Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency Saturday, citing growing militant attacks and interference in government policy by members of the judiciary. But far from a solution to Pakistan’s problems, Musharraf’s move to consolidate power has plunged the country into a deeper constitutional crisis and is likely to unleash a wave of new attacks by Al Qaeda-inspired militants, further destabilizing a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror. Aryn Baker (’01) and her colleague Simon Robinson report for TIME.

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A dozen people have gathered inside the Industrial Evangelistic Fellowship’s modest community center in Macau, where the Rev. Jimmy Tan strums his guitar and belts out Christian songs with the small group before him. Latecomers trickle in well past the meeting’s 9:30 p.m. start time, but no one seems to mind — many of them work multiple jobs and are used to odd hours. Seated in a semicircle of plastic chairs, the engineers, police officers, health-care workers and casino dealers have something in common: they are all addicted to gambling. Lin Liu (’06) reports for TIME.

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Flickr photograph by Jeff Kubina.

Call centers are symbols of India’s economic boom. With Anglicized names and feigned Western accents, Indians handle credit card problems and troubleshoot computers, collect debts and conduct customer satisfaction surveys. Over the past decade or so, relatively high salaries in the call center sector have attracted thousands of applicants across the country. But now the boom is going bust because India’s college graduates and young job seekers just don’t want to be bothered with the business anymore. Sudhin Thanawala (’07) based in Delhi for TIME Asia looks at the waning popularity of call centers.

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Flickr photograph by David Robinson.

China’s central government recently warned of a potential ecological catastrophe caused by the huge Three Gorges dam, once hailed as the country’s greatest undertaking in 1,000 years. Jianqiang Liu, a reporter with Southern Weekend and a visiting scholar, reports for chinadialogue.com on how views of the project have changed.

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YOKOHAMA, JAPAN—Things in Chinatown here have all the appearance of being Chinese. From every angle golden signs, red roof tiles and traditional lanterns attract the eyes of the district’s many visitors, estimated to number 20 million each year. But when waitresses and waiters decked out in traditional Chinese garb nod their heads and bellow out greetings in Japanese rather than Chinese, it becomes clear that Yokohama’s Chukagai is different from Chinatowns found in other countries.

“This Chinatown has been Japanified,” says Fu Shunhe, member of Yokohama Chinese-Overseas Association. Wu Nan (’08) reports from Japan for The Daily Yomiuri.

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Hong Kong consumers are demanding more organic goods after a series of food scandals in China, from where the city sources 80 percent of its food.

Park’n Shop, the grocery-store unit of billionaire Li Ka- shing’s Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., this month started a system of monitoring vegetables imported from China. Rival Wellcome, controlled by Jardine Matheson’s Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd., plans to turn its organic supermarket ThreeSixty into a three-store chain by the end of next year, said spokeswoman Annie Sin.

Laurie Burkitt (’08) reports for Bloomberg.

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“Asean officials are talking nonsense.

Several ministers and diplomats of Asean countries warned recently a sudden regime change in Burma could lead to an Iraq-type anarchy with rival factions battling each other for power.

Are such people that ignorant of Burma, which belongs to the 10-member Asean grouping?”

Kyaw Zwa Moe (VS ‘06), comments in the Thailand-based English language news magazine The Irrawaddy.

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The day Benazir Bhutto returned to Karachi after exile in 1986, Nazir Ahmad Baloch woke up early, pinned a button of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to his shirt and danced out the door chanting “Long Live Bhutto.” “He was crazy,” says his aunt, Anipa Banno. “The party never did anything for him, but he believed in their slogan, ‘Bread, Shelter and Clothes.’ He was a party diehard.” Bhutto had fled Pakistan when her father, former President and Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was toppled in a military coup and later executed. But she went back to pick up her father’s mantle as head of the PPP, and eventually led the party to election victory, becoming the world’s first woman to head a modern Muslim nation. Like many in the sprawling slum city of Lyari, Baloch, though only a child, fell in love with the PPP when the elder Bhutto made it the centerpiece of his campaign to empower Pakistan’s poor. “Bhutto came to my house and asked about my problems,” says Banno. “Nazir was there with me, waving his little flag.” Lyari has been a PPP stronghold ever since. Aryn Baker (’01) reports for TIME.

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