Communist Laos opened a modest stock market today, hoping to attract capital to its largest enterprises and boost the economy of one of the world’s poorest nations.

The trial against a pregnant British woman on heroin trafficking charges opened today, in a case that has raised questions about how she managed to conceive while behind bars.

A British woman facing trial in Laos for alleged heroin trafficking secretly impregnated herself with the sperm of another prisoner in a bid to escape the death sentence, a government-run newspaper said today.