First they called her "that girl". Then, "madam". Eventually, they referred to her as "sir."

Much as we would like to believe that the long-drawn West Asian wars will end soon, the fact is that the U.S. now has a third front to its war on terror: Pakistan. And the Pakistan front is likely to be open for a long time. As a Taliban spokesperson reportedly said: "We are prepared for a long war."

For the past four years, the World Economic Forum has studied the gender gap - that is, the amount of resources dedicated to boys and girls and women's opportunities to fully participate in society - in over 100 countries, then ranked them. (In 2009, the Index included data from 134 nations. At least 12 of 14 indicators used for the Index must be available in order for a country to be included.) The goal, according to the 2009 Global Gender Gap Report, is:

The "immigrant experience"  is a phrase I usually associate with the U.S., what with people from across the world streaming in here everyday. A travelogue is what I'd associate with literature by foreigners from India. But the blogosphere is telling a different story. Many American and other Western citizens, who have either got on the love train or are riding the global economy wave that took them to India or simply love living there, are blogging about their experiences in a personal way that travel guides are unlikely to offer. Some are there for a few years.

[Updated to add below new related links to stories about India and climate change]

Tara is the Goddess of Compassion in Tibetan and Japanese Buddhism. Tara was quite a surprise to me. I had not expected to find a such a feminist among the early goddesses. Tara appeared in Buddhist writings after she had also been a part of Hinduism, after about the year 500.

One of my favorite Chinese proverbs says, "Women hold up half the sky." Some days I feel like it's more than half, but the point of the proverb is that women are equal partners with men in navigating through life. At least, we ought to be.

It has been an eventful year for sexual minorities in India. After successfully challenging in the Delhi High Court a Colonial-era law that criminalizes homosexuality, the community cleared another hurdle last month when the Central Government declined to take a stand on the issue and left it up to the Supreme Court (which is hearing a challenge to the high court ruling) to decide.

A series of powerful deep sea earthquakes , tsunami, typhoons and floods in the Pacific region on Tuesday and Wednesday have left behind scenes of devastation and death, bringing back fears and memories of the deadly 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands in the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions.

Sri Lanka's uneasy peace after ending a 25-year-old civil insurgency and brutally crushing the separatist group LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam) earlier this year, is being put to a new test by its fettered media. As we had discussed earlier, the Sri Lankan government had completely shut out the media and aid agencies from covering the war-ravaged north and east.

It bothers me a little bit that the small print above the August 23 issue of The New York Times Magazine reads, "Saving the World's Women." I'm not sure why. Maybe there's something weirdly patriarchal about it, conjuring images of women sitting around waiting to be rescued? The word "saving" almost implies some sort of blame, as if the world's women did something stupid and now we need to save them from themselves. Or maybe it is the cultural baggage that comes from an American magazine imploring readers to "save" people, which reminds me of all the "saving" that we did in the past that created a lot of other problems. Anyway, aside from my nitpicky initial reaction to something in minuscule font, it is great that the August 23 issue focuses on women who are marginalized and ignored.

In the current discussion and debate about health care reform proposals the methods of paying for, administering and delivering universal basic health care benefits in other countries are often raised as models of either what we should emulate or what we should fear adopting.