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India's economic boom has reached Calcutta, a city better known for crushing poverty. The city wants to ban hand-pulled rickshaws, calling them medieval and inhumane. Officials promise to provide alternative employment, although those promised jobs might not materialize.

A major earthquake rumbles through mountain villages in Kashmir, Pakistan's capital and many other cities and towns across South Asia. Initial estimates of the dead are put at 1,000 and are likely to climb.

Sri Lanka's hard-line prime minister has been elected in a tight presidential race. The vote was seen as a referendum to push for the island's faltering peace process and rescue the tsunami-hit economy.

The U.S.-Pakistan relationship has hit a new low. Pakistan is nervous and indignant about Washington's agreement to supply India with nuclear fuel and equipment. Critics in Pakistan say that five years of support for President Bush's War on Terror have gone unrewarded.

Protests continue against the rule of the King Gyanendra of Nepal. The king's announcement last week that he's willing to turn over power to a prime minister has done little to quiet demands for democracy and a new constitution for the Himalayan kingdom.

Nepalese police open fire on thousands of pro-democracy protesters marching toward the capital of Katmandu in defiance of a government-imposed curfew, killing at least three and wounding dozens, witnesses and hospital officials report.

A sixth person dies in Nepal's two-week long protest campaign against the country's King. The enigmatic Nepalese monarch holds the future of the kingdom in his hands.

Many millions of Hindus are gathered along the shores of their holiest river, the Ganges, in one of the world's largest religious gatherings, the Kumbh Mela. Over a few weeks, up to 70 million Hindus swim in the chilly waters — many of them on what India's astrologers deem to be "auspicious" bathing days.

Thousands of people trying to leave Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula are trapped by ethnic conflict. The peninsula is held by the Sri Lankan government. The territory just to the south is in the hands of Tamil Tiger rebels.

In the last six months alone, extra-judicial executions, suicide bombings and fighting have claimed many hundreds of lives in Sri Lanka. The death of a Hindu Tamil priest underlines the sheer viciousness of the conflict.