Israel, Christians Negotiate The Price Of Holy Water
One of the holiest sites in Christendom has also been one of the most contested. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem lies on the site where Jesus Christ is said to have been crucified and...
View ArticleDaughter Of A Dictator Favored In S. Korean Election
Her presidential campaign rallies present blaring pop music and dancing supporters, but Park Geun-hye's campaign involves managing some tricky legacies.Her father, Park Chung-hee, was a military...
View ArticleSouth Korea's New Leader Promises Moderate Path
South Korea will have its first female president, following Wednesday's close presidential election. Park Geun-hye says she will be open to better relations with North Korea, but she leads a...
View ArticleJakarta's New Governor Seen As A Rising Star
Residents give a boisterous welcome to Jakarta's newly elected governor, Joko Widodo, when he shows up for a town meeting with the residents of a Jakarta slum where residents' shacks overlook the...
View ArticleSouth Korea Prepares The Young For A Rapidly Aging Population
At a clean and sunny community center in Seoul, the South Korean capital, senior citizens make clay models of their own faces in an arts class. Some of the faces are vivid and lifelike. Others are...
View ArticleIn Myanmar, A Hunt For Fabled Cache Of Buried WWII Spitfires
For the past few weeks a team of scientists, archaeologists and documentary makers has been digging at Yangon's international airport in Myanmar, also known as Burma. They are searching for a legendary...
View ArticleAn Indonesian Extremist Trades Rifle For Spatula
Tucked away in a back street of Semarang, a city in Indonesia's Central Java province, is a tiny, four-table restaurant. In the cramped kitchen, Mahmudi Haryono whips up a plate of ribs — lunch for two...
View ArticleAfter Long Isolation, Myanmar Now Has Suitors
For decades, Myanmar was isolated diplomatically, an economic backwater that seemed almost frozen in time amid a Southeast Asian region that was modernizing at a rapid pace.But the political reforms...
View ArticleNow A Politician, Aung San Suu Kyi Is The Object Of Protesters
Last year, Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was greeted by adoring crowds during triumphant tours of Asia, the U.S. and Europe.
View ArticleJourney To Java's 'Tempeh Village': Where Soybean Cakes Are Born
For centuries, Asia has been home to sophisticated vegetarian cultures. In recent years, Americans have gradually discovered cooking with meat substitutes like tofu and an Indonesia soybean cake called...
View ArticleAs Myanmar Reforms, Old Tensions Rise To The Surface
The town of Meiktila in central Myanmar presents a tranquil scene on a hot April day: A woman presses juice from sugar cane while customers loll around in the midday heat. The town is right in the...
View ArticleHe Helped Discover Evolution, And Then Became Extinct
Ask most folks who came up with the theory of evolution, and they'll tell you it was Charles Darwin.In fact, Alfred Russel Wallace, another British naturalist, was a co-discoverer of the theory —...
View ArticleThe Threat To Indonesia's Biodiversity, Foretold In The 1800s
British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace was not only a key figure in developing the theory of evolution in the mid-19th century but also had the foresight to call for saving endangered...
View ArticleAre Buddhist Monks Involved In Myanmar's Violence?
In the Western stereotype, Buddhists are meditating pacifists who strive to keep their distance from worldly passions. But last month, more than 40 people were killed in fighting between Buddhists and...
View ArticleAs Myanmar Reforms, Indonesia Offers Some Lessons
As Myanmar's leaders push a series of political and economic changes, they are also having to deal with recent strife between the majority Buddhists and minority Muslims, or Rohingya.Many countries...
View ArticleBattling Deforestation In Indonesia, One Firm At A Time
On the Indonesian island of Sumatra, a backhoe stacks freshly cut trees to be made into pulp and paper. Asia Pulp and Paper, or APP, is Indonesia's largest papermaker, and the company and its suppliers...
View ArticleMyanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi Walks Fine Line In Her New Role
To her many admirers in the international community, Aung San Suu Kyi remains one of the world's best known democracy icons.But in Myanmar, also known as Burma, she is now very much a politician who is...
View ArticleIn Today's Beijing, Flash Ferraris And Fading Traditions
Before it became China's capital in 1949, Beijing was a fairly provincial little city of 2 million people.Today, it has grown into a megalopolis of some 18 million people.I've recently returned to the...
View ArticleA Secret Folk Music Holds Firm In China's Badlands
When Guns N' Roses released the album Chinese Democracy five years ago, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman commented that, questions of politics aside, the GNR sound just wasn't most Chinese folks'...
View Article'Abenomics' Serving Up The Same Old Medicine In Japan?
Ever since Japan's stock market bubble burst in the early 1990s, the country's economy has been stuck in a deflationary spiral.
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