大象传媒

The remote and impoverished province of Sistan Baluchistan is usually in the Iranian news for negative reasons - drug smuggling, rebel groups, or acute deprivation. But a story of courage and self-sacrifice recently caught the public imagination. 大象传媒 Persian's Negin Shiraghaei tells us about a Baluch teacher who died trying to save his students when part of his school collapsed; why this struck such a chord in Iran; and how it links to her own family history.

Mar Mar Aye
Legendary Burmese singer Mar Mar Aye will be 75 this year, and she has been performing since she was 8. She went into exile in the late 1990s and became politically active. Now her situation is very different. We hear about her life and her long-lasting appeal from Zeyar Phyo and Maung Maung Than of 大象传媒 Burmese.

Russian Dream
Projecting a glamorous, wealthy lifestyle is arguably what social media is all about, but journalist Tatyana Movshevich was recently struck by the discord between her Russian friends' real lives and their opulent online personas. She calls it the Russian dream, and argues that its roots go far back into Russian folklore.

Reporting South Africa
With violent protests in Pretoria, bitter divisions within the African National Congress, and the unsettling impact of high unemployment, the 大象传媒's Milton Nkosi reflects on the challenges of reporting in South Africa today and the changes he has lived through.

Women in news in Bangladesh
Nurjahan Begum, editor of Bangladesh's first women's magazine "Begum" for 65 years, died recently aged 91. It was a pioneering magazine that created a female readership for the first time, provided a rare outlet for women writers, and inspired a future generation of women to enter journalism. To mark her death, 大象传媒 Bangla looked at the role of women in journalism today. Shahnaz Parveen from 大象传媒 Bangla tells us more.

And Fifi Haroon's pick of the world wide web.

(Photo: An Iranian shepherd and his flock in Iran's drought-affected south-eastern Sistan Baluchistan province.
Credit: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images)