"A Chinese petrochemical plant was operating normally on Monday despite a local government order to close it down due to a toxic spill scare, an industry source said."

"A storm battering the northeast Chinese coast on Monday whipped up waves that threatened a dyke protecting a chemical plant, forcing residents to flee while soldiers and firefighters rushed to fill the breaches, news media said."

"A bloody outbreak of fighting that has ended a 17-year ceasefire between Burmese government forces and a tribal militia was partly caused by the expansion of Chinese hydropower along the Irrawaddy river, conservationists claim."

"China has been accused of trying to cover up the extent of lead poisoning among children, and of blocking effective testing and treatment."

"Indian officials signed an agreement with the World Bank on Tuesday to use a $1 billion loan to finance the first major new effort in more than 20 years to cleanse the revered Ganges, one of the world’s dirtiest rivers."

"North China is dying. A chronic drought is ravaging farmland. The Gobi Desert is inching south. The Yellow River, the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilization, is so polluted it can no longer supply drinking water. The rapid growth of megacities — 22 million people in Beijing and 12 million in Tianjin alone — has drained underground aquifers that took millenniums to fill."

"Photographer Jonas Bendiksen made three separate trips to Bangladesh last year to document the wet season and the ways that rising waters are altering Bangladeshi life."

"More than 900,000 households remained without electricity on Friday after the strongest aftershock to hit since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan rocked a wide section of the country’s northeast."

"The nuclear disaster is now also a disaster for Fukushima's farmers. The government has banned the sale of milk, spinach and other leafy vegetables, not just from here but also from the neighboring prefectures."

The end of one Tsunami-hit Japanese whaling company could mean the end of a seaside town. In a variety of ways, the quake aftermath is transforming life in Japan. As the death toll mounts, power, water, and food are in short supply.

"The Japanese authorities are considering a plan to import bottled water from overseas, a government official said Thursday morning, a day after spreading contamination from a crippled nuclear plant led to a panicked rush to buy water in Tokyo."

"A spike in radiation levels in Tokyo tap water spurred new fears about food safety Wednesday as rising black smoke forced another evacuation of workers trying to stabilize Japan's radiation-leaking nuclear plant."

"Behind Japan's escalating nuclear crisis sits a scandal-ridden energy industry in a comfy relationship with government regulators often willing to overlook safety lapses."

"A second explosion rocked a troubled nuclear power plant Monday, blowing the roof off a containment building but not harming the reactor, Japanese nuclear officials announced on public television. The explosion underscores the difficulties Japanese authorities are having in bringing several stricken reactors under control three days after a massive earthquake and a tsunami hit Japan’s northeast coast and shut down the electricity that runs the crucial cooling systems for reactors.

An explosion at a nuclear power plant in northern Japan on Saturday blew the roof off one building, brought down walls and caused a radiation leak of unspecified proportions, Japanese officials said, after Friday’s huge earthquake caused critical failures in the plant’s cooling system."