by Maureen Nandini Mitra
India/USA

In March this year, a court in the northern Indian state of Haryana sentenced five family members to death for killing a young couple who married within the same sub-caste. It is the first time an Indian court has awarded such a harsh penalty in an honor killing case. But, even as women’s rights activists are hailing the decision as a landmark judgment, honor killings continue unabated and defiant khap panchayats - village councils that order such killings – are calling for an amendment to the Hindu Marriage Act to fit their beliefs regarding sub-caste and inter-caste marriages.

by Moira Birss
-USA/Colombia-

Colombia prides itself on being Latin America’s oldest democracy. Unlike its neighbors, Colombia has not suffered brutal military coups and dictatorships and, with one brief exception, has held regular presidential elections since the mid 19th century. Nonetheless, in a country mired in internal conflict in which armed actors attempt to influence outcomes through violence, vote buying is not an uncommon practice and dozens of senators have recently been convicted of collaboration with paramilitaries. Election season in the country highlights the danger and complexity in which the country continues to live. And, as Colombians prepare to elect the successor of Álvaro Uribe, tensions are high and some surprises are surfacing.

by Alice Alech
-France-

The British have discovered an uplifting, social, healthy way to promote sustainability - care for the environment by growing their own fruits and vegetables while at the same time interacting with fellow gardeners. Allotments, or small parcels of land rented for the purpose of growing food crops have grown in popularity as concerns about carbon footprints, saving money, and good nutrition have increased.

• Allotments at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Photograph courtesy of Flickr user muggers! •

by Barbara Callahan
-USA-

On April 20, 2010 the drilling rig the Deepwater Horizon - owned by Transocean, the world’s largest offshore oil drilling contractor, and leased by the multinational oil company BP - exploded approximately fifty miles off the Louisiana coast in 5,000 ft of water. The resulting ocean floor rupture has been continuously gushing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico for the past four weeks. In a closed-door briefing with members of the US Congress, BP officials conceded the rupture could be spewing as much as 60,000 barrels a day. Many officials worry the leak could go on for months.

• Image of an oiled Pelican. Photo courtesy of the author. •

by Nusrat Ara
-Indian-Administered Kashmir-

It is Sunday noon. I am standing outside the only functional cinema in all of Indian administered Kashmir.

Located in the city of Srinagar, the shabby Neelam Cinema sits quiet. It looks more like a war torn military post, with coils of razor wire and bunkers, than a cinema. A paramilitary guard looks out from a bunker above as we approach the tin door. “No film today,” he says. “Go back.”

• The Neelam Cinema, Srinagar, Kashmir. Photograph by Nusrat Ara. •

“I would ditch school to watch a movie. It was difficult at times to get a ticket from the counter. Mostly we had to rely on the black market,” said businessman Shameem Ahmad, 38, about the pre-insurgency days.

The guard lets us in only after we convince him we have to meet the manager.

Inside we learn that they have been waiting for a movie to arrive for three days. “We are getting it by this afternoon,” Muhammad Ayub, the projector operator tells us. The big poster for a film assures us that we are in the right place.

by Mridu Khullar Relph
-India-

Banav Bibi is not a Bangladeshi. She wants everyone to know this. She shouted it to the policeman who accused her son of being an illegal immigrant, arrested him, and beat him up. She said it to the rich madamji in one of the homes from which she picks up trash, when she was accused of stealing and not allowed to enter. And she told the jamadarni, the neighborhood head of the waste collectors, who hired goons to run her out of the area.

If they want proof, they can look at her identity card. "Bangladesh is an entirely different country," she says. "They have a different way of talking. We are from Calcutta, which is in India."

by Paula Humphrey
-USA-

The Obama administration has worked furiously in the past year to leverage new strategies against two primary threats: the illicit production of nuclear weapons, and their potential use by terrorists or “rogue” states. Arriving this week at the Eighth Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the U.S. boasts a historical year of significant changes in the terrorism and nuclear realm. However, also important and less discussed, are the minor policy shifts that may indicate a broader change in U.S. diplomacy overall. One of the more remarkable of these is the decision to reframe the definition of the war on terrorism.

• The bilateral meeting room during the Nuclear Security Summit. The Nuclear Security Summit logo in the background is what prompted Fox News Channel to note a resemblance to the crescent moon appearing on many Muslim Countries’ flags. Photograph courtesy of the U.S. State Department. •

by Nora Maccoby
- USA -

"The question for me has always been: How can I help the world?" Mara Haseltine smiles - her large aquatic blue eyes bright and passionate. "Because it's a race against time. We have to engage people into a scientific narrative so that everyone can be part of the solutions."

In her thirties, Haseltine is both a professor of Environmental Studies at The New School in New York City and a ground breaking artist - merging science, functionality and art. She was one of the first people in the world to be exposed to bio-informatics, the 3D representation of molecular and submolecular data that went along with the Human Genome Project, run by her father, Dr. William Haseltine.

"With the discovery of how proteins function, we saw how we could advance medicine from the dark ages to a new renaissance. What I saw with proteins was that function follows form," Haseltine explains. "So I began making sculptures with molecular and submolecular armature/shape. Taking things you couldn't even see and making them giant."