The 1991 ban on alcohol is enforced with increasing strictness, though booze is still available in top hotels and backstreet pool halls.

CNN: TROUBLED KINGDOM

The contest between theocratic politics and a notionally secular state looks even more unequal in another ex-British land, Malaysia, where freedom of choice in religion is enshrined in the federal constitution, but Islamic law is imposed with growing strictness on the Muslim majority.

ECONOMIST: Religious conversions

Many suffered stunning upsets in the elections, thanks both to the new voting system and to the strictness of the Election Commission.

ECONOMIST: Pleasing the voters