The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities in Kuala Lumpur to drop a criminal charge against blogger Irwan Abdul Rahman. He was charged on 2 September with “intent to hurt” in connection with a satirical entry on his blog, nose4news, that made fun of Malaysia’s state-run power company Tenaga, news accounts said.

Most migrant women in Asia are working as foreign domestic workers. Such predominance in domestic work is obvious in countries where female migrants outnumbered men, such as the Philippines and Sri Lanka. As International Solidarity Day with Foreign Domestic Workers fell on 28 August, CARAM Asia and its members called on governments throughout the world to immediately amend national employment laws to recognise domestic workers as workers with rights no less than other categories of workers.

It would seem that when desperation plummets to really low levels, as it seems to be doing quite rapidly now, there can be no degree of decency in politics, observes Zaharom Nain.

Huo Daishan, a newspaper photographer, did not want to give up on the river he loved. So he embarked on a crusade to save the heavily polluted river. The Philippine Daily Inquirer has the story.