From the men daring to admit that they are "furries" to Barbie, the "Chinese running dog"... Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.
- Barbie's Vietnam -
Once before Vietnam stood against impossible odds and stopped Uncle Sam in his tracks. Now it has taken on an even more terrifying foe, Barbie, and the tsunami of pink cuteness her new movie is about to unleash on the world.
Hanoi has banned the blockbuster about the blonde doll claiming that Barbie and Ken are subliminally supporting Chinese claims to large swathes of the South China Sea that it hotly disputes.
Warner Bros insist the "child-like drawing" of a map in the movie is just a "doodle depicting Barbie's make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the real world".
"It was not intended to make any type of statement," the studio pleaded.
But Vietnamese officials are unmoved. Having forced K-pop megastars Blackpink to apologise this week for a map on their website showing the Chinese claims, they are in no mood to compromise.
- Heads you lose -
In the "good old days" if you wanted to get ahead among the Konyak of India's far northeast, you lopped off an enemy's head. But now tribal elders complain that the young are going soft.
"We witnessed our brave elders cutting off enemies' heads and participated in many battles," Nokkho Konyak told AFP, his eyes lighting up as he talked about "those simpler times".
"Today's generation is too privileged," said the 90-year-old, the doyen of a small but respected warrior community in remote Nagaland state.
Kamya Wang, 80, the wife of a local king, is not so nostalgic. "It was particularly hard for women, who worked thanklessly at home and in the fields all the time," she said, while the men were out decapitating the neighbours.
- Going to the dogs -
American lorry driver Mark Redshaw has a secret. After a hard day's trucking, he zips himself inside his "Harpo Barx" costume and channels his inner dog.
It's nothing to be ashamed of, he insisted.
Redshaw, from New York state, was one of 10,000 "furries" who descended on Pittsburgh to celebrate the once hidden subculture of people who like to dress as cuddly animal characters.
Everyone at Anthrocon 2023 "are very accepting of your strangeness", he said. You too may be furry-curious without knowing it.
"If you like Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and you follow those cartoons and go, 'Well, I wonder what it would be like to create my own character,' well you might be a furry and not even know it," Redshaw laughed.
- Swift end -
Being a Taylor Swift fan is a dangerous business in the Philippines. First there's having to deal with the disappointment of the American singer leaving the country off the Asian leg of her tour.
But thousands of "Swifties" got the next best thing when they packed a Manila mall to watch a drag queen impersonate the butter-wouldn't-melt megastar.
Taylor Sheesh lip-synched through her classic hits as Filipino fans sang and screamed along, one carrying a framed picture of Swift as the Virgin Mary.
Sheesh, a call centre worker, is one of the lucky superfans who has got a ticket to see her idol abroad. "I'm gonna die" when she walks on stage, she told AFP. - AFP