Laos' bizarre capital is a languid collection of wide French-style avenues furnished with cruising tuk tuks, and plane-tree studded neighbourhoods dotted with Buddhist temples and French colonial architecture.

Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said that "the judgement in itself is a message to Pakistan that they should not export terror to India."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was believed to be making a rare trip to China amid tensions over the sinking of a South Korean warship and stalled nuclear disarmament negotiations, South Korean reports said.

A NZ schoolboys cricket team has travelled to play in India for two weeks despite a Mfat warning of an "extreme risk" of terrorism.

A major hospital has evacuated patients and suspended all but emergency surgery.

China is undergoing an awful wave of frenzied attacks on schoolchildren by knife-weilding men.

A Chinese gymnast, now living in Huntly, has been stripped of an Olympic bronze medal for being too young during the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

Being a large man taking up a space usually occupied by three Vietnamese, writer Walter Mason was obviously an easily noticed foreign visitor in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon).