LAOS-CULTURE: ASEAN Attempts to Build on a Shared Language: Music

A landmark concert featuring artistes from eight of the ten South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) took place here on Jan. 21, in an effort to build a regional community through the common language of music.

BANGLADESH: Coup Bid Reveals Extremism Within Army

Bangladesh’s army has won paludits as leading United Nations peacekeepers, but the January coup attempt against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government has exposed lurking religious extremism within its ranks.

India Weighs Social Media Curbs

After India's agriculture minister Sharad Pawar was slapped by a young Sikh man at a function in New Delhi, to record his protest against corruption in high places, social media sites went viral with musical spoofs and caricatured images of the incident.

China Looks Both Ways on Iranian Oil

China’s response to calls from the West to join an oil embargo penalising Iran for its nuclear programme so far has been to choose the middle course typical of its non-interfering foreign policy of the last 30 years – denouncing sanctions on one hand yet working to protect its national interests on many fronts.

CHINA: In Chains, And Writing Out

Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, has been placed at the forefront of the fight for human rights in China once again with a new collection of works published in translation this January.

PAKISTAN-INDIA: Women Expose Secret Genital Cutting Rite

"It was a dark and dingy room, where an elderly woman asked me to take off my panties, made me sit on a low wooden stool with my legs parted and then did something…I screamed out in pain," recalls Alefia Mustansir, 40, of her childhood experience.

PAKISTAN: New Rehab Plan Brings Hope for War-Disabled

The prolonged United States-led war against terrorism has left a large number of people disabled in Pakistan, compelling the government to institute a rehabilitation plan that will include imparting vocational skills.

INDIA: Male Activists Enhance Pre and Postnatal Care

The primitive Juang tribe in remote Nola village on Chandragiri hill experienced its first three institutional childbirths only a month ago.

PAKISTAN: Violence, Death Stalk Child Domestic Help

"He was a happy child, my younger brother," Mohammad Ramzan, 18, reminisced, his voice steeped in sadness.

SRI LANKA: Poorest Still Go Hungry

Experts agree that Sri Lanka's free pre and postnatal clinics across the island nation have helped bring infant mortality down to 15 per 1,000 live births and the under-five mortality rate to 21 per 1,000 live births.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Informal Economy Ensures Equitable Development

Although Papua New Guinea is known as a resource-rich country, 85 percent of the population depends on the informal economy for a living.

BURMA: Dismantling a Dictatorship – Peacefully

As he dismantles a 50-year military dictatorship without a shot being fired, Burmese President Thein Sein is resorting to the political art of compromise.

JAPAN: Tsunami Brings Sea Change to Tohoku

Yumi Goto, 60, lives with her husband in a temporary shelter on a windy hill that overlooks vast stretches of tsunami-devastated seacoast where her home was once located.

INDIA: Advancing Economy Reveals a Hungry Underbelly

Even a year after Rani, a three-year-old tribal girl in the backward Wayanad district of southern Kerala state, was treated in a government hospital for gastroenteritis she remains grossly underweight and suffers from frequent bouts of diarrhoea.

PAKISTAN: Taliban Bombs Get Deadlier

In their efforts to kill and injure more people as part of a terror campaign in northern Pakistan, the Taliban militia have resorted to lacing bombs with toxic chemicals that leave survivors with complicated wounds.

JAPAN: Pushing Nuclear Exports After Fukushima

Japan plans to boost civilian nuclear exports even as it tries to appease its population angered at radiation leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, crippled by an earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11, last year.

BURMA: Political Prisoners Freed – Conditionally

The release of 651 prisoners, a process which started this month, is being seen as a victory for activists and families who have had to contend with Burma’s notorious prison system.

THAILAND: Malay-Muslim Insurgency – Lessons Learnt

Teachers’ Day on Jan. 16 was a sombre affair in Thailand’s troubled southern provinces where memories are strong of 155 educators killed over the past eight years in an insurgency led by Malay-Muslim separatists.

PAKISTAN: Forests Fall Victim to the Taliban

The forests of northwestern Pakistan have become the latest victim of the Taliban’s increasingly desperate quest for resources to sustain and fund its military programme.

INDIA: The Tribal Show Goes On

In the eastern city Kolkata, a tourist just back from a holiday in India’s Andaman islands last week boasts he threw bananas to Jarawa tribe members and secretly photographed them when their car passed through a jungle.

CHINA: Building a Cultural Front Against the West

President Hu Jintao of China made headlines in the early days of the new year saying China and the West were engaged in an escalating culture war, and calling on Chinese people to strengthen cultural production to defend themselves against the assault.