On board flight number ED 410, Nazar Muhammad Chohan, a lawyer based in Lahore, senses something dubious around him on this Dubai-bound flight.

Anjali was stuck. Stuck. Trapped. She couldn’t leave him. What would happen to the children? What would they do the next time he was in one of his moods? She had been a good child, always listening to her parents. She worked hard and did well in school, and could embroider, stick, knit, sew, paint, sketch, and cook better than any of her sisters. A pleasant smile was never far from her face. Her heart on her sleeve, she gave generously to those around her, and always had a kindly word for anyone who may need it. All she wanted was joy. She had never thirsted after money, manipulated her position for power.

Living in the bleak rural outskirts of Multan, Razia Mushtaq had a childhood full of hardship. She was from an underprivileged family. There was no silver spoon. Her father was a shoe mender. Such was the bitter reality she had to face, day after day. Their house was a mud-and-brick structure, covered by a flimsy tin roof, incurred at considerable expense.

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INTERVIEW AND PHOTO BY TOMOKAZU KOSUGA

How long into his life can a man keep fucking? Here in Japan, there is one brave grandpa who is using his own body to answer that question. His name is Shigeo Tokuda and he is a 74-year-old porn performer. He often stars in movies staged in old-age homes—like, as in “gramps fucks his hot little nurse”—which frankly we have no clue who would want to watch, save for the morbid chuckles factor.
Regardless, we headed over to meet this geriatric pussy master and ask him questions about his ancient cock.

Polygamist Warren Jeffs (C) is flanked by Las Vegas Metro Police SWAT officers during an extradition hearing at the Clark County Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, in this August 31, 2006 file photograph. – Reuters Photo

He is a polygamist religious leader who married many women, including underage girls, and raped a minor. He banned parades, dances and magazines like the Sports Illustrated and Car and Driver and yet revelled in the company of multiple wives.

BY MARA HVISTENDAHL

How did more than 160 million women go missing from Asia? The simple answer is sex selection -- typically, an ultrasound scan followed by an abortion if the fetus turns out to be female -- but beyond that, the reasons for a gap half the size of the U.S. population are not widely understood. And when I started researching a book on the topic, I didn't understand them myself.

BY ELLEN KNICKMEYER

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—On the "ladies' level" at the Kingdom Centre shopping mall in the Saudi capital, winds of change for Saudi women are blowing among the racks of bras. Gender barriers are falling among the body-shapers and panties. In what Saudi activists argue is one of several potentially momentous moves this spring and summer to ease some of the toughest strictures in the world upon women, Saudi Arabia says that it is remaking employment regulations -- so that women clerks can wait upon female customers in lingerie stores.

Pir told her parents that the djinn had been exorcised and that the only way to get rid of the demon was to burn her and beat it out.

KHANEWAL: A pir beat a woman, while performing an exorcism on Friday morning.

Some 90 per cent of Afghan women face some form of domestic violence - many are forced into early marriage, kidnapped, or raped with no hope of justice

In December 2010, in a small house located in Sarbande Chakush village in the Juzjan province of Afghanistan, a 14-year-old girl named Aziza was abruptly awakened by loud banging on the front door in the middle of the night.

Iqbal Hussain is a controversial painter based in Pakistan. Not controversial in the Western sense - he's no Dash Snow or Andres Serrano - Iqbal showcases a side of Pakistan that many Pakistani's would rather not acknowledge.
I'm no expert on Hussain's work, so I'll quote excerpts from a fine article on All Things Pakistan written by Pervaiz Munir Alvi.

Enter the oldest & meanest brothel system of India, where you can buy females as less as 50 cents. Child pornography, drug dealing is common & law enforcements are all but blind. Peek into the economic giant India & face the ugliest truths in the poverty stricken population of Mumbai brothels.

Naseema was born into and lives in one of India's most infamous brothels but is now working to free trafficked women.

