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Steppe change (Jul 3)
An election turns uglyIN THE 18 years since the nation threw off Soviet domination and embraced democracy, Mongolian politics have been vibrant and even chaotic; but never violent. That suddenly changed after parliamentary elections on June 29th, when demonstrations over alleged vote-rigging turned into deadly unrest in the capital, Ulan Bator. Buildings and cars were set on fire, prompting the police to use tear-gas and rubber bullets and the president to declare a four-day state of emergency, with a night-time curfew, press restrictions and a ban on sales of alcohol. At least five people died in the violence on July 2nd and more than 300 were injured. One of the buildings set ablaze was the headquarters of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), the ruling communists in the pre-reform era and still the dominant political force. Preliminary election results showed the MPRP taking as many as 45 seats in the 76-seat Great Hural, or parliament. The leading minority party, t...

A movable feast (Jul 3)
A collision over cab collusionTHEY are called "pub taxis". These fancy cabs drive Japanese bureaucrats home in the evening, provide a few beers, snacks and sometimes a discreet kickback (usually in the form of a shop voucher, sometimes good old cash). The practice has long been an open secret, but in the present irritable political climate, with speculation about an early election, it has now become a scandal. In June a lawmaker from the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) demanded an investigation. It revealed that more than 1,400 officials across the bureaucracy accepted such gifts, which are of questionable legality. Government officials often work very late. Staff regularly stay past 3am to prepare ministers' remarks for the next day's Diet (parliament) session. Public transport ends soon after midnight, and they may take a taxi home with an expense-voucher. It is a perk of the job. ...

Tough love (Jul 3)
This time "white paternalism" might actually be doing some goodWHEN Sue Gordon was four, in the late 1940s, the authorities took her from her aboriginal community in outback Western Australia, put her on a train to Perth and handed her over to a Christian charity home. As a mixed-race child, she grew up as one of Australia's "stolen generations" ordered to obliterate her aboriginal heritage. Now 64, and a juvenile-court judge, Ms Gordon has just finished assessing an equally controversial government takeover of aboriginal lives. And she is surprisingly impressed.After a report in June last year revealed widespread aboriginal violence and child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory, John Howard, the former conservative prime minister, ordered police and the army to take control of 60 remote indigenous communities. Aborigines make up 29% of the federal territory's population, compared with 2% nationally. Mr Howard's measures included compulsory health checks on children, confining th...

Land and blood (Jul 3)
The independence campaign flares up in a row about land for Hindu pilgrimsFIRE crackers and scattered cheering dotted the night on July 2nd in Srinagar, as Kashmiris celebrated a rare victory over the Indian government. Hours earlier, after a week of popular and violent protests, Kashmir's government had rescinded a gift of protected-forest land to Hindu pilgrims. In response, local Muslim separatists called off the protests they had organised. But after this triumph, which followed a year or so of relative calm in the troubled valley, fresh agitation seems likely.Indeed, it may well spread beyond Kashmir and go national. On July 1st India's main opposition, the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), called for a nationwide strike to put pressure on the state government--which, like India's central government, is a coalition led by the Congress party--to reverse its reversal. Sticking up for Hindu pilgrims--hundreds of thousands of whom flock to a cave in Kashmir each year ...

Here we go again (Jul 3)
Allegations against Anwar Ibrahim may backfire on the governmentIN FEW countries does the word "sodomy" evoke a sense of political deja vu. Malaysia is one. On June 28th a male volunteer working for the political campaign of Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the opposition coalition, lodged a police report accusing him of sexual assault. Mr Anwar immediately called the accusation a "complete fabrication" and took refuge in the Turkish embassy, claiming that the government and police could not guarantee his safety. The government found itself in an awkward fix: its relations with the Turkish government were tested; and it had to declare that the safety of its main political rival was of the utmost importance. When Mr Anwar left the embassy the next day, in a throng of press and supporters, he claimed that the accusation was a diversionary tactic. He said it was meant to derail announcements that he would be standing in a by-election, and that four members of parliament from the ruling Bar...

