Asia

By Arnab Sengupta in Asia on April 11th, 2011
[Photo by AFP]

 

Follow the latest events around the Pacific Rim after an 9.0-magnitude earthquake off Japan's coast triggered a devastating tsunami.

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By Marga Ortigas in Asia on April 9th, 2011

"Seeing video of an actual quake makes you think you can imagine what one really feels like," a colleague with us here in Japan said after the magnitude 7.1 quake rocked the northeast coast the other night, "but boy was I wrong!", he finished. 

And he was right.

There have been many aftershocks since the big one on March 11... but they were all "just" in the high 5s or low 6s on the scale. It had gotten so that you became so used to the ground intermittently moving underneath you that you just kept right on doing what you were doing throughout the shaking. Sleeping. Eating. Trying to walk. Whatever. We had all by now developed "sea-legs". Or so we thought.

That's because we'd as yet felt nothing as powerful as the one on Thursday night. (It's been two days since, and my knees are still wobbly!)

Tags: Japan
By Prerna Suri in Asia on April 8th, 2011
Photo by Al Jazeera/Prerna Suri

It is being called India's version of Tahrir Square after Egypt's protests that toppled the president. Jantar Mantar, the country's historic stretch, is crowded with Indians. They're singing, chanting, dancing, painting, holding up placards in 45 degrees heat - all for one cause: corruption.

"Politicians are getting richer and we're paying the price for it. We don't have jobs and while we're suffering they're living it up,"  says 22-year-old Swati, a university graduate. She's supposed to be the face of 'shining India', where opportunities are available in plenty, but her presence in these protests is defying that image.

By Andrew Thomas in Asia on April 8th, 2011
Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd [EPA]

It was an amazing spectacle: former prime minister, now foreign minister, Kevin Rudd slowly – but surely – undermining his successor on live TV. And – just as the assassin always smiles – doing so while being praised by fellow panelists and clapped by the audience for "honesty" uncharacteristic in a politician.

Monday Night’s Q&A – Australia’s version of the BBC’s Question Time – suddenly became a key moment in Australia’s political narrative.

By Rahul Pathak in Asia on April 5th, 2011

File 20346

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By Andrew Thomas in Asia on April 3rd, 2011
Photo by EPA

Last week was not a good one for Australian attempts to establish a pan-Asia framework for assessing asylum applications.

At a conference in Bali, prime minister Julia Gillard’s plan for a processing centre on Timor-Leste failed to gain traction.

A "regional co-operation framework" with a "centre or centres" was cited as an aspiration. Nothing, though, was fixed.

Promises of a centre somewhere, one day, do not convey the urgency the Australian government claims it has. Politically in Australia, the consensus is that quick action is needed.

Boats full of asylum seekers keep arriving. A fortnight ago, the detention centres on Christmas Island burned after riots over application delays and overcrowding; hundreds of detainees temporarily roamed loose.

By Wayne Hay in Asia on April 2nd, 2011
Photo by AFP

The Japan government's announcement that there would be a boost in the search for bodies was well overdue.

It's been more than three weeks since the tsunami hit but in many areas it looks like the waves have just crashed ashore.

Debris is still piled high, possibly hiding bodies. Cars still sit in the most bizarre locations, on top of the remains of buildings or precariously leaning vertically against trees.

Just before the announcement from the government, we saw recovery workers in pockets but they seemed to operate without a clearly defined pattern. We saw some soldiers from the US helping along with a handful of Malaysians but there appeared to be little foreign assistance.

This is a mammoth task but one that should have been given a boost a lot earlier.

Then there are the survivors. There around 1900 evacuation centres in place. Some of them are in excellent condition and are very well run, while others are in very bad shape.

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By Rahul Pathak in Asia on April 1st, 2011
Photo by Reuters

Superstar, Genius, God… all words that at some point have been used to describe Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.  

While most cricket fans around the world are aware of the huge popularity of the "Little Master" it's only when you come to India that you realise the near religious devotion the one billion strong Indian public has for the man from Mumbai.

And when you're in Mumbai you can take that devotion and multiply it by a thousand. If Sachin (no one calls him Tendulkar round here) scores his 100th international hundred to help India win the World Cup final against Sri Lanka then this city may well spontaneously combust.

By D. Parvaz in Asia on March 29th, 2011
Photo by D. Parvaz

In doing a story on what happened to three towns along Japan's north east coast - each of them hit by the tsunami, but with massive differences in losses and casualties - I decided to put together a slideshow of what Ofunato and Yoshihama looked like after the March 11 disaster. 

(Photos of the hardest hit town or Rikuzentakata are embedded in the original piece)

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By Rahul Pathak in Asia on March 29th, 2011
Picture by GALLO/GETTY

A no-fly zone, a city in lockdown and worst of all, V.I.P.s and V.V.I.P.s - and probably the odd V.V.V.I.P. - can't park their private jets at the local airport.

All this for a cricket match.

Fortunately for me, this isn't the cricket match I'm covering.

While India and Pakistan lose their collective heads over the mela in Mohali, I'm in the rather more relaxed surroundings of Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital.

Don't get me wrong, this is a country hugely excited about the World Cup, but it's an excitement tempered with a more chilled-out attitude, more akin to people from the Caribbean than the sub-continent.

As Colombo says goodbye to the World Cup, they do so in the knowledge that this has been a much happier experience than the last time they co-hosted this event in 1996.

Tags: Sri Lanka

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