Asia

The Communist Party has become obsessed with maintaining social stability in recent years. Rights advocates say it has to do with the country's unstable economy.

President Xi Jinping has led an unprecedented crackdown on lawyers, NGOs, academics and journalists. Information is more tightly controlled by the Communist Party than it's been since the Mao years.

China's ruling Communist Party's 19th national congress will likely decide the country's leadership lineup for the next five to 10 years. While leaders will go all out to present a facade of orderly transition and party unity, analysts believe that the facade conceals some brutal political power struggles, due in part to a lack of clear rules in China about how power is transferred.

The festival has been blamed for cloaking New Delhi and other cities in an unhealthy haze, but the solution has drawn plenty of criticism.

"Dictators see free, fair election as a threat," Monovithya Kem tells NPR. Her father, opposition leader Kem Sokha, is in jail on charges — which he denies — of trying to overthrow the government.

Bangladesh is struggling to accommodate 500,000-plus Rohingya who have poured across the border in less than two months. It isn't recognizing them as refugees and would prefer to see them repatriated.