Glad to be gay (but a bit shy about it) (Jul 3)
Where Victorian values and repressive laws still holdTHERE were no half-naked dancers, pink floats, or sailor boys locked in clinches; but India's gay-pride parade was ground-breaking enough without them. Several hundred men and women, waving rainbow flags, danced, stamped and sang their way through the city centres of Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata (Calcutta) on June 29th--the first such national event in this conservative country. The parade was lent a uniquely Indian flavour by flamboyant cross-dressing hijras, known as eunuchs, although many modern hijras are gay men who feel alienated by mainstream society. Though hijras, once trusted courtiers of the Mughal emperors, have a well-established identity in India, gay men and women do not; indeed the practice of homosexuality is illegal, punishable with ten years' imprisonment.Many of those who paraded under heavy monsoon clouds in Delhi said one of their main motives was to campaign for the repeal of that law, Section 377 of India's...

The war president (Jul 3)
Sri Lanka's army chief says the government has won its 25-year war against the Tamil Tigers. This is not trueMAHINDA RAJAPAKSE, Sri Lanka's president, shakes out his white outfit and spreads his bare toes with a satisfied air. "We have concentrated on the LTTE [the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam]," he says, "because unless we defeat them, we will have no peace and development." In January he abrogated a ceasefire and stepped up a brutal two-year offensive against the no-less-brutal LTTE. This week his army commander, General Sarath Fonseka, claimed the operation had succeeded. The Tigers, said the general, had lost the capability of fighting as a conventional army. "We have defeated them."The Tigers have not surrendered and would presumably disagree. But the president's brother, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who is also defence secretary, says the government has a once-in-a-generation chance to crush them. General Fonseka claims the Tigers have lost 9,000 fighters since 2006. They were dri...

Maoists prepare for power (Jun 28)
Nepal's ageing prime minister stands aside. A leading Maoist will probably replace himNEPAL'S Maoists, surprise victors of a general election in May, are now claiming their spoils. On Thursday June 26th Girija Prasad Koirala, the leader of the main opposition Nepali Congress (NC) party, resigned as the country's interim prime minister. He is expected to be replaced by the Maoists' leader, Pushpa Kamal Dahal.This is a departure almost as radical as the abolition of Nepal's 240-year-old monarchy, which took place, at the Maoists' demand, last month. Mr Koirala is an octogenarian giant of Nepal's politics. He assumed the post of prime minister, for the fourth time, in 2006, after the recently-deposed King Gyanendra was forced by popular protests to concede his absolute powers. ...

G?day Asia (Jun 26)
Not yet mates with its neighboursKEVIN RUDD, Australia's prime minister, wants to make Australia the "most Asia-literate country in the collective West". But many countries in Asia think Asia-literacy incompatible with membership of "the West". As hard as Australia tries to engage with the region next door, they still see it as an outsider preaching Western values to neighbours it does not fully understand. Now Mr Rudd has come up with two grand plans--for a political community and a nuclear non-proliferation body--that may throw this clash into even starker relief.Since he led the centre-left Labor Party to power last November, Mr Rudd has clocked up some impressive foreign-policy achievements. He has withdrawn Australia's 500 combat troops from Iraq without damaging the country's alliance with America. On a visit to China in April he managed to raise concerns about Tibet in fairly blunt terms, and yet to leave relations apparently unscathed. And he seems to have soothed fears in T...

Going bang (Jun 26)
Finding the truth in the debrisAS NORTH KOREAN spectaculars go, the promise to blow up the cooling tower of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the source of plutonium for Kim Jong Il's nuclear arsenal, is a welcome new departure. The North Korean leader's previous attention-grabber was the detonation of a nuclear "device", possibly a small bomb, in October 2006. Ironically, it was that blast which at last got China to lean hard on Mr Kim. This helped propel forward six-party talks that also include America, South Korea, Japan and Russia. As The Economist went to press this week, China was preparing to receive a long-sought account of North Korea's nuclear activities, America said it would lift some sanctions and start removing North Korea from its list of states that sponsor terrorism; the destruction of the Yongbyon tower was to symbolise a new turn in North Korea's dealings with the world. ...