Graham Lees

BANGKOK, Thailand -- While desperate people braved pro-government thugs on the streets of Rangoon to protest economically devastating fuel price rises, Burma's chief energy planner was in Singapore spouting fantastic figures about his country's oil and gas wealth. Burma has reserves of more than 600 million barrels of oil and almost 16 trillion cubic feet of gas, claimed U Soe Myint last week. But the Burmese regime sells that energy abroad to earn hard currency while Burmese suffer shortages.
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HONG KONG -- Just as growing numbers of newly affluent Chinese are planning to buy the status symbol they seek most, along comes a spoilsport government with a plan to limit the number of cars on the roads. The central government is enforcing a test run this week of a plan to take more than 1 million cars off Beijing's roads. The object is to test the measure's effectiveness in cleaning the capital's filthy air ahead of the Beijing Olympics. It's a desperate measure in a country that has devastating levels of pollution. more

BANGKOK, Thailand - Ethnic clashes that have led to 11 deaths in Moreh, an Indian town on the border with Burma, have barely raised a blip on the global news meter but have brought much trade between the two countries to a standstill. Even while Moreh has been under curfew, however, senior Indian officials were busy promoting its status as a gateway to Southeast Asia. Stymied by poor relations with Bangladesh, New Delhi is seeking to develop road, rail and waterway routes into and through Burma for its northeast region. more

SINGAPORE -- Evidence is growing that threads of homespun Islamic extremism in seven countries of Southeast Asia are weaving links among each other. Malay Muslim insurgents fighting an increasingly violent conflict in southern Thailand, for example, now appear to be receiving assistance from Islamists elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The violence there is perpetrated in the name of a radicalism that ultimately seeks a separate Islamic state, or at least autonomy, forged from Thailand's southernmost provinces bordering Malaysia. more

Russia has put a price tag of half a billion dollars on plans to build a nuclear "research" center in Burma, one of the world's poorest countries, where electricity is a luxury for most inhabitants. However, given the high cost and the need to find and fund the training of at least 300 Burmese scientists and technicians to help run it, Western diplomatic circles in Southeast Asia are beginning to take informal bets on whether the penny-pinching junta will ever actually proceed with the development.

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BANGKOK, Thailand -- Iranian money is behind a strategic oil pipeline to be built across Malaysia with the aim of linking the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea -- and eliminating a militarily vulnerable shipping bottleneck via Singapore. Almost half the world's oil tankers pass through the narrow Strait of Malacca bound for East Asia, not least China, on their way from Middle Eastern and North African oil fields. Now the National Iranian Oil Company is helping finance an estimated $14 billion pipeline across Malaysia.
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BANGKOK, Thailand -- The rekindling of formal diplomatic relations between Burma and North Korea this week completes a bizarre circle of skulduggery between two pariah states. The visit by Pyongyang's deputy foreign minister, Kim Yong-Il, to Rangoon and the half-built new capital Naypyidaw is a formality, and certainly not the first visit by North Koreans since relations were formally severed in 1983. There have been persistent reports in recent years of North Korean technicians working in Burma, as well as of trade in arms.
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BANGKOK, Thailand -- The quaint 1956 Hollywood musical "The King and I" is outlawed in Thailand under the country's increasingly catch-all "les majeste" rule, which prohibits insulting the king. With this in mind, Thai Internet users should perhaps not be so surprised that the popular video forum YouTube has been blocked for running doctored clips of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. But the YouTube blackout has illustrated to a global audience a level of creeping electronic censorship that is now extending into all Web corners where Thais want to talk about politics.
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BANGKOK, Thailand -- After the nightly curfew begins at 8 p.m. in parts of the southern Thailand city of Yala, only stray dogs and army patrols move about the streets. The eight-hour curfew has been in force since Muslim insurgents stepped up their bloodletting in the area, stopping a minibus and cold-bloodedly executing its eight Buddhist occupants, including women and children. One Western military analyst believes the insurgency, which does not appear to be a top priority in Bangkok, is being funded by the Saudi-based Wahhabi movement.
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The Year of China in Russia got off to a top-level handshaking start in Moscow this week, ensuring that whatever else might go amiss, visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao would have something to smile about, for the TV stations back home at least. But after three days of political pledges and promises with President Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders, the Chinese president has returned home without any progress on the one issue that hexes Beijing now -- energy security. more

