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PEOPLE OF ASIA
Teaching a girl to fish
A trek to the world’s highest peak gives rise to one of education’s greatest endeavours.
Little Januka (not her real name) grew up on the streets of Katmandu, selling trinkets to try to make enough money to eat and feed her three younger sisters. Her mother had passed away and her father had abandoned them. She moved in with her grandmother but had to work as a housemaid to warrant her keep. At age 15 she met with an opportunity to change her world.
A Wii problem
Gamers celebrate pain much to Nintendo’s relief.
There is a new danger lurking in the living room and it is responsible for everything from deep cuts to broken arms and dislocated knees. The console that requires much more strenuous activity than the average PS3, the Nintendo Wii, is creating quite a stir. Tales of strained wrists and broken windows continue to pervade the Internet, all due to using the Wii, if a tad over enthusiastically. Things have certainly changed since the days when the only damage a game console could possibly do was to your wallet or your thumb.
Penny Wong
Australia's first Asian-born woman in Parliament leads the country in talks about Climate Change.
Born of a Malaysian father and Australian mother, Penny Wong moved to Australia at the age of eight after her parents divorced. There she gained an interest in politics, and later earned her law degree.
It wasn't always broken
As the world watches Zimbabwe burning from a safe distance, one girl remembers what it was like being raised in a country that once held all of Africa's hope for a better future.
They don’t know how to cook meat in other countries. Mostly, and especially in the UK, it’s overcooked, or sometimes smothered in thick gravies. When we were little, my brother and I would happily devour entire rare steaks and use our teeth to strip every morsel from the bones we held in our hands, leaving nothing for the dogs to chew on. We must have looked as wild as the savage animals from the plains of the savannah to our parents’ polite guests who managed to use cutlery in every conceivable situation. However, this was forgiven for we were, after all, the children from Africa.
Outward bound
Newly discovered sources point to a golden age of Japanese seafaring during which the Marco Polo of Japan lived.
Before the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry’s "black" ships on the shores of Edo in 1853, Japan was a country known for its notorious isolation from the outer world. All overseas trade was restricted, and most Japanese ports were closed to foreign ships. Such isolation, however, was not always the case, as newly discovered sources point to a golden age of Japanese seafaring during the early 17th century.
Rudd in Beijing
To be honest, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Mandarin isn’t all that great. But try telling that to the students of Beijing University.
Rudd, 50, made his first trip to China in early April as Australia's head of state. Rudd is an old Beijing hand, having stayed in the Chinese capital for three years in the late 1980s. Not many Chinese, in Beijing or otherwise, had noticed the smiling official from the Australian embassy then. The fact that he could speak fluent Mandarin – in a city where many foreigners are Chinese experts – aroused little interest.
Meet Asia's dynamic First Ladies
In 2003, Taiwan's former First Lady was named one of Time magazine's Asian Heroes. Now she could face jail time. Her Thai counterpart is doing no better, having been sentenced to three years for tax evasion, without her other half. Between a graft indictment and a divorce-of-convenience, Asia's First Wives have shown that they are no mere tai tais or ladies of leisure.
They are not Laura Bush, forever smiling, forever supportive, a silent ornament next to her bumbling husband, George. Neither are they Hillary Rodham Clinton, outspoken, aggressive, a scene-stealer, as much a liability as an asset to the charismatic Bill. They are constrained by culture and tradition to be subservient to their men.
Malice in wonderland: The Imelda Marcos story
The looking-glass world of Imelda Marcos comes under scrutiny in a documentary film.
Photo by Paolo Picones
It is a testament to her residual power that Imelda Marcos was able to get a court order to prevent a damning film about her to be shown in the Philippines. What other widow of a reviled dictator could get her way in the country that she pillaged?
A father remembers his stolen child
Terrorist attacks feature all too often in the news out of Israel. With each suicide attempt that succeeds, lives are lost and sometimes, they belong to children whose parents waited in vain for them to return home from school that day. One such father was Yossi Zur.
He is determined to continue to give his son what was denied to him in death, touching many who now join him in honouring Asaf's memory.
There are some things that endure even in death. One of them is the love for a child.
A Malaysian aversion to conversion
Tan became the first living person to be allowed to leave Islam in Malaysia.
This May, the first living person was allowed to leave Islam. Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah was granted legal permission to become a Buddhist and take a new name, Tan Ean Hung.
This case – hailed as a historic ruling then – now seems to be more historical.
Amidst strong protests by Islamist groups in the capital of Kuala Lumpur against the verdict, the government itself was reported as intending to appeal the case.
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The Moving
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The work of IM Pei, Asia's most accomplished architect
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Another Point
An imaginary factual blog of General David Petraeus, Commander, United States Central Command