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Asaram wants special bed, gangajal in jail

Self-styled godman Asaram Bapu, lodged in Jodhpur Central Jail over the alleged sexual assault of a minor, in a trial court Thursday sought special facilities such as a personal bed, gangajal, some herbs and medicines, books and a few other items to carry out puja inside the jail premises.
Asaram's lawyer, Pradeep Choudhary, argued that he be permitted the requisition considering his age.
Choudhary told reporters that the demands were being made in a court as the jail authorities had refused to comply. He cited a rule that provided any prisoner reasonable facilities in the jail permitted upon the

discretion of the jail superintendent. "The facilities should be made available to my client considering his age. We had asked the jail authorities for the same but the request was turned down," Choudhary said.
The prosecution argued that Asaram was being checked by a medical team twice every day and was found to be physically and mentally fit and therefore such a demand did not hold ground.
The jail authorities did allow Asaram gangajal after he was shifted to the jail Monday evening but he had asked for more to take showers with it.
On the first day of his stay in jail, he was also permitted food from outside and his followers had got him fruits and sweets. But the authorities decided to deny him the special provisions considering his fitness. Officials said he was perfectly fine, was taking his usual medicines and hence did not need any additional herbs or medicines.
A decision on the matter is slated for Friday.
Meanwhile, co-accused in the case, Shiva, Asaram's attendant at the Manai ashram, told reporters on Thursday that he was being forced by Jodhpur Police to admit his involvement. Shiva alleged that the police had tortured him and pulled off his ponytail hurting his religious sentiments. He said the allegations on Asaram were a conspiracy by the Congress party.

Teenager gangraped by three cops in J-K, two arrested

A teenage girl was allegedly abducted and gang-raped by three police personnel in Jammu and Kashmir's Reasi district, about 70 kms from here.
J&K 'mass-rape' victims break silence, vow to fight
The girl was abducted from Talwara Migrant camp in Reasi on Thursday evening by Assistant Sub Inspector Mahesh Mehta, Satvir Singh, personal assistant to Reasi SSP, and Special Police Officer (SPO) Karnail Singh, a senior police official said.

Two arrested for raping minor in J&K
On a complaint of the girl's parents yesterday, police raided a house in Marhi area and arrested the ASI and SPO while Satvir managed to flee, the official said, adding the girl was also rescued.
J&K govt offers Rs 2 lakh for rape, Rs 3 lakh for rape in police custody
"We have launched a hunt to nab Satvir," Reasi SSP M S Chouhan said. Medical examinations of the girl had been done and she was produced in court and kept in a women's shelter, he added. The incident triggered protests by Talwara migrants who blocked roads and staged sit-in.

Jaya assets case: SC pulls up K'taka govt, stays trial

Censuring the conduct of the Karnataka government, the Supreme Court Friday stayed the trial proceedings in a Bangalore court against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa in a corruption case.
A Bench of Justices B S Chauhan and S A Bobde ordered a stay on the proceedings while asking the Karnataka government to file its reply to her petition against the manner in which orders withdrawing the special prosecutor in the case was passed.
"It is not the way to deal with the matter. We want to now hear the matter fully. If trial is required to be brought to this court, we will conduct the trial too but we now want to hear it. It is too much...," observed a Bench, expressing its displeasure.
Jayalalithaa had approached the apex court second time in less than a fortnight on the decision of the state government to remove G Bhavani Singh as the prosecutor.

Previously on September 6, the court had simply disposed of the matter after the Karnataka government backtracked on the issue of directly removing Singh and also agreed to withdraw the contentious notification.
Admitting the procedural lapses, the government conceded before the SC that it was withdrawing the order to take off Singh as special public prosecutor in the case since it was issued without consulting the Chief Justice of High Court.

