News stories by Joel Chong

The impact of the global recession may still be around, but Chinese communities all over Asia are bent on letting the Year of the Tiger come in with a festive, prosperous roar on Sunday.

Thanks to the inclusion of young volunteers and migrants in the cast and crew, a Lao television mini-drama series about the lives and struggles of young migrants who freely cross the border turned out to be just the right vehicle for getting their attention to migration and its risks.

Who knows how many more fossils and species are lurking in the vast, unexplored riches of South-east Asia?

The rich and unique biodiversity of the Mekong region, which has been discovered only since the recent years, is likely to be put at risk by environmental impacts that climate change is expected to bring, says the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) in a report launched here Friday.

'I'm being watched all the time. I am considered an organiser. Between noon and 2 p.m., I am allowed to go out of the monastery. But then I'm followed,' Buddhist monk U Manita said. 'I'm prepared to march again when the opportunity arises. We don't want this junta. And that's what everyone at my monastery thinks as well.'