Asia

Chher Cheng is the only female to sit as a Commune Councilor in her Cambodian village. Elected in 2002, Cheng ran in the first wave of local elections heralded by decentralization proponents as a key step in rebuilding village life by granting more autonomy from the national agenda emanating from the capital city of Phnom Penh.(1)

Since March 2006, the United States and South Korea have been straining to complete the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Both governments claim it will yield more jobs and cheaper goods, but South Koreans are highly suspicious.

We sat around the breakfast table gently sweating along with our hosts in the early morning heat.

EI TU TA, Burma-At 35, Naw Win Schwe has already lost more than she cares to think about. During a government military offensive near Mon township in March, Naw Win's husband Maung Thanlwin was arrested and killed by Burma's ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Since then she has also lost her home, land and almost everything she and her husband had once owned. Eventually she was forced to flee for her own life as well, which is how she ended up in the Ei Tu Ta refugee camp on the eastern edge of Burma's Karen state. 

The death of the President-for-Life of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, on 21 December 2006, the shortest day of the year, has again proved that all humans are mortal, and that death is the great equalizer.  The Turkmenbashi, "Father of all Turkmen" had set the stage for his own immortality, having written down from heavenly sources a two-volume book The Ruknama (The Book of the Soul) on the model of the Koran which was dictated to but not written by the Prophet Muhammad.