Tension in Aligarh area after eveteasing incident

Tension gripped Atrauli area here after a girl was allegedly eveteased by three youths of a community.
The girl who was on her way to college was allegedly accosted and harassed by three motorcycle-borne youths yesterday, police said.
The girl raised an alarm and bystanders nabbed one of the youths, while the other two escaped, they said.
There was tension in the area following the incident as leaders of different saffron organisations reached there. Senior district officials soon rushed to the spot and
another culprit was nabbed.
Police said a strict vigil is being maintained at Atrauli and neighbouring villages.
Uttar Pradesh has been on tenterhooks since outbreak of violence in Muzaffarnagar and surrounding districts over an eveteasing incident.

Muzaffarnagar riots: Tales of tragedy and destruction unfold in refugee camps

Lisarh represented all that was good in Muzaffarnagar, dubbed the sugar bowl of India. It had the prosperity arising from the region's agrarian boom, and in its demographics, it had two communities living and working together in peace.
PHOTOS: Tales of tragedy in Muzaffarnagar relief camps
Haji Samiuddin, 65, of Lisarh represented all that Muzaffarnagar could have been. Having toiled in his fields for decades, he had ensured his children got a good education and saw them become owners of a saw mill. The family business was booming, and they were thinking of expanding.
Samiuddin and his wife are now dead, killed and dumped inside their burning home. And Lisarh, a village that was on the cusp of becoming a town, will now never be the place it was.
***

Samiuddin's eldest son Saeed Hassan remembers each detail of the last time he met his father. It was the morning of September 7. Things had been worsening, and they had heard of the Jat mahapanchayat being held that day in Sakheda, 35 km away. "The Jats have gathered in lakhs. Our friends are leaving and so should we. These are dangerous times," Hassan had said.
Akhilesh Yadav: The man in the muddle
Samiuddin found this incredulous. "We have lived here all our lives, half the youngsters here have grown up sitting in my lap. Nobody will harm us here," he said.
Hassan says he told him that it was no longer about the villagers. "This is about politics and things we are not connected to."
However, Samiuddin insisted on staying. "You go son, you have your children to think about," he said. "You mother and I were born here and come what may, we will die here."
His mother Hamida, age 58, had added, "I cannot leave your father's side. Jahan bhi jao khuda to sab jagah hai (Wherever you go, god is everywhere)."

Kajol: I am a lazy actor

Actress Kajol, who is now set to make another comeback to the big screen, says she is a lazy actor.
Kajol, 39, took a sabbatical from full-time acting in 2001 and returned to films with the 2006 romantic thriller "Fanaa". But, afterwards she was only seen in cameo
appearances.
Also Read:
Kajol likely to make a comeback in husband Ajay Devgn's film
She was last seen in a prominent role in Karan Johar's home production "We Are Family" (2010).
"I am lazy... I can't do more work or films beyond some extent. Two films a year is enough for me so that I feel I am working. I don't think of any film as mine till I start shooting for it. After I start working then it is mine... It is a healthy attitude," Kajol told PTI in an interview.
Asked what keeps her in demand despite not being in the limelight, Kajol said, "May be I am away from work, that is why I am in demand. I am working for more than 20 years, but I have done little work, handful of films. There are others who do three times or four times more films than I do."

And now she is set to return with husband Ajay Devgn's home production.
"It is a nice script and story but nothing to talk about it as of now.... It is too premature," she says.
But she also added that she will not be seen regularly in films as family is her priority now.
"Definitely I will not do films regularly. I will take time off. I don't want to do film just for the heck of it. I have a full life; I have a husband, two kids, house, a production company and other things.

20-year-old NRI out partying in Kalkaji found dead

A 20-year-old NRI was murdered in Kalkaji, Southeast Delhi, on Saturday. Police said the NRI, Anmol Sarna, was in the capital on a vacation and was to return to the United States next month.
NRI found murdered at Mahimasinghwala
According to police, Anmol was out partying with his friends in an upmarket residential society in Kalkaji on Friday night. Around 1 am, he was taken to AIIMS with several grave injuries to his face and body. His parents and were informed and by the time they reached the hospital, Anmol succumbed to injuries, police said.

