Myanmar's junta on Tuesday said the country had "not returned to normalcy" almost two years after its coup, casting doubt over plans for elections and ending a state of emergency.

The Southeast Asian country has been in turmoil since the military toppled democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government, alleging massive fraud during elections her party won in 2020.

A junta-imposed state of emergency is due to expire at the end of January, after which the constitution states that authorities must set in motion plans to hold fresh elections.

During 2022 the South Asian island nation of Sri Lanka was the scene of large-scale protests prompted by an unprecedented economic crisis.

For the first time in its post-colonial history, the country was forced to default on $51 billion in foreign debt obligations.

The harshest winter since 2008 is contributing to shortages of staple vegetables across Central Asia and sending prices north in a region still suffering from COVID-induced food inflation. 

In Uzbekistan, record frosts have highlighted the shortcomings of the national energy system as even residents of the capital spent days on end without power. But the cold has also hammered the agriculture sector in the region’s most populous country.

On the afternoon of January 10, Van Bawi Mang, a member of an armed resistance group fighting against the Myanmar military, was resting in his barracks at a camp on the country’s northwestern border with India when a loud explosion jolted him back to the reality of war.

He scrambled into a nearby ditch as jet fighters flew overhead, glass shattering with the reverberation of the falling bombs.

Fighting has flared in recent days between Myanmar junta forces and rebels opposed to their rule, officials and locals said Tuesday, with reports that large numbers of civilians have fled the violence.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since Aung San Suu Kyi‘s civilian government was toppled in an army coup almost two years ago.

Long-established ethnic rebel groups, as well as dozens of “People’s Defence Forces” (PDF), have emerged in opposition and clash frequently with the military.

Two years after Azerbaijan and Armenia ended a war that killed about 6,800 soldiers and displaced around 90,000 civilians, tensions between the countries are again high in a dispute over a six-kilometer (nearly four-mile) road known as the Lachin Corridor.

The winding road, which is the only land connection between Armenia and the ethnic Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh region in Azerbaijan, has been blocked by protesters claiming to be environmental activists since mid-December, threatening food supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh’s 120,000 people.

Israel's Cognyte Software Ltd won a tender to sell intercept spyware to a Myanmar state-backed telecommunications firm a month before the Asian nation's February 2021 military coup, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

The deal was made even though Israel has claimed it stopped defence technology transfers to Myanmar following a 2017 ruling by Israel's Supreme Court, according to a legal complaint recently filed with Israel's attorney general and disclosed on Sunday.

Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government said it has raised more than US$100 million to fund its democracy effort and topple the junta.

About 45 per cent of the funds are from the sales of so-called Spring Revolution Special Treasury Bonds, according to Tin Tun Naing, shadow minister for planning, finance and investment. The debt does not pay interest and the capital will be repaid only when the democracy effort is successful.

The US is facing major moves by the global community to de-dollarize their economies.  The reserve status of the US dollar will eventually come to an end, maybe not anytime soon, but sometime in the future as it is facing numerous challenges not only from major powers such as Russia and China who are actively trying to rid themselves of the toxic currency, but also countries with smaller economies who are based in the Southeast Asian region which includes Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos.  The globalist think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Pea