"Severe flooding across central and southern China over the past week has killed almost 130 people, damaged more than 1.9 million hectares of crops and led to direct economic losses of more than 38 billion yuan ($5.70 billion), state media said on Tuesday."

"The stink from Vietnam’s fish kill scandal — which left some 70 tons of dead fish scattered across the beaches of four of the country’s provinces and fishermen out of work — is symptomatic of something greater than worries about food security and the environment: access to information and the ability to distribute it."

"Vietnam’s government has said toxic discharges from a Taiwanese-owned steel plant were responsible for massive fish deaths that have decimated tourism and fishing in four provinces and highlighted the risks of rapid growth in foreign investment."

"Tukaram Jadhav was barely surviving off of his tiny cotton farm when he killed himself last September. His widow, a petite mother of two, pulls her purple sari tightly around her, and says she discovered her husband as he lay dying."

"A fire crackles along the banks of the Yamuna River: a cremation of a young mother, struck by a car while she was fetching water. The stench of the river engulfs the sad assembly."

"Government says 330 million people are suffering from water shortages after monsoons fail".

"Indian villagers have found a way to bottle the fragrance of monsoons."

"DHAKA - On the streets of this South Asian mega-city, jammed solid with rickshaws, honking taxi vans, cars, bicycles, sweating pedestrians and lumbering buses with their paint scraped off in tight squeezes, getting anywhere quickly by road is impossible."

"Coal-fired power plants have propelled much of China’s economic rise for decades, helping make the nation the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Even with economic growth slackening, and other energy sources taking hold, new coal plants have been added. Now Beijing is trying to slow things down."