Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — the Iranian leader Washington loves to hate — has only a few more months left in his presidential term. But this is not cause for celebration. If President Barack Obama really wants to improve relations with Tehran, working with Mr. Ahmadinejad may be his best bet.

Ali Reza Eshraghi (VS ‘09) writes for The New York Times.

Read the full article.

Bao Tong, 76, was a top aide and speechwriter for the secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1980s. Now he lives under virtual house arrest, his every move observed, every visitor screened by a handful of guards, every conversation presumably monitored. The Communist Party would clearly like him to fade into oblivion, to live out the rest of his days caring for his goldfish and taking walks in the park. But Bao Tong has no intention of going out quietly.

Austin Ramzy (’03 ) writes from Beijing for TIME.

Read the full story.

Photo via TIME

In introducing Richard Holbrooke’s mission to promote counterterrorism cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama has warned that “there is no answer in Afghanistan that does not confront the al-Qaeda and Taliban bases along the border [in Pakistan].”

Aryn Baker (’01) writes from Islamabad for TIME.

Read the ful article.

Photo via TIME via Corbis

President Obama’s 18-minute Inaugural Address on Tuesday was generally lauded by Americans for its candor and conviction. But the Chinese Communist Party apparently thought the new American president’s gilded words were a little too direct.

Edward Wong  (’98) reports from Beijing for the New York Times.

Read the full story.

Oakley Qiao had every reason to feel confident when he began his job hunt last September. He was a student at one of China’s top graduate business schools. He already had a few years of work experience. Students applying for jobs at the same time the previous year had gotten two or three offers by the winter, sometimes for a starting salary 20 times the average Chinese annual income.

But on Tuesday, Mr. Qiao walked away empty-handed from the campus of Peking University to take a train northeast to his frigid hometown.

Edward Wong (’98) reports from Beijing for the New York Times.

Read the full article.

Photo via New York Times

Tsuyoshi Amemiya, 74, a retired Aoyama Gakuin University professor, recalls the day he got a lesson on the status of refugees in Japan — and how shocked he was by his own ignorance of the issue.

On his way to a dentist appointment in 2004, Amemiya came across some Kurdish asylum seekers handing out fliers near United Nations University in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo.

Setsuko Kamiya (VS ‘06) writes for The Japan Times.

Read the full story.

From 1910 to 1940, a million immigrants seeking a better life in the U.S., most of them Chinese, were processed on Angel Island, a tiny dot of land in the San Francisco Bay, roughly 45 minutes from San Francisco. In 1970, the Angel Island Immigration Station was scheduled for demolition, but a California state park ranger named Alexander Weiss made a remarkable discovery: hand-carved fragments of Chinese poetry hiding under layers of graffiti and plaster in the walls of the derelict barracks.

Ling Woo Liu (’06) writes TIME Travel.

Read the story.

In a country notorious for its exclusive immigration policy, the question of whether to allow Japanese to hold dual citizenship became a surprisingly hot policy topic last year after members of the ruling party breached the issue.

Setsuko Kamiya (VS ‘06) writes for The Japan Times.

Read the full article.

The Sri Lankan government is under intense local and international pressure to halt attacks against journalists and media organisations after a newspaper editor was killed and a private television station attacked by unidentified armed gangs.

Amantha Perera (VS ‘04) reports from Colombo for the IRIN.

Read the full story.

Photo via IRIN via Amanta Perera

For years, sprawling Beijing seemed destined to be another Los Angeles, with endless traffic jams and long commutes. But suddenly, Beijing flows. Credit an ambitious subway network that’s finally starting to draw commuters off the street.

Josh Chin (’07) produces this video for the Wall Street Journal.