CORRUPTION: China Begins to Watch Out

When Internet activist ‘Huaguoshan Zongshuji’ published a survey of luxury watches worn by Chinese government officials this month, the move was commended by the state media. Yet weeks later the survey was censored - shooting the one-party state’s uneasy relationship with corruption into the spotlight.

INDIA: Facing Climate Change With Flower Power

Gazalla Amin’s office on the outskirts of this city, capital of Jammu & Kashmir state, is redolent with the fragrance of lavender wafting up from heaps of the dried flowers in a corner bowl.

INDIA: Kashmiris Hail Hague Stay on Dam

A ruling by the International Court of Arbitration (ICA) at The Hague, staying construction of a dam across a river that flows into Pakistan, has brought cheer to the tribal people who live around the site.

Polio Spreading Out From Pakistan

Despite two decades of mass oral polio vaccination (OPV) drives, Pakistan has failed to control the crippling paediatric disease. Health authorities now fear that it is exporting the virus and setting back global eradication plans.

SRI LANKA: Single Women Begin to Rebuild

For Magei Kasai the battle against hardships did not end when the guns fell silent two years ago in the Sri Lankan civil war. New battles began for survival, for herself and for what was left of her family.

HEALTH: China Scrambles Against Mutant Bird Flu

Veterinary experts in China and Vietnam are scrambling to produce a vaccine capable of beating a new strain of the deadly avian influenza (AI) virus, reports an official of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

Bangladesh Draws Pakistan’s Garment Makers

Faced with serious political instability and a deteriorating industrial climate, Pakistan’s garment exporters are turning to Bangladesh, a territory which splintered away after a bloody war of independence in 1971.

NEPAL: Quake Strategy Needs a Jolt

Though Nepal was relatively unscathed by the earthquake that wreaked havoc in the adjacent areas of India this week, it showed up this Himalayan country’s inadequate disaster preparedness.

PAKISTAN: Flood Relief by Caste, Creed

With just the clothes on their backs, Moora Sanafdhano, 68, and his family of nine waded through waist-deep flood waters swirling through their village of Allah Ditto Leghari, saving themselves in the nick of time.

INDIA: ‘Missing Girls is About Femicide’

India has been ranked the fourth most dangerous country in the world for women, but the widespread practice of selectively aborting female foetuses may make it the most hostile to the female gender.

NORTH KOREA: Women Wear Pants, Revive Markets

North Korea's communist government frowns upon women wearing pants, seeing it as a mark of ‘rotten bourgeois lifestyles.' Yet, wives, literally wearing pants, are selling goods in the local markets to supplement their husbands' meagre pay packets.

NEPAL: No Brakes on Sex Trafficking

While a Nepalese campaign to stop human trafficking gains recognition by the White House and Hollywood, Nepal continues to be a prime source for sex trafficking, thanks to unsettled conditions created by a protracted political crisis.

INDIA: ‘Women Make Good Business Sense’

Harish Hande believes that involving women in design, manufacture and sales pays dividends in any business, but especially in those making products that women ultimately use.

BURMA: ‘Civilian’ Govt Eases Iron Grip

With Burma’s quasi-civilian government relaxing the iron grip on power maintained for half-a century by military juntas, the big question is: How real is the change?

INDIA: Kashmir Gets a Grip on AIDS

When the sole Community Care Centre in Jammu and Kashmir providing medical and psychosocial services to people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) closed down for lack of patients it was a sure sign that the north Indian state had beaten back dire forecasts.

SRI LANKA: Catching Itself Young

When Sri Lanka extended the age of retirement for government workers from 55 to 57 years it defied criticism that the island’s public sector was overstaffed and needed serious downsizing.

Iran Prepares for Parliamentary Elections amid Uncertainty

Uncertainty and confusion, particularly among the highly factionalised conservatives that have dominated Iranian politics since 2005, appear to be the order of the day some seven months before next March's parliamentary elections.

PAKISTAN: 9/11 Legacy – An AK-47 in Every Home

The United States-led war-on terror, unleashed on Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, has utterly destabilised the neighbouring Pashtun-dominated tribal areas of Pakistan and reduced them to a state of utter lawlessness.

INDIA: 10 Million Depressed – on the Optimistic Side

While Indian psychiatrists have rejected a World Health Organisation (WHO) study portraying India as the depression capital of the world, they say it has indirectly drawn attention to an acute shortage of trained personnel and facilities to deal with mental illness.

PAKISTAN: Dodging Drones and Bullets to Beat HIV

Having to contend with U.S. army drones and the crossfire between the Taliban and the Pakistani army, the residents of Pakistan’s tribal areas find access to treatment for HIV/AIDS harder than in most other parts of the world.

Donors Fund Forced Labour in Vietnam

A leading international human rights group has accused the United States government, the World Bank and other international donors of indirectly funding forced labour in Vietnam’s drug rehabilitation centres.