News stories by Marwaan Macan-Markar, page 6

Every month, Buddhist monk Phra Patarapong visits this village of mostly wooden houses on stilts and draws crowds, but not just for his regular sermons on spiritualism. People come to see him also for his tips on health, in particular his warnings about the excessive use of antibiotics.

The shimmering green paddy fields across the vast terrain here remain a vivid marker of rural identity. But now, another colour — red — is steadily taking root in the villages dotting this plateau in north-east Thailand that are home to poor farmers.

If Burma’s quasi-civilian government was hoping for warmer ties with the U.S. government, Senator John McCain’s visit to this South-east Asian nation has placed such hopes on ice.

Even if French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde secures the top post at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the rumblings across Asia convey the message that the international lender's clubby custom of picking a European national to be its managing director smacks of discrimination.

Weeks after a watershed general election in Singapore, the influential role played by social media to dramatically transform political debate in this affluent city- state continues to reverberate through cyberspace.

Thailand faces a new phenomenon on the road leading to the Jul. 3 polls: an informal union between a strong opposition political party and a formidable street protest movement that may reshape this year’s political campaign.

Thailand’s powerful army chief, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, appears determined to carve out a dominant role for the military in the coming weeks, as political parties seek to woo an estimated 45 million voters ahead of the general election on Jul. 3.

The new Burmese government’s request to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) by 2014 has given its neighbours a political headache they have decided to put off dealing with till later this year.

An annual meeting of Asian finance ministers and central bank governors in Hanoi is set to address the fate of 64 million people in the region on the brink of extreme poverty. They are the worst affected by soaring food prices, which have hit record highs in the first two months of this year.

History professor Somsak Jeamteerasakul has weathered a storm of insults since mid-December for doing the forbidden: he offered an alternative assessment of the most dominant institution in the country, its monarchy, in a forum at his university. Now military officials are dropping hints he could face more than just verbal attacks.