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"Thousands of young women living in a part of Pakistan once considered the country's most idyllic tourist destination have been prevented from going to school after an order from Taliban forces which have seized control of much of the area. "

Report into gender inequalities that exist in Pakistan.

Jalozai was the largest Afghan refugee settlement but was demolished in June 2008 and its settlers were told either to go to their home country or move to other locations inside Pakistan. Insecurity, land disputes and lack of jobs have stopped tens of thousands of returnees from moving to their original areas and rebuilding their houses. Some households, including Jamaluddin's, have set up tents and mud huts in different parts of the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar

'Brown Clouds' Are World's Newest Environmental Threat By TINI TRAN AND JOHN HEILPRIN / AP WRITER Friday, November 14, 2008 BEIJING - A dirty brown haze sometimes more than a mile thick is darkening skies not only over vast areas of Asia, but also in the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, changing weather patterns and threatening health and food supplies, the UN reported. The huge smog-like plumes, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and firewood, are known as "atmospheric brown clouds." Cars drive through thick smog on a street in Beijing in September 2008. Enormous brown clouds of pollution hanging over Asia are killing hundreds of thousands of people, melting glaciers, changing weather patterns and damaging crops, the United Nations said. (Photo: AFP) When mixed with emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the earth's atmosphere like a greenhouse, they are the newest threat to the global environment, according to a report commissioned by the UN Environment Program and released Thursday. "All of these points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet," said Achim Steiner, head of Kenya-based UNEP, which funded the report with backing from Italy, Sweden and the United States. Brown clouds are caused by an unhealthy mix of particles, ozone and other chemicals that come from cars, coal-fired power plants, burning fields and wood-burning stoves. First identified by the report's lead researcher in 1990, the clouds were depicted Thursday as being more widespread and causing more environmental damage than previously known. Perhaps most widely recognized as the haze this past summer over Beijing's Olympics, the clouds have been found to be more than a mile (kilometer) thick around glaciers in the Himalaya and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. They hide the sun and absorb radiation, leading to new worries not only about global climate change but also about extreme weather conditions. "All t

Inequalities in development

News story about a former female Pakistani serf who is now running for office.