"Beijing -- Authorities ordered a solar-panel manufacturing plant in eastern China to close after four days of protests by hundreds of villagers who have accused the facility of causing air and water pollution, Chinese media reported Monday.

The decision is an indication of the growing power of environmental protesters to sway government policy in China. As many as 500 villagers participated in the protests near Haining, an industrial city of 640,000 in coastal Zhejiang province.

"Five million people have been affected by floods in the Pakistani provinces of Baluchistan and Sindh, according to regional officials.

At least 133 people have been killed, officials said, and the number is expected to rise.

About 900 villages have been submerged and about 100,000 homes have been completely destroyed.

"TOKYO — Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday."

"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."