India's handwritten magazines have long fascinated me. But while researching the subject for a blog, I came across one in particular that stood out. Jugnu is a 32-page monthly magazine that has been written and published by the sex workers of the Chaturbhuj-sthan brothel in Bihar, near the border with Nepal, for the past 10 years.

by Sana Saleem

That reporting a rape is an arduous ordeal is a truth that resounds globally. When braving for police investigations, enumerating the ordeal in court and damaging stereotypical media representations become a norm then the argument for a pellucid approach becomes preemptory.

In 2006, a much-heated debate on the Hudood Laws revealed the anatomy of rape, conflicting legalities involving misinterpretations of Shariah Laws and the deeply engrained distorted public perceptions. For those who followed the debate, there should be no qualms in admitting that it made the inherent flaws in interpretations of the law and the systematic distortion of a society sensitive to violence and abuse evident.

Could the widespread availability and consumption of pornography in recent years actually be rewiring the male brain?

It is hard to ignore how many highly visible men in recent years (indeed, months) have behaved in sexually self-destructive ways. Some powerful men have long been sexually voracious; unlike today, though, they were far more discreet and generally used much better judgment in order to cover their tracks.
Of course, the heightened technological ability nowadays to expose private behavior is part of the reason for this change. But that is precisely the point: so many of the men caught up in sex-tinged scandals of late have exposed themselves - sometimes literally - through their own willing embrace of text messages, Twitter, and other indiscreet media.

The news of an elderly woman being paraded naked in Haripur, a remote village in Punjab, is really heart throbbing. Her crime? Her son is accused of adultery with a fellow village woman. The village jury declares her son guilty and the victim (her mother) is paraded around the streets naked, as the punishment. Justice dispensed! I wonder if the chief arbiter had pronounced the same verdict had he been accused of adultery/rape. But that is another story. In our Orwellian world, some people are just more equal than others.

So, what then, disturbs me is the fact that why, each time, a mother has to pay for the crimes of her son? Why, always, is a sister punished for a wrong done by her brother? Is this our way of restoring honour? Bartering and exchanging girls like cattle, raping them in the open, siccing dogs on them, and now, parading them naked on the streets. The simple logic that two wrongs never make one right seems incomprehensible to our ‘jurists’.

by Razeshta Sethna

For most governments that have come and gone, Pakistan’s women haven’t mattered. Gaunt and broken, fifty-something Shahnaz Bibi was paraded naked in her village of Neelor Bala in Haripur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in June.

Her son was accused of having an affair with a married woman, but it was Shahnaz who was punished when some influential men of the area decided to take matters into their own hands. The devastating impact of male-dominated parallel justice systems have destroyed, and taken, the lives of Pakistani women.

Bedouin Arabs living in the Negev desert are being forced off their grazing lands into towns and villages that lack clean water, sanitation, electricity, and other basic services [GALLO/GETTY]

Ibrahim al-Atrash lifts the cover to a large, copper water tank. "Rust," he says, pointing to the discolored rim. Moments later, one of al-Atrash's children fills a pink, plastic jug with water that slowly trickles out from the container's spout.

by Zafar Hilaly

While we have seen phenomenal changes take place across the world in recent decades, the status and fate of women, who have been so badly treated through the centuries in almost all cultures, hasn’t changed much.

But in Pakistan, their situation has become worse and thus it comes as no surprise that we were recently rated as one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to the way we treat women. Already among the ten most corrupt states of this world, Pakistan ranks even higher when it comes to maltreatment of women. Only in war-torn Afghanistan and the Congo is their plight worse and their lives and honour more threatened.

For centuries Hindu pilgrims have donated their hair in a ritual of purification. Today this hair has become a precious commodity and an extraordinary economic resource.

Hair India follows the journey of human hair from the holy temples of Southern India to the production lines of Europe and on to high class beauty salons around the world.

Last year, filmmaker Raffaele Brunetti spoke to Al Jazeera's Donata Hardenberg about the making of Hair India and how the film reflects the contradictions in modern Indian society.

Al Jazeera: Why did you decide to make a film about hair and its journey?