Ian Mackinnon

While prices of wheat, corn and other agricultural commodities have surged since the end of 2006, rice held fairly steady.Aware that shortages of such a vital staple could spell trouble at home, Asian governments have moved to ensure their people get enough to eat at a price they can afford, an insurance policy that has in turn raised prices further.

Dengue fever is sweeping South-East Asia in an outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus that is already threatening to become the worst in almost a decade. Hospitals across the region are filling up and the number of deaths mounting, with no country left immune, from the richest, ultra-modern Singapore, to the poorest, such as Laos and Cambodia.

Two trucks with cages crammed with Burmese migrant workers halt abruptly beside the Thai-Burmese frontier’s river landing stage. Detainees, standing and sitting, are pressed hard against one another and the wire mesh that is their temporary prison. The deportees appear resigned to their fate. When the doors fly open, 140 men and a lone woman file out and down steep steps on the Thai side of the border to a waiting barge.