📚 April's best reads from across the region

“We have our exact measurements and we just have to follow the same recipe that we have been using for 100 years,” chief cook Adham Abdul Manan told Al Jazeera as he wound down from a busy morning in the kitchen, still wearing his green apron and black cap, and rustling through his checklist for the next day.

The mosque, situated in a village now surrounded by skyscrapers and highways, is renowned for its creamy sweet-savoury porridge. It produces 15 pots a day during Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month.

In Bali, Indonesia, I sampled delicious nasi campur (a platter of brown rice served with seven different vegetable dishes) at a tiny shack, along with tempeh (fermented soybeans) tacos and mung bean pancakes at an upmarket cafe. In Hanoi, I slurped my way through meatless pho (rice and noodle soup), while vegetables took the place of fish in the amok (a coconut dish) I ate with rice in Siem Reap, Cambodia. And in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I had my fill of crunchy, spicy khao soi -- a popular noodle dish among Thais living near the border with Myanmar.

“Fancì Club embodies femininity — it’s sexy, it’s nightlife with a princess personality,” said Beverly Nguyen, a Vietnamese American stylist in New York City. “It also pairs well with vintage trends that we have been seeing for quite a few seasons now: the oversized Dior glasses, the Fendi baguette bag, the Manolo sparkly sandal.”

Ms. Nguyen said she felt especially nostalgic, and proud, to see her culture reflected in Fancì Club’s outfits. “The silhouettes and colors remind me of my mom’s style in the early ’90s,” she said. “I love that the designs are rooted in nightlife culture that stays true to the city girl of Vietnam.”

Moving the birds is a delicate task, often involving multiple keepers moving the tiniest birds into boxes. The process for taller, leggier birds can be more complex because they risk injuring themselves, said Dr Neves. 

“For animals like storks, cranes, because they’re so big and they’re so strong and it’s so easy for them to injure themselves, we use a net to quickly restrain them and then we quickly wrap a towel around them and make sure they cannot flap their wings,” he continued. 

“In a way, it’s not different from when you bring your cat to the vet.” 

What happened next, however, is what several NGOs and lawyers involved in the case have blasted as “baffling.” Despite being an apparent flight risk, a liberty and custody judge released him on judicial supervision. And then he vanished. 

The last time anyone has heard from the sex offender was on Oct. 5, 2022, when Larroque checked in with the police as part of the conditions of his release under judicial supervision. Now on the run, Larroque’s fugitive status is a source of anxiety for many of the survivors, and unsettling for those wishing to bring him to justice. The escape also raises questions about the competence and judgment of the French judiciary system. A zoom-out on France’s justice system reveals bigger, broader structural problems that have been criticized by both those caught within the system, and observers looking in.

Knowing the building was located in San Francisco’s Filipino Cultural Heritage District, architects met with local organizers from community association SOMA Pilipinas to find ways to bring Filipino cultural influences into the design. That influence starts with the name Tahanan, which comes from a Tagalog word evoking “home,” and recurs in the building’s materials and shapes from base to roof.

On the ground floor, unfinished exterior walls have been lovingly — and imperfectly — textured by pouring concrete into molds lined with traditional Philippine banig grass mats and bamboo rods and letting it dry. The concrete subcontractor was so jazzed about the method that he drove down to Southern California to pick up more banig when they were short. “They said, ‘We’ve been working on parking garages and water treatment facilities — this is so refreshing,’” said Jonas Weber, an associate at David Baker Architects and the firm’s modular lead.

Still, despite his years of warnings, conditions failed to change. Complaints against Samsung’s labor conditions in Vietnam began to appear. In 2016, a 22-year-old female worker suddenly collapsed at Samsung’s Thai Nguyen factory, sparking whispers of overwork and occupational poisoning among the worker community. A 2017 survey of 45 Bac Ninh and Thai Nguyen workers indicated they suffered from frequent fainting, eyesight damage, nosebleeds, even miscarriage. In both events, Samsung did not acknowledge a connection to the workplace. The company threatened legal action against the civil society groups that authored the study, sparking “serious concern” from several members of the United Nations’ Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council.

Late last year, Kang finally blew the whistle to South Korean investigative news outlet Newstapa, which published his story in March. In it, he alleged that Samsung’s managers, in both Vietnam and South Korea, regularly ignored environmental and safety regulations, and that in all 14 years of Bac Ninh’s operation, he was not aware of those lapses ever being investigated by the Vietnamese government. Samsung has refuted the news report, saying the company is “strictly complying” with environmental safety laws in the countries where it operates. The company did not respond to Rest of World’s request for comment.

"If people come in from the Myanmar side, and I have the medicine, I treat them for free, which makes me proud, like God has given me a chance to help them," said Mary, an ethnic Chin. "I want to develop this clinic and build more to take care of my people."

In the absence of an incubator, newborns are wrapped in towels and their mothers are carried by hand, intravenous drips attached, to rest in bare rooms. Some babies are born with jaundice, which Mary puts down to malnutrition and sometimes alcoholism.

"Most women in Chin don't get enough food," she said. "They work all day in cultivation using their bodies, but maybe twice a week they get milk and meat."

In the midday tropical heat, I jumped into a tuk-tuk and headed across town to meet Khchao at her studio, where she arrived in style on her "garden motorbike" – a famous sight on the city's streets, designed with its own modified sidecar planted with a riot of greenery and featuring a miniature gazebo.

"Flowers, trees and nature – they spend their lives giving us everything we need: colour, oxygen, shade and beauty," she said. "They are healing, too. And that's especially important in Cambodia, where trauma is a universal experience."