Paul Rivers

Voters hope the military will accept their decision this time Votes are being counted in Myanmar's first openly contested general election for 25 years. Turnout is estimated in excess of 80 per cent with the elections being seen as a big step away from decades of...

Aung San Suu Kyi greets supporters On the eve of Myanmar’s election, the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) urged voters to remain calm if they were denied their democratic rights. “It is a great loss for people to be disenfranchised,” the party said in a...

Ho Kwon Ping Tension between Singaporeans and expats could undermine the city-state’s status an economic success story, warned leading businessman Ho Kwon Ping warned. “One of the major reasons that I think we can decline is what I would call social schizophrenia – the tension...

President Barack Obama will be the first US head of state to visit Laos when he attends an Asean summit in the landlocked country next year. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told a think tank in Washington DC that ahead of the visit “there...

Myanmar’s general election, due on November 8, has been condemned as “fundamentally flawed, depriving Burmese of their right to freely elect their government”, by Human Rights Watch (HRW). The democratic process was undermined by systematic problems, including the lack of an independent election regulator, the...

Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. The Asean Regional Road Safety Strategy has been finalised, said the Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. He said the strategy, which followed the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020, would...

Aung San Suu Kyi. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. A Myanmar MP from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy who was attacked with a machete while electioneering in Yangon is still in hospital but wants to return to the campaign trail. Naing Ngan Lin, a National...

The USS Lassen. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. On November 2, the United States and Brunei began an annual military exercise at Muara Naval Base in the wealthy Southeast Asian state. The 21st Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) Brunei exercise is aiming to address shared naval security...

Mandalay Palace. The highway will pass through the historic city of Mandalay in Upper Burma. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. The trial run for the India-Myanmar-Thailand (IMT) trilateral highway connecting south and southeast Asia is set to begin in December. "We are developing the protocol in advance and...

Armed soldiers stand guard in Sarawak in 1965, as a group of Chinese villagers take a communal bath. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Amnesty International is calling on Jakarta to relax censorship and the freedom to assembly over its attempts to silence discussion about the large-scale anti-communist purges...