Lily Jamali

In Chennai, India, it is what is called “the December Season,” a time when the city comes alive with thousands of concerts featuring Carnatic music.

India and China are competing for influence in the Maldives, a tiny country of 1,200 islands scattered in the northern Indian Ocean.

The Maldives is one of the countries most imminently threatened by rising seas from climate change. But as Lily Jamali reports, even many people in the tiny Indian Ocean nation don’t sense a real threat to their lives and livelihoods.

As the Kyrgyzstan’s fledgling democracy moves forward, the local media have been covering events closely. But so has an older, arguably more powerful institution in Kyrgyzstan.

This year’s reform movement in the Arab world has raised questions about US cooperation with repressive regimes.