REUTERS KATHMANDU (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A woman and her two sons suffocated to death in Nepal after she was forced to sleep in a windowless shed during her period, police said on Thursday, the latest victims of an age-old Hindu practice that was banned more than a decade ago. Amba Bohara, 35, and her sons, aged 12 and nine, …

New research suggests that a more equal society is a more productive one IT IS OFTEN said that rapid social change is behind the reactionary politics of America’s new right: older white heterosexual men feel their traditional role is under attack. But while they may have lost privilege, they may have gained from productivity. Two recent papers suggest that declining …

Couple who was lynched over blasphemy accusations left behind three young children — one of whom witnessed the horror. Xari Jalil Do you remember the ill-fated Shama and Shahzad Masih, the Christian couple from Kasur’s Kot Radha Kishan district in a brick kiln village called Chak 59? The husband and wife – who was pregnant at the time – were …

AFP India’s lower house passed on Tuesday legislation that will grant citizenship to members of certain religious minorities but not Muslims, sparking protests in the country’s northeast. The bill covers select groups — including Hindus, Christians and Sikhs — who moved from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan and who have lived in India for at least six years. Muslims are excluded, …

Pakistani dramas and soap operas, many of which seek to challenge the deeply patriarchal country’s conservative taboos, are immensely popular. AFP ISLAMABAD – Pakistani television channels may no longer show “intimate moments between couples” or “bed scenes”, the conservative country’s media regulator has announced, complaining of too much feminist content and warning that such “bold themes” offend viewers. The Pakistan …

ISLAMABAD: Contrary to the claims of the minister of state for interior about excessive drug use by students in the capital, a new survey has found that no more than 2pc of students in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar are regular drug users, reports daily Dawn. Quaid-i-Azam University’s Department of Sociology released the findings of a survey conducted in collaboration …

News Desk Child sexual abuse cases are on the rise in Pakistan. In Islamabad only, 300 cases of child sexual abuse were registered over the last five years, while another 260 cases went unregistered, a Senate panel was informed on Monday. Over 3,440 cases of child abuse had been reported last year, according to data collected by a non-gove­rnmental organisations. …

Arwa Mahdawi From pop culture to politics, 2018 was a year of extraordinary firsts for women. But the past year also proved progress isn’t linear with a deeply anti-feminist thread. It was the best of times, the worst of times and the stupidest of times. Twenty-eighteen was an exhausting, eventful year. On the one hand, it was a year of …

A report in Dawn shed light on attitudes that still exist towards the female child through interviews with would-be mothers who had to abort their daughters upon family pressure, health practitioners who are apprehensive about revealing the gender of the child, and welfare workers who take in abandoned children — mostly girls. It presented a gloomy picture of prevalent attitudes …

It is known as ‘Maidenhair’ Christopher Hooton Thousands of people from all over China have headed to the Zhongnan Mountains to appreciate the simple beauty of a tree shedding its leaves for the 1,400th consecutive year.   The storied gingko tree’s leaves start falling around mid-November, their vibrant yellow colour giving rise to the tree’s nickname of ‘Maidenhair’. As the …

Mudabbir Ali Some say it is a year-old video. Be that as it may, the video came under spotlight of social media very recently. It showed students – both girls and boys – of Karakorum International University (KIU) dancing to a folk song alongside TV anchor Sanam Baloch. And it has generated a lively outburst of public debate in Gilgit-Baltistan. …

Aziz Ali Dad ‘If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed but if you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.’—Mark Twain Asia encompasses diverse countries and regions – in terms of religion, culture, language, ethnicity and history. However, the region has remained a geographical category not a cultural entity because of the lack – if not absence – of initiatives to conceptualise …

By Sultan Abbas After the incidents of Punjab University and Peshawar University recently the vigilantism has reared its ugly head in Karakoram International University Gilgit. The debate over women’s participation in cultural activities has taken the social media by storm after performance of dance by some KIU girl students in a TV programme. It indicates the division in society over …

Zaighum Abbas Social media outburst over a video clip of few girls dancing on folk songs in a TV’s morning show touched new highs last week. The gunnery sergeants of ‘honour’ and ‘ghairat’ encamped in their laptop trenches and started their shelling with vitriol, bigotry, abuse and misogyny as prime weapons messing up with emotions of people. The female students, …

In his incisive and thought-provoking analysis, Aziz Ali Dad dissects and diagnoses the psychological pathologies afflicting the cultural mindset of GB society.    By Aziz Ali Dad Culture is an interesting aspect of human society. Unlike the evolutionary processes, the changes in culture are quick not under the influence of nature but from the processes created by the society itself. …