True to St. Augustine’s dictum, Pushpa Basnet works as though everything depends on her. As the founder of the Early Childhood Development Centre (ECDC), she is at the forefront of a movement to shelter children of incarcerated parents in Nepal. For her efforts, she has been nominated, along with nine other persons, for the 2012 edition of “CNN Hero of the Year”, an annual award that celebrates selflessness.

A gay rights group in Nepal is hosting South Asia's first ever tournament for gay athletes in capital Kathmandu, with more than 300 gay, bisexual and transgender athletes from 30 countries registering to compete in the three-day event.

Around 150 acid attacks on women take place in Pakistan every year, says Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, who won an Oscar for portraying the trauma, helplessness and struggles of women disfigured by such violence in her country.

Afghan girls have left behind years of strife and torment under the Taliban rule. They feel liberated to even play football out in the open unmindful of the repercussions.

The picture of the country that leaders envisioned and the pledges they made to the people during all these years have turned into an illusion. In stark contrast to the growth phenomenon manifest in the emergence of high-rise buildings, shopping malls and luxury cars in the cities, villages in Bangladesh till now are portraits of human misery.

Looking at it dispassionately, it is evident that middle-class Indians have acquired many reckless and jarring values from Pakistan.
Mindless consumerism pervasive in India today is something Pakistanis have indulged in for decades — the fawning slave-master nexus with.

As Afghanistan engages in rebuilding its educational institutions destroyed by the Taliban, bringing women back into schools and colleges continues to be a challenge says Afghan Deputy Minister for Academic Affairs M. Osman Babury.

There seems to be no end to the attacks on the schools and education in Afghanistan. Unfortunately as a response to such a heinous objective, there are no tangible measures carried out by the Afghan authorities to deal with the situation appropriately.

Sri Lanka's oldest martial art Angampora is still being practiced in traditional schools across the country. The art involves unarmed combat where only 'anga' or body parts are used to fight. The exact period when the art first came into being is not clear, but clans that have carried on the tradition place it anywhere from 3,000 to 30,000 years old. It is the oldest form of martial arts in the country.

The radical and conservative elements in Afghan society have always been against modern education. They have always taken acute steps to stop its growth in this society. And when the matter is related to the education of the girls or women, the situation becomes more intolerable for them.