SINGAPORE - What are terrorists doing on Facebook? And what can you do if someone you care about is abducted?

Rappler CEO Maria Ressa tackles these questions in her second book, "From bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 years of Terrorism," which became available worldwide in hardcover and digital editions on Tuesday, April 2.

First launched in the Philippines in October last year, on the 10th anniversary of the Bali bombings, "From bin Laden to Facebook" made its debut here at Global Security Asia 2013, where government officials, security experts, academics and businessmen met to discuss counter-terrorism and security issues.

Thailand

Prasert Palitpholkarnpim provides a detailed deconstruction of Thai manga

Whether it's the caped crusaders from DC Comics in the US, the swashbuckling heroes of Japanese Manga or Noo Hin _ the famous Isan character from Noo Hin Inter _ comics the world over have a similar power: they can make us smile.

Yet in the book One Hundred Years Of Thai Cartoons: From Siam Classic To Thai Modern, such cartoons are revealed to be much more serious than we might at first think.

Taiwan

This book is two things — a song of praise for Taiwan, and a song of praise for the author himself.

I don’t mean this unkindly. I enjoyed reading this account of over a decade of teaching in Taipei, getting married to a Taiwanese bride and learning Chinese. But the title is unambiguous — David Pendery has found “something super” in Taiwan, and his own obvious success as a teacher is without any doubt a part of it.

Pendery is someone whom sadness or disappointment appears not to have touched. An unbounded optimism suffuses his pages, combined with a happiness derived at least in part from success. That he is an outstanding teacher seems obvious, but in the nature of a narrative such as this it’s information inevitably learnt from his own words. He steers the difficult line between offering an honest account and blowing his own trumpet. He has, in other words, the kind of sunny, right-handed personality that both entrances students and more or less ensures success in the public sphere. There is little or nothing of the introverted, left-handed, secretive personality about him.

Fireflies in Manhattan
Author: Umar Kayam
Publisher: The Lontar Foundation 2012

The Lontar Foundation has for more than 25 years now endeavored to bring quality Indonesian works of literature to an international audience with their Modern Library of Indonesia book series. For the past year, one gets the feeling that Lontar is cranking up its efforts to bring even more new Indonesian works of literature to the international community to be in time for the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair two years from now.