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The program, a linguistic time machine of sorts, can quickly crunch data on some of the earliest-known "proto-languages" that gave rise to modern languages such as Hawaiian, Javanese, Malay, Tagalog, and others spoken in Southeast Asia, parts of continental Asia, Australasia, and the Pacific. The speed and scale of the work is key here, as proto-languages are typically reconstructed through a timely and painstaking manual process that involves comparing two or more languages that hail from a shared ancestor. "What excites me about this system is that it takes so many of the great ideas that linguists have had about...

For Catholic Malaysians, Putrajaya’s latest pick of a Malay-Muslim principal to head the prestigious SMK Convent Bukit Nanas (CBN) underscores a worrying trend to disregard the Church’s contribution and rights in the country. Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur Tan Sri Murphy Pakiam waded this week into a growing row between the 112-year-old school’s Catholic owners and the Ministry of Education (MOE) after its new principal Datin Seri Zavirah Mohd Shaari’s surprise arrival at its doorstep. ... Christians say such issues are an attempt to erode their religious rights in Muslim-majority Malaysia.

120 soldiers of the Royal Malay Regiment have become the first all-Islamic Company to provide a British monarch's ceremonial guard. Report by Shell Daruwala. RMR soldiers during Changing of the Guards The Royal Malay Regiment soldiers with Members of the Welsh Guards during the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace on Friday 2 May 2008 [Picture: Sergeant Mick Howard RLC] At Buckingham Palace today, Friday 2 May 2008, red jackets and black bearskins were replaced by pristine white tunics, brocade 'sampins' and gold-banded 'songkoks', when the Malay Regiment changed guards with 1st Battalion Welsh Guards.

Islamic militants today shot dead four Buddhists in two separate attacks in Thailand's mainly Muslim south, where an insurgency has raged for more than two years... In one attack, two teenagers in Islamic students' dress and riding a motorcycle, shot and killed three Buddhists in Yala... “The militants exploited the fact that the men were shopping at a grocery store and could not defend themselves, even though they had a gun,” police Colonel Somsak Wannawak said. Earlier a militant shot dead a Buddhist man in Pattani province while he was riding a bus... More than 1400 people have died in...

SINGAPORE - A Singapore court Friday sentenced two ethnic Chinese to prison for posting racist remarks about ethnic Malays on the Internet, in what is considered a landmark case underscoring the government's attempts to crack down on racial intolerance and regulate online expression. Animal shelter worker Benjamin Koh Song Huat, 27, was jailed for one month while Nicholas Lim Yew, an unemployed 25-year-old, was sentenced to a nominal prison term of one day and fined the maximum 5,000 Singapore dollars ($2,969) for racist comments against the minority Malay community. "Racial and religious hostility feeds on itself," said Senior District Judge...

BANGKOK, Aug 28 (Reuters) - A bloody insurgency in Muslim southern Thailand is a struggle for the independence of its ethnic Malay majority involving tens of thousands of people ready to die for their cause, a senior separatist figure said. In his first interview with a major news organisation since violence flared 20 months ago, a spokesman for the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO) said his movement had no ties to international groups such as Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda or its southeast Asian affiliate, Jemaah Islamiah. "We have no connection with those terrorists," the senior member of PULO,...

Bangkok - The bodies of a Buddhist couple were found shot and nearly decapitated on Friday in restive southern Thailand, adding to the five other beheadings in the past three weeks, police said. Jad Suwanchatree, 52, a defence volunteer in Muang district of Yala province, and his wife Serm, 51, were riding their motorcycle to tap rubber from a plantation when they were killed. "As Jad stopped his motorcycle to remove wood which blocked the road, he was shot and slashed in his neck, as was his wife," police in Yala said. "Their heads were not totally separated from their...

YALA, Thailand (Reuters) - Buddhists in Thailand's Muslim-majority south say they are being treated like "third class citizens" as the government struggles to end ten months of ethnic and religious unrest which has claimed nearly 500 lives. Fear has descended on the three southernmost provinces near the Malaysian border, and Thai Buddhists, who make up just 20 percent of the mainly Malay-speaking region's 1.8 million population, believe their plight is being ignored. Many of them are second or third generation Chinese Thais who form the backbone of the local economy -- entrepreneurs running everything from grocery shops to construction firms,...

WASHINGTON - The Malaysian prime minister disputed yesterday that President Bush scolded him for anti-Semitic remarks and added that he is also worried about Christian fundamentalists in the Bush administration. Outgoing Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad conceded in a news conference that Bush "did pull me aside" at the Pacific rim conference in Bangkok, but only "to explain to me why he made such a strong statement" condemning Mahathir's speech to Islamic leaders. "Certainly, he did not rebuke me. After that, we were walking practically hand in hand. How do you say a person is rebuking another person if our relations...