Taking a High Road

The Economist

The top judicial and law enforcement bodies in China have issued new guidelines that seek to halt the use of torture in obtaining confessions or witness testimony, especially in death penalty cases.

Bhutan to build Gross National Happiness Centre

BBC News

A young boy from a border village in Polonnaruwa had fiercely sworn to hate the Tamil race. Living on the borderlines of the conflict, he lost his mother and father to a brutal LTTE attack in the height of the war. Rationality not prevailing, he blamed all Tamil people for the loss of his parents.

A recent survey in Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir has produced "striking results". The poll was conducted by Robert Bradnock - an associate fellow at the Chatham House think-tank in London - and here he assesses the results.

The UN's climate change chief blamed a secret draft treaty, leaked to the Guardian, for the summit failure.

Sherpa mountaineers in Nepal say a rise in the rate of snow and ice melt on Mount Everest has exposed bare rock faces and made it dangerous to climb.

Op-Ed

The Backbencher

If anything, the UPA’s report card reveals its listlessness and shrunken ambitions.

The State of the Pakistan Economy

There is very little to cheer. “Of prime concern is the near total breakdown in the delivery of basic public services like power, gas and water”. Indeed a visit to Pakistan in the summer can be quite a punishment.

Most sex workers take a steroid called Oradexon. They take it because they say it makes them stronger, larger and more attractive. But it is also the same drug that farmers here use to fatten up their cattle before taking them to market

At one level this is just a demand for a fairer share of the China cake now mostly being eaten by enterprises, local and foreign, rather than by their workers. In almost no other country are employees’ shares of national income as low as it is in “socialist” China.

When the strip on the pregnancy test turned pink, 23-year-old Mustafa asked his girlfriend to marry him. Not because he wanted to, but because he believed it was the right thing to do. She said no.