News stories by Kalinga Seneviratne, page 2

SINGAPORE, Jul 17 (IPS) - The play opens with a man and his mother waiting impatiently at the dining table in the family home. A woman rushes in after a busy day at the office with takeaway dinner packets, followed by her son and daughter who walk in expecting their mother to serve them a meal.

SYDNEY, Jun 08 (IPS) - With a population of over 1.2 million people spread across 14 government districts, the suburbs of western Sydney have long been perceived as the impoverished "other half" of Australia's economic, financial and political hub, serving as a de facto port of entry for incoming migrant workers.

SYDNEY, May 25 (IPS) - Australia's largest textile workers' union and activist groups are up in arms that the country's leading retail chains, who source most of their fashion labels from Bangladesh, are refusing to sign a legally binding accord that will help to improve labour and safety standards in Bangladeshi garment factories.

SYDNEY, Mar 18 (IPS) - Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's comments about foreigners taking Australian jobs in a speech made last week in Rooty Hill, the working-class heartland of Sydney's western suburbs, has brought issues of immigration, asylum and race back into election campaigning.

SINGAPORE, Dic 20 (IPS) - The first workers strike in 26 years in this affluent Southeast Asian city-state has triggered some soul-searching about the treatment of migrant labour and the low wages they are paid.

SINGAPORE, Dic 08 (IPS) - With a population of five million crammed on a landmass of just 715 square kilometres, the tiny republic of Singapore has been forced to expand upwards, building high-rise residential complexes to house the country's many inhabitants.

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 11 (IPS) - Malaysia is gearing up for a general election in six months and as the campaigns enter the crucial voter-courting phase many observers are wondering if the political ‘tsunami', which severely weakened the ruling National Front coalition (BN) at the 2008 polls, might be repeated.

SINGAPORE, Sep 04 (IPS) - How to get Singaporeans to have more babies has become a major part of the debate about this country’s future, and the government is encouraging people to speak out on the issue.

SINGAPORE, Aug 23 (IPS) - Singapore was recently ranked as the world’s richest country. But there is much scepticism about such rankings among average citizens here.

The crash of a million-dollar Ferrari driven at high speed by a wealthy Chinese expatriate in the early hours of a weekend morning earlier this month has reignited the stormy immigration debate here, highlighting many Singaporeans’ resentment towards foreigners living and working in this small island nation.