Special features

Hope was a key word in the campaign of newly elected US President Barack Obama. Americans and citizens around the world were stirred by Obama’s oratorical prowess and his vision of change. Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano is optimistic.

Women who love women still leads to suicide pacts in India, often burning themselves to death. But in the wake of a groundbreaking film, lesbians are asserting themselves more – and seeing some encouraging signs of change, as Nick Harvey reports.

Nick Harvey explains the background on gay rights – and then talks to lesbian activists about a cause that is beginning to catch fire.

What can be wrong with putting five notorious Khmer Rouge leaders on trial? Plenty, argues lawyer Brooks Duncan, as he examines the nature of the long-awaited, and foreign-funded, trials currently underway.

While Hurricane Gustav swirled through the front pages of our media, the hundreds of deaths caused by extreme winds in the last month around the Caribbean and in Asia rated barely a mention.

Science is coming up with ever more extraordinary proposals for combating climate change, from laying white plastic over deserts to locking up carbon dioxide in the oceans or shooting it into space. Should we take any of this seriously?

Regular NI contributor Anna Chen casts the second Stone.

Filed in: China Religion Tibet

Mari Marcel Thekaekara reflects on the state of the Indian nation in middle age.

Filed in: India

A huge new scientific experiment plans to go looking for tiny particles in the middle of India’s oldest Biosphere Reserve, moving mountains of rock and earth as it goes. Tarsh Thekaekara has his doubts about what is being done in the name of pure science.

Filed in: Conservation India Science

Poems that confront human challenges – an international selection.