It was a meaningful moment this morning for Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be present in the General Assembly Hall to listen to President W. Bush’s last speech to member states. But, is this a message to the United States? It certainly is. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the mood in Tehran and Washington has changed.

Omid Memarian (’09) writes for the Huffington Post.

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Pakistan is in crisis. Islamic extremism has metastasized from the lawless tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan to Pakistan’s cities. Terrorists tried, and failed, to assassinate the Prime Minister in the capital, Islamabad, on Sept. 3. The nation’s economy is a shambles. And Asif Ali Zardari, the man who has just taken the helm of this nuclear-armed country, is a onetime playboy who has spent more time in prison than in government and who wriggled out of a 2006 corruption trial in Britain by pleading mental instability.

Aryn Baker (’01) reports from Islamabad for TIME Magazine.

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THE god was ready for his night of conjugal bliss. The priests of the temple, muscular, shirtless men with white sarongs wrapped around their thighs, bore the god’s palanquin on their shoulders. They marched him slowly along a stone corridor shrouded in shadows to his consort’s shrine. Drumbeats echoed along the walls. Candles flickered outside the doorway to the shrine’s inner sanctum. There, Meenakshi, the fish-eyed goddess, awaited the embrace of her husband, Sundareshwarar, an incarnation of that most priapic of Indian gods, Shiva.

Edward Wong (’98) writes about his travels in South India for the The New York Times.

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Photo via New York Times

Habiba Sarabi should be wearing spurs and a sheriff’s badge. The diminutive Governor of Bamiyan, one of Afghanistan’s least developed provinces, is laying down the law. The environmental law, that is.

Aryn Baker (’01) writes for TIME Magazine.

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An international news agency has released photos of an attack that took place early this month against Chinese security forces in the remote Silk Road oasis town of Kashgar. Chinese officials have said the assault killed 16 paramilitary officers and wounded 16 others, making it the deadliest attack on Chinese security forces in recent years.

The unprecedented audacity of Tuesday’s attack on one of the largest U.S. bases in Afghanistan reflects the growing confidence of the Taliban: Six men wearing suicide bomb-vests attempted to rush the entrance gate of Camp Salerno in Khost Province. But unlike most suicide bombers, these men were not simply looking to blow themselves up in order to kill those within range of their blasts; instead, they were the human battering ram of a kamikaze infantry attack, sent to blow a breach in the security barrier for the fighters following in their wake to penetrate the base and spread maximum devastation inside a well-protected concentration of American power.

Aryn Baker (’01) reports from Kabul for TIME.
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Before the Beijing Olympics, China’s results in beach volleyball were hardly smashing. But at the Aug. 21 final, the country’s women’s side showed just how far they’ve come. After finishing 19th in the sport at the 2000 Games and 9th four years ago, Chinese teams took silver and bronze in Beijing. Austin Ramzy (’03) writes from Beijing for TIME.

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Two Beijing women in their late 70s have been sentenced to a year of administrative detention after applying to protest in the Chinese capital’s Olympic protest zones.

Austin Ramzy (’03) writes for TIME.

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Sa Dingding has made a tremendous impression on the West. It could be the 24-year-old Chinese singer’s florid costumes. Perhaps it’s her music videos, which feature psychedelic graphics and monks striding to fashionable breakbeats. Or maybe it’s her songs, which incorporate Buddhist mantras, traditional Chinese instruments and electronica. At any rate, the U.K.’s Sunday Times has anointed her “the Asian Björk.” The Guardian gave her debut album, Alive, four stars upon its U.K. release last October, adding, “Sa Dingding deserves to be the first Chinese singer-songwriter to become a celebrity in the West.”

Ling Woo Liu (’06) writes for TIME.
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The President of Afghanistan remains unrelenting in his criticism of neighboring Pakistan, even as that nation begins a sensitive political transition. In an interview with TIME in Kabul, Hamid Karzai said the way to fix Afghanistan is to fix things in Pakistan.

Aryn Baker (’01) reports for TIME.

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Photo via TIME via Getty