Quoting AIIMS doctors, police said Anmol's injuries appeared to have been "caused by a blunt object". Police have registered a case of murder but are yet to make any arrests. They are questioning Anmol's friends with whom he was partying.
Anmol's family told police that on Friday evening, a friend had called Anmol to invited him to a party the friend was hosting.
4 real estate agents found murdered in farmhouse
Anmol's cousin Akhil said, "The party was being held at the flat of a common friend in Kalkaji. They picked up Anmol from Kailash Colony on Friday evening. Around 11.30 pm, Anmol's mother received a missed call from one of his friends, who was at the party. When his mother called back, no one answered. Around
1 am, Anmol's mother received another call from the mother of the friend in whose house the party was hosted. She informed auntie that Anmol had a stomach ache and that they were taking him to hospital," Akhil said.

My mom and i share the same husband

As a child in rural Bangladesh, Orola Dalbot, 30, liked growing up around her mother's second husband, Noten. Her father had died when she was small, and her mother had remarried. Noten was handsome, with a broad smile. "I thought my mother was lucky," Orola says. "I hoped I'd find a husband like him." When she hit puberty, however, Orola learned the truth she least expected: She was already Noten's wife. Her wedding had occurred when she was 3 years old, in a joint ceremony with her mother. Following tradition in the matrilineal Mandi tribe, mother and daughter had married the same man.
"I wanted to run away when I found out," says Orola, sitting in the sunbaked courtyard of her family home in north-central Bangladesh. "I was shaking with disbelief." Orola's mother, Mittamoni, now 51, told her she must accept it. Among the Mandi, a remote hill tribe in Bangladesh and India, widows who wish to remarry must choose a man from the same clan as their dead husband. The only single males, however, are often much younger. So the custom evolved that a widow would offer one of her daughters as a second bride to take over her duties  including sex  when the daughter came of age.
"My mother was only 25 when my father died. She wasn't ready to be single," says Orola, swathed in a vibrant blue pashmina. The tribe offered Noten, then 17, as Mittamoni's new husband, on the condition that he marry Orola, too. "I was too small to remember the wedding I had no idea it had taken place," Orola says. Devastated to discover that she was expected to share her own mother's husband, she says, "My mother already had two children with him. I wanted a husband of my own."
The situation was doubly unjust in Orola's eyes because ethnic Mandi women usually choose their own partners. The tribe's matrilineal structure means that women are the heads of household, and all property is passed down the female line. Women make the first romantic move and propose marriage. "I was excited about finding the right man," says Orola.
In recent years, many observers assumed the mother-daughter marriage custom had died out. Catholic missionaries have converted 90 percent of the tribe's 25,000 Bangladeshi members, and many once-accepted Mandi practices are now taboo. These include the rare custom of "groom kidnapping," in which Mandi women abduct potential husbands. Yet, while there are no official figures, one local leader claims there are "numerous" families who still follow the mother-daughter custom. "People stay quiet about it because having more than one wife is frowned on by the church," says Shulekha Mrong, head of Achik Michik, a powerful women's group run by Mandi female elders.
Today, Orola Dalbot is the mother of three children with Noten: a 14-year-old boy, a 7-year-old girl, and an 19-month-old girl. (Orola's mother has a son and daughter with Noten.) The family lives in a cluster of mud houses in a village with no running water. The nearest town consists of a single row of ramshackle stalls selling cooking oil and candles. Orola and Mittamoni jointly own a few acres of land, from which they make a modest living cultivating pineapples and bananas

