(BANGKOK) — Several countries including Canada and Australia are in talks with the U.N. refugee agency to accept a Saudi asylum seeker who fled alleged abuse from her family, Thai police said Friday.

Thailand’s immigration police chief, Surachate Hakparn, told reporters the U.N. was accelerating the case, though he gave no indication of when the process would be complete.

Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun was stopped at a Bangkok airport on Saturday by Thai immigration police who denied her entry and seized her passport. While barricading herself in an airport hotel room, the 18-year-old launched a social media campaign that drew global attention to her case and enough public and diplomatic support to convince Thai officials to admit her temporarily under the protection of U.N. officials.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees eventually granted her refugee status on Wednesday.

Alqunun’s case has highlighted the cause of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. Several female Saudis fleeing abuse by ..

A member of a popular Japanese girl group apologized to fans on Thursday for speaking out about an assault allegation, telling audience members during one of the group’s performances that she was “truly sorry” for “causing trouble.”

Maho Yamaguchi, a member of the idol act NGT48, alleged that two men tried to grab her face at the entrance to her apartment on Dec. 8 in the city of Niigata. The pair, reportedly unemployed and in their 20s, were arrested and released without charge after telling police that they “just wanted to talk to Yamaguchi,” according to Japan’s national broadcaster NHK.

Yamaguchi made the allegation earlier this week during a live-stream that was abruptly cut short, Billboard reports. She said later on Twitter that she stayed silent for a month, hoping her group’s management would do something about the incident. She also expressed concerns for her own safety and that of her fellow members.

The 23-year-old pop star, nicknamed “Mahohon,” has since received waves ..

(BEIJING) — China on Friday broadcast pictures taken by its rover and lander on the moon’s far side, in what its space program hailed as another triumph for the groundbreaking mission to the less-understood sector of the lunar surface.

The pictures on state broadcaster CCTV showed the Jade Rabbit 2 rover and the Chang’e 4 spacecraft that transported it on the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon, which always faces away from Earth.

The pictures were transmitted by a relay satellite to a control center in Beijing, although it wasn’t immediately clear when they were taken. Officials with the China National Space Administration said they mark a “total success” for the mission in showing the rover moving away from its lander.

The pictures show a rocky surface with the jagged edge of craters in the background, posing a challenge for controllers in plotting the rover’s future travels, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Among the images is a 360-degree panorama stitched ..