Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani human rights activist, especially for women’s and girls’ education, and the world’s youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate (the second Pakistani to receive the prize). Born in the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan in 1997, she started writing a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu, detailing her life during […]

Rainbow shower tree (Cassiaxnealiae)

By Danielle Carpenter – Climate change and extreme climatic events are having grave consequences for plant biodiversity around the world. Fires in Australia, the Amazon and North America are destroying key ecosystems. Bark beetles are benefiting from warmer temperatures to kill increasing numbers of trees worldwide. Extreme drought in some areas and flooding in others […]

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy tells stories that drive social change. She wrote, “My films are examples of how one story, eloquently told, can move a country’s lawmakers to break through decades of impunity and legal deadlock. Film, art, literature, music and performance help people express themselves and even just be themselves.” “In 2014, a Pakistani teenager called […]

Young women in Pakistan, especially in rural areas, have few choices when their parents don’t have the money to pay school fees to continue their education: they get married so their husbands provide for them instead. One family from Shimshal, a village in the northern mountains of Pakistan, is trying to change that by bringing […]

“11 August 2015 marks 1 year since the last wild polio case was detected on the entire African continent. A polio-free Africa would leave only 2 countries where polio transmission has never been interrupted: Pakistan and Afghanistan.” That’s the great news from the World Health Organization in its update: Africa advances toward a polio-free continent. On […]

The sub-title reads, “The eradication of polio suggests ways to tackle even deadlier diseases.” That good news appeared recently in The Economist” (18 January). The anti-polio campaign in India started in 1995, with massive efforts and money poured into millions of doses of vaccine and the services of millions of vaccinators who administered the oral drops. […]

“We are within grasp of declaring the end of polio worldwide,” Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said end October, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Perth. During that meeting, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Nigeria and Pakistan, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, pledged over $100 million in new funds to stamp […]