Gay people in Myanmar have adopted a secret language
WEDNESDAY HAS just turned into Thursday in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, and pleasure-seekers are on the prowl in a glitzy…
Asian countries try to build travel “bubbles”
May 28th 2020IN CONTRAST TO most of Europe and America, still buffeted by covid-19, swathes of East Asia and the Pacific have…
Hobbyists hope to halt hunger in Lebanon by growing their own crops
THE COVID-19 pandemic has brought no end of comparisons to Spanish flu, which raced around the globe in 1918. For Lebanon, though,…
The covid-19 crisis is boosting mobile money
THE STORY of mobile money is one that turns during crises. In Kenya in 2008, violence broke out after a disputed election the…
The battle over state TV in Iran
THE COMEDY series “Payetakht” (Capital) has been one of the most popular shows on Iranian state TV since it began airing in…
Burundi’s rigged election
May 30th 2020AS PEOPLE ELSEWHERE hunkered down at home to avoid covid-19, millions in Burundi crowded into polling stations on…
A border dispute between India and China is getting more serious
China is nibbling away at Indian territory and digging inMay 28th 2020WHEN INDIAN and Chinese soldiers brawled at Pangong lake…
India and China square up on their Himalayan border
May 27th 2020WHEN INDIAN and Chinese soldiers brawled at Pangong lake in Ladakh earlier this month—a punch-up serious enough…
As covid-19 spreads, Indonesia’s president has an unhappy Eid
Citizens pay the price for Joko Widodo’s flip-flops on a holiday travel banIT SHOULD BE a time of bowing, shoulder-to-shoulder,…