LaNUBlog™

Cambodia is benefiting from two decades of relative stability, having endured civil war and the murderous rule of the Khmer Rouge. As it attempts to end its dependence on foreign aid, the country's economic potential and natural resources are drawing foreign investment - especially from China and neighbouring Vietnam. Garment-making is the biggest industry, employing around half a million people and accounting for 80% of exports. Tourism is expanding, and Cambodia hopes to tap into offshore oil and gas reserves. However, corruption is deep-rooted and Cambodia is still one of the world's poorest countries, with around one third of people living on less than one dollar per day. Most of the workforce is employed in subsistence farming. The Mekong River provides fertile, irrigated fields for rice production. The government in 2012 approved the controversial Sesan 2 dam project to boost hydroelectric power on the river. Angkor Wat's 12th Century temples show Hindu-Buddhist ...

. . .Continuation, The military authorities offered to allow her to travel to the UK to see him when he was gravely ill, but she felt compelled to refuse for fear she would not be allowed back into the country. Her last period of house arrest ended in November 2010 and her son Kim Aris was allowed to visit her for the first time in a decade. When by-elections were held in April 2012, to fill seats vacated by politicians who had taken government posts, she and her party contested seats, despite reservations. "Some are a little bit too optimistic about the situation," she said in an interview before the vote. "We are cautiously optimistic. We are at the beginning of a road." She and the NLD won 43 of the 45 seats contested, in an emphatic statement of support. Weeks later, Ms Suu Kyi took the oath in parliament and became the leader of the opposition. And in May, she embarked on a visit outside Burma for the first time in 24 years, in a sign of apparent confiden...

Aung San Suu Kyi stood for election for the first time in 2012 Like the South African leader Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi has become an international symbol of peaceful resistance in the face of oppression. The 66-year-old spent most of the last two decades in some form of detention because of her efforts to bring democracy to military-ruled Burma. In 1991, a year after her National League for Democracy (NLD) won an overwhelming victory in an election the junta later nullified, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee chairman, Francis Sejested, called her "an outstanding example of the power of the powerless". She was sidelined for Burma's first elections in two decades on 7 November 2010 but released from house arrest six days later. As the new government embarked on a process of reform, Ms Suu Kyi and her party rejoined the political process. On 1 April 2012 she stood for parliament in a by-election, arguing it was what her supporters wanted even...

In public, Mrs Clinton wouldn't be drawn on what she thought of Thein Sein, saying she judged people by their actions. She did appear to have made a connection with the president's wife, chatting to her intently on the way to lunch and again on the way out to the car. Burmese journalists took pictures of her black limousine parked outside the presidential palace surrounded by a moat. The president, his wife and their entourage, stood by on the steps watching the departing motorcade drive away over the bridge. Thein Sein, a small bespectacled man wearing the traditional skirt-like Burmese lungi, waved back to occupants in one of the vans, looking slightly forlorn in front of his giant marble palace. While Burma's president has said he is determined to pursue reforms, observers believe he doesn't have the temperament needed to push beyond the initial stages of a process that will be long and could be messy, since not everybody in his government is on board. After their...

They could not have had more different lives or be more different in personality and outlook. But when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi came face to face for the first time on Thursday evening in Rangoon after years of reading about each other's struggles, fears and dreams, there appeared to be a moment of instant recognition. By coincidence, they wore matching outfits for the occasion - white Asian-style jackets, their hair tied at the back, Mrs Suu Kyi with flowers pinned in her low pony tail. Mrs Clinton, one of the world's most famous and powerful women with a commanding, charismatic personality had, perhaps for the first time, met her match in the equally world-famous pro-democracy activist with a quiet demeanour and vulnerability hiding a steely determination. Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate revered in her country and inspiring to millions around the world, political royalty treated with deference by her entourage, found hersel...

Myanmar, also known as Burma, was long considered a pariah state, isolated from the rest of the world with an appalling human rights record. From 1962 to 2011, the country was ruled by a military junta that suppressed almost all dissent and wielded absolute power in the face of international condemnation and sanctions. The generals who ran the country stood accused of gross human rights abuses, including the forcible relocation of civilians and the widespread use of forced labour, including children. The first general election in 20 years was held in 2010. This was hailed by the junta as an important step in the transition from military rule to a civilian democracy, though opposition groups alleged widespread fraud and condemned the election as a sham. It was boycotted by the main opposition group, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) - which had won a landslide victory in the previous multi-party election in 1990 but was not allowed to govern. At a glance *...