The three-way marital arrangement grew tense when Noten began sleeping with Orola when she was 15. "My mother knew it was inevitable that we'd have sex. But he quickly began to prefer me to her, and she hated it," Orola says. In a whisper — Mittamoni is nearby — Orola relates how her mother once slipped some wild herbs into her food to make her vomit. "While I was ill, she seized the chance to spend the night with Noten. She really loved him."
The rivalry ruined their mother-daughter bond. "She stopped being my mother," Orola says. "I couldn't turn to her for advice anymore. I felt betrayed and abandoned." Orola rebelled against her new role, taking off on solo day trips to the district capital of Madhupur to go shopping and watch Bengali movies. "I used some of the family money to buy gold jewelry," she says. "I knew I'd never have a man of my own to buy gifts for me, so I bought some for myself."
Orola became alienated from her girlfriends as well. "They spent all their time gossiping about boys, and I couldn't join in," she says. Since Mandi communities are usually very close-knit, her intense isolation drove her to consider suicide. But she soon became pregnant with her first child, giving her "a new purpose," she says.
Mittamoni, a statuesque woman, listens without apparent emotion as Orola talks. Does she feel guilty hearing Orola's words? "No, I don't," says Mittamoni. "The marriage was necessary. I couldn't have managed alone after my first husband died." Noten was the only bachelor available — most Mandis marry around the age of 18 — so she had no choice but to allow him to wed Orola as well. "It was our clan elders' decision, not mine," she adds. She says she protected Orola until she grew up, and that sharing a husband was tough for her, too. "I had to step aside when Noten grew affectionate with Orola, and that was very painful," she says. Noten, who is also present, throws his hands in the air as if to say, "Don't put me in the middle of this." The gesture is so lightning fast that it's obvious he uses it on a regular basis.
But the point of co-marriage is not simply to satisfy the husband's sexual needs. Most marital practices around the world that involve multiple spouses have more to do with power and economics than sex, and the Mandi tribe (also known as the Garo tribe) is no exception. Since the Mandis are matrilineal, the idea that a man should marry a widow and her daughter is designed to safeguard the property-owning female lineages of both sides of the family. A Mandi marriage represents the consolidation of wealth between two clan lines. As a widow, Mittamoni was obliged to remarry within her first husband's clan to ensure that the union remain intact. The point of her daughter's marrying the same man helps guarantee two things: first, that the family has a fertile young woman to produce children to add to its wealth, and second, that the wife's clan holds onto its power, as her daughter protects her property when she dies.
Female elder Shulekha Mrong, a majestic-looking woman in a burnt-orange sarong, understands such clan issues, yet she opposes mother-daughter marriages. "The custom is a great injustice against young girls," she says. "They're denied choice, and it's psychologically damaging to share a husband with their own mother." She cites recent cases where young women have bolted from such arrangements, fleeing to Dhaka to work as maids or beauticians. "Mandi girls want to have genuine love relationships these days," she says.
Parvin Rema, 36, agrees. When she was 13, she and her widowed mother jointly married an 18-year-old man. "I thought my life was ruined after the wedding," she says. "My mother was 36. I didn't understand why she wanted such a young husband." But Parvin, a feisty character with a prematurely lined forehead, quickly used her wiles to become the household's alpha female. "My mother slept with our husband for the first three years. But as soon as I was old enough, I made sure he lost interest in her. I cooked him delicious curries and never refused him sex."
After a few years, she gave birth to a daughter, Nita, who is now 14. Motherhood brought powerful emotions to the surface. "When I look at Nita, I can't believe my mother forced me into this kind of marriage," Parvin says. "I feel angry and sad. How could she do that to her daughter?" Parvin is determined to make sure Nita has more life choices. "Nita is so full of hope," says Parvin. "I want her to go to college, and to decide who and when she marries."
Nita is currently studying hard at school, where she is teased by her classmates because of her unusual family setup — another reason Parvin fervently wants the tradition abolished. But she also wants her daughter to be proud of her Mandi heritage. "Mandi women have run this tribe for centuries," she says. "Now it's up to Nita's generation to ensure we run it even better in the future."

 

Finding Power Behind the Wheel

Most of what we hear about Iran these days is worrisome, but there's at least one upbeat movement afoot: the rise of the female race-car driver. Last June, Zohreh Vatankhah (left) and her navigator, Afsaneh Ahmadi (right), entered a multipart rally race in Iran, along with four other women's teams.

The race began near Tehran, shifted to the desert, then returned to the capital, where the winner (not Vatankhah) received $300. (Winnings per race can reach $1,000 — not a bad day's pay, considering Iran's average annual household income is $7,500.)

