News stories by Marwaan Macan-Markar, page 19

A court ruling in military-ruled Burma has brought into sharp focus a law the junta widely uses to go after civilians it wants to silence.

China’s growing dependence on military-ruled Burma to meet its energy demands is poised to take concrete form when, according to activists, work commences in the coming months on the construction of oil and gas pipelines.

In a move that places greater weight on growing regional solidarity over historical ties with a western superpower, Thailand ordered its military to forcibly return over 4,000 men, women and children from the Hmong ethnic community to Laos, the country they had fled in search of political asylum.

A heated debate about the future of the Mekong River at a media conference in this northern Thai city exposed a fault line triggered by the regional giant China’s plans to build a cascade of dams on the upper stretches of South-east Asia’s largest waterway.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak will pen a new chapter in his country’s relationship with Thailand during an upcoming visit. He will be the first Malaysian leader to venture into Thailand’s southern provinces, where an insurgency has been raging for nearly six years.

The list of high-profile foreigners heading to Burma to engage and advise the country’s military regime is about to get longer. The latest due to join that flow is Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

In the wake of a meeting attended by the all-powerful military elite, Burma’s military regime is due to come under close scrutiny for concrete signs of change leading up to a promised general elections in 2010.

Eighteen months after the powerful Cyclone Nargis tore through military-ruled Burma, one question that dogged early relief efforts has lost relevance: does the country have an active civil society to help victims?

Children at the largest school in this village close to the Thai-Cambodian border have a new regimen to follow besides books and sports. They have drills, practising evacuation, in case their school comes under an artillery attack.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is known for his brash and earthy vocabulary even when, as he did in early April, he talks about himself. 'I am neither a gangster nor a gentleman, but a real man,' the politician who has led his country for 25 years said in a fit of rage.