Banyan

GERMANY’S central bank, the Bundesbank, has just shelved a technical-assistance programme on the detection of counterfeit currency that it had planned to bring to Bangladesh. As it happens, Bangladesh is expected to introduce the death penalty for its domestic currency counterfeiters, later this year.

We blogged about this earlier today, noting the troubling implication for the Germans. They have since taken action:

While the Bundesbank believes that counterfeiting is a serious criminal offence, it considers the threat of imposing the death penalty to be excessive.

INDIA’S business leaders are joining ranks behind Narendra Modi, the controversial and egocentric chief minister of Gujarat and a leading light of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in advance of India’s next general election. Their support was evident as the chairmen of some of the country’s biggest companies, led by Ratan Tata of the giant Tata group, lined up as speakers at the opening and closing sessions of last weekend’s “Vibrant Gujarat” event. Mr Modi (whom we last interviewed in September 2012) staged it as a large-scale biennial conference and trade exhibition to build up both the image of the state and of his leadership.

EVENTS in Pakistan look more disconcerting with each new development. On January 15th the Supreme Court launched its latest attack on the civilian government of President Asif Zardari, over a long-running corruption case. Because the president is immune from prosecution but is accused of serious graft, the court has instead repeatedly gone after his successive prime ministers. The court has now ordered the arrest of the current one, Raja Pervez Ashraf, and 15 other individuals, over allegations that Mr Ashraf took bribes while he was minister for power and water a couple of years ago.

WITH luck the latest fracas between India and Pakistan, over the death of soldiers along the line of control (known as the LOC) in disputed Kashmir, may still be remembered as another example of how the two countries are learning to manage the long-running tension between them. Yet the news, on January 10th, that a fourth soldier had been killed in a third incident of cross-border fighting in just five days, is a worrying new development.

In general, India and Pakistan have been going through a spell of relative calm and friendly relations.

THE government of Laos had been exuding a bluff, self-congratulatory air towards the end of 2012—having won admission to the WTO in October and then playing host to the Asia-Europe summit in November—until suddenly a foul wind blew through, mid-December. The country’s most distinguished leader of an NGO was grabbed at a police checkpoint in the capital, Vientiane, and has not been seen since.

Sombath Somphone founded the Participatory Development Training Centre (PADETC) in 1996 with the aim of fostering sustainable, equitable and self-reliant development in Laos.

SOUTH KOREA has elected Park Geun-hye, a 60-year-old conservative, as president for the coming five years. The candidate is from the same party, the Saenuri party, as the incumbent, Lee Myung-bak. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the dictator who set South Korea on the path of break-neck development, seizing power in 1961 and assassinated by his security services in 1979. Ms Park thus becomes South Korea’s first woman president. Curiously, she also has the distinction of having once been the country’s first lady, following the assassination of her mother in 1974 by a North Korea sympathiser.

IN OCTOBER, Varsha Deshpande persuaded a pregnant friend to travel eight hours to Aurangabad, a thriving, medium-sized city in the state of Maharashtra, for an ultrasound scan that she could have easily undergone in her hometown. Ms Deshpande also persuaded her friend to go to the appointment with a small microphone hidden under her sari blouse. A man posing as her husband had a tiny video camera concealed about him. Using the recordings of what went on during the appointment, Maharashtra’s state government has filed a case against the doctor that could lead to a three-year prison sentence.