Ash is looking to go on a nice date, meet the right girl, but nobody believes he is Indian!  Three Dates is a film about a man of Indian origin who lives in New York and has trouble making people around him believe that he is Indian. Why would they? He is not Mama’s boy, Tandoori chicken and spicy Indian food doesn’t go down very well with him and he is not into yoga. He rolls his eyes when his date mentions the aligning of chakras. He could pass for a Mexican or an Italian – anything but Indian. A light-hearted short film, Three Dates explores important questions about one’s identity.

Infolady – the short form for “information lady” is a revolutionary concept that has provided thousands of Bangladeshi women the much-desired freedom and chance to use modern technologies. The infolady project is one of the winners in the Deutsche Welle Bobs awards for the category, “Global Media Forum Award.”

This blog is part of a series on women and elections in Pakistan. The project is a joint effort by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) Pakistan and the UKS research center.

Women make up almost half of the almost 200 million people inhabiting Pakistan. That is indeed a huge number, but come election time, and the percentages we see the statisticians throwing at us present a pretty dismal picture.

As a child, I often imagined I would die in front of my family or class mates and they would express their love to me and grieve over my dead body. This thought gave me a lot of satisfaction and even though I never really wished to be dead, just thinking I could be close to death assured me that I was loved and cared for.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is set for his third term as the country’s prime minister. The economy is crippled, the people unhappy and a huge energy deficit reigns in the country. Islamic extremism has tarnished the image of the country in the world. Will Sharif be able to overcome the daunting tasks that lay in front of him? Will he able to do justice to the expectations of the women in the Pakistani society? Will he able to really bring about a change in Pakistan? WTO reporter Roma Rajpal asked five Pakistani women from varied backgrounds about their expectations.

According to the latest figures released by the Indian Home Ministry, out of the 15,85,117 personnel working in state police forces, only 84,479 or just 5.33% are women.  Besides there are only 499 all-women police stations out of a total of 15,000 stations in the country. The figures are absurd and call for an analysis. Is meagre representation of women in the forces, leading to a rise in crimes against women?

What is cancer exactly and is it really possible to “beat the disease?” German oncologist Christof von Kalle is convinced that interdisciplinary collaboration by medical specialists will improve treatments for cancer patients. He hopes to simplify studies to speed up the development of new therapies for cancer.