates that the time is ripe to put the two uses on the same card.

In Kamikatsu, Japan, waste is not a problem -- mainly because new policies practically forbid it. But citizens have adapted to their new zero-waste lifestyle.

A Taiwanese inventor is proposing a rail system that never stops for passengers, virtually eliminating delays. Follow the full story link to see the video.

Will laser-projected pedestrians make crossing the street safer in South Korea?

American-style malls are cropping up in Siberia, and gobbling up land, to enable once-isolated Russians to consume in ways that might have been unimaginable a generation ago.

In the mid-1980s New Zealand sold its national rail assets to private industry in hopes of developing a profitable, efficient rail network. With deteriorating infrastructure and a desire for greener transit, the government has decided to buy it back.

"Cat cafes" are popping up all over Tokyo, giving patrons the company of a cat -- without the burden of actually owning one. There are at least seven cat cafes in Tokyo.

This 12-part video series from Vice gives a gritty look at the Texas-sized patch of plastic flotsam that has formed in the Pacific Ocean -- and the global environmental and health hazards it presents.

These two videos show the downside of high public transit ridership.