CHIANG KHONG, Thailand -- In the sleepy village of Chiang Khong on the muddy-brown banks of the mighty Mekong river, the young men are excited by talk of a bridge to link Thailand with Laos on the other side. The older population of mostly farmers and small traders are less enthused; they have heard it before. But this time, a bridge to open up a forgotten corner of empty, jungle-covered hills on the edge of the Golden Triangle might really happen, thanks to Chinese investment and influence.
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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- In the coffee shops and tea houses of this modernized, stylish city, the hushed talk is of a faltering economy, rising racial tensions, and the man Malaysians either love or loathe. Old political warhorse Mahathir Mohamad, now 81 and recovering from a recent heart attack, has yet again demonstrated his refusal to retire gracefully with the mantle of respected elder statesman. After antagonizing his anointed successor as prime minister on a range of issues, Mahathir now plans to conduct a "war crimes" tribunal. more

BANGKOK, Thailand -- China's warming relationship with Burma is emerging as a vital element in solving one of Beijing's biggest problems -- energy security. The jungles of Burma now seem certain to provide a shortcut for oil from the Middle East and Africa to the Chinese border. A pipeline from a Burmese port up to China's southwestern province of Yunnan would not only bypass the Malacca Strait, it would lop over 1,800 sea miles off the present journey to Chinese South China Sea ports from China's main oil sources. more

BANGKOK, Thailand -- At precisely 7:09 a.m. on Feb. 24 Thailand will collectively hope for good luck. The army generals now running the country think the country needs uplifting and have decreed this date an apparently auspicious time for a bout of national "merit-making" to be led by senior Buddhist monks. The Land of Smiles, as the Tourist Authority of Thailand labels the country, has not had much to smile at recently. Since the military coup last September, the economy has slumped, bombs have killed people in Bangkok, and now there's a rare diplomatic row with Singapore. more

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Astrology and superstitious belief are part of everyday life in impoverished Burma, where hope for every family hangs on some fortune-teller's prophesy. But there is one prediction no one in the country is prepared to make -- who will succeed ailing leader Than Shwe. Rumor is rife in Rangoon that the hardhearted general who cherishes his family life is seriously ill with intestinal cancer. His death or withdrawal from a position of influence is seen by some Burma-watchers as a small chance for reform of the hard-line regime.
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BANGKOK, Thailand -- While a jittery Thai capital has been warned to brace for more bomb attacks from unidentified terrorists, the country's military-installed government is sowing fear among Thailand's foreign business community. New laws promulgated by the unelected interim regime following the September army takeover threaten to undermine the Thai economy. Meanwhile, rumors flash around the capital about a possible counter-coup by disaffected army and police factions, and speculation runs rampant about who planted the Dec. 31 bombs that killed three people and wounded dozens of others. more

MANCHESTER, England -- In this gritty northern city once famous for its textile exports, two bus companies have had their operating licenses suspended for employing Polish drivers who cannot read English road signs. In the Romanian capital of Bucharest, a new bus station opened this week to cater for yet more people keen to travel to Eastern Europe's favorite destination. Critics argue that Britain's infrastructure and social fabric is being undermined by the biggest wave of immigration since the Roman legions arrived over 2,000 years ago. more

BRADFORD, England -- Fogbound airports, a Christmas shopping frenzy and sordid headlines about a serial prostitute strangler conspired to blur the disclosure in Britain that a Somali man wanted over the murder of a police officer escaped the country disguised as a veiled Muslim woman. To the comfort of the London government and immigration authorities, national preoccupation with seasonal festivities has failed to trigger the level of controversy that ensued when a Muslim woman recently lost her job for refusing to remove her veil while working in a junior school. more

BANGKOK, Thailand -- It was Constitution Day in Thailand on Dec. 10, and because it fell on a Sunday this year, banks, schools and offices stayed shut Monday for a holiday, ostensibly to reflect on the charter's importance. There's just one problem: Thailand hasn't got a constitution any more. The much-lauded 1997 constitution, the 16th since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, was torn up and thrown in the trash can when the army staged its coup on Sept. 19. Three months later, the country's future remains uncertain.
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BANGKOK, Thailand -- Cambodia is on the verge of attracting the attention of business news writers instead of the horror headlines that for so long marked reporting about the Southeast Asian country. Instead of horrendous stories of the murderous and bizarre Khmer Rouge regime that bludgeoned the place back into the dark ages, the news out of Cambodia is set to focus on oil and gas production and refineries and port development. Cambodians might be sitting on as much as two billion barrels of oil and 10 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to reports by the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program.
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