John Sparks

Life as a teacher in southern Thailand is becoming increasingly perilous. Asia Correspondent John Sparks has spent time with some of the brave women risking their lives.

Thousands of Burmese people are trying to flee persecution to neighbouring Thailand, but with an unresponsive result. Our Asia correspondent, John Sparks, reports.

Burma never enjoyed the economic boom that swept Asia – but that has saved its colonial heritage from being demolished. Now the capital has been moved from Rangoon, neglect and ruin lie in wait.

World leaders have been beating a path to Burma for months now to meet Aung San Suu Kyi and President Thein Sein. So why is Barack Obama so late to the party?

Reports come in of an attack on a mosque in Sittwe, Burma, as the conflict between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims escalates.

I first heard about Colin Cotterill on a family holiday in the old royal capital of Laos, called Luang Prabang, writes our Asia Correspondent John Sparks.

So a Chinese court in an out-of-the-way city called Hurfei has sentenced Gu Kailai, the wife of a disgraced Communist party boss, to a prison term of “life”. No dramatic tension there, I am afraid.

Feted in the West, Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi faces difficult political problems at home.

Chiranuch Premchaiporn faces a jail-term of up to 50 years prison for “defaming, insulting, or threatening” Thailand’s royal family under the country’s ultra-strict “lese-majeste” laws.

Zimbabwean newspaper reports of the ill-health of Robert Mugabe have sparked a wave of speculation over his condition in the country that the 88-year-old president has ruled since 1980.

Imagine our surprise on arrival at Rangoon’s airport, when a plain clothes operative came back with our press cards and passports with a watery smile and a (barely-audible) ‘welcome to Myanmar’

Channel 4 News Asia correspondent John Sparks writes his own travel guide to the capital city of Burma, Naypyidaw

John Sparks on his meeting with Imran Khan, whose political star is rising despite his party currently having no seats in Pakistan’s parliament.

John Sparks meets the mothers who lost their sons on Thailand’s roads – and who are campaigning to stop it happening again.

The calls began in early October with panicked sounding ‘pet’ owners begging Dr ‘Ning’ Natarika to do something. Millions of Thais were evacuating their homes, taking only what they could carry. Everything else was left behind – and ‘everything else’ happens to include snakes, monkeys (including an endangered capuchin), wild boar, hundreds of deer, a couple of black panthers, Siberian tigers, black bears, a pride of lions and so on.