Though their numbers have steadily increased since 1979, women racers in Iran still must follow the strict Islamic dress code, covering their hair and bodies while driving. But no one said they couldn't paint their cars pink....

Here Come the Brides!

'Tis the season to tie the knot. In China, the more the merrier.

In the city of Sanya, on the southern tip of Hainan Island, hundreds of couples participated in the 11th annual Tianyahaijiao International Wedding Festival, flocking to the country's most beautiful beach for a piggyback "race" to reaffirm their love. (It is also one of many promotional events leading up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008.) Tianyahaijiao, the name of the beach, is also a proverb meaning "To the end of the earth and corner of the sea." The American equivalent? "Till death do us part."

What Some Women Will Do for Beauty

WHY IT'S DONE: About 50 percent of Pacific Asians do not have an upper-eyelid crease. For those who do, the crease falls about 7 mm above the lashline, whereas for Caucasians, the crease falls about 11 mm above it.

HOW IT WORKS: During the most popular version of this outpatient procedure, a crescent-shaped incision is made along the new crease line, and a small amount of skin, tissue, and fat on the upper eyelid is cut away. When the two sides are sutured back together, the incision is hidden under the newly created crease.

PROCEDURE LENGTH: Approximately one hour

RECOVERY TIME: Sutures are removed after about a week. Bruising and swelling usually subside after a month.

COST: $2500 to $5000

ORIGIN: 19th-century Japan. The popularity of the procedure jumps whenever there was a significant Western presence in Asia — for example, during the Korean War.

HOW COMMON: Almost 300,000 Asians in the U.S. had the surgery in 2006.

The Kite Makers of Kabul

In The Kite Runner, the film adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's best-selling path-to-manhood tale, it's the creations of renowned local kite maker Noor Agha that fill the sky. Banned during Taliban rule, kite flying — and the more combative kite dueling — is once again Afghanistan's national passion, so Agha's business was already booming. But when DreamWorks came calling, he had to recruit the women in his family to learn this traditionally male craft.

They all work together in one room. That includes both his wives: Marzia, who makes the bold graphics of each kite into completely unique patchwork patterns, and Farida, who completes the tails and imprints Agha's name and signature scorpion image.

The two wives, working and raising their combined 11 children, are the collaboration that holds the whole kite-making operation together — maybe even more than the family's trademark secret glue.

The Best Boutique in Town

Ghazni was once a dazzling capital of the Turkish empire; now it’s a decaying mud-walled city. Located on the trade route between Kabul and Kandahar, one of the most dangerous highways in Afghanistan, the region is known for frequent roadside bombs, air strikes, and kidnappings. Then there’s the weather: extreme droughts, followed by snowstorms and heavy flooding. But even in Ghazni, the occasional pretty thing blooms. Here, dresses hang in the window of a tailor shop, a sign of the small pleasures daily life still holds — in spite of everything.

Need a Life? Rent One

For the millions of people in Japan who spend too much time at work to have pets, a social life, or a partner, help is at hand.

It started with Tokyo's cat cafés, where customers can sit around and sip coffee—and also rent a cat, for 10 bucks an hour. With Japan's economy in deep recession, cuddles are clearly in demand; customers ranging from schoolgirls to engineers are flocking to businesses such as Neko no Mise ("Cat Store"). Clients receive a "menu" of the felines available for petting; balls of wool and plastic mice are complimentary.

The cat cafés have become so popular that more than 150 businesses have sprung up to offer animals for hire—ferrets, turtles, squirrels, monkeys--on an hourly, weekly, or even monthly basis, if you want to bring the critter home. Dogs are predictably popular, but for those with a smaller apartment and budget, beetles are an option.

One agency has taken the idea of renting whatever makes your life complete a step further. Hagemashi Tai ("I Want to Cheer Up Limited") rents out relatives. Whether it's for a wedding or funeral, you can choose the perfect person to accompany you, rather than go solo. The agency also offers a service to single mothers seeking a male role model for their children. The "father" will attend school events, take the kid to the park, help with homework. Kikue Shimizu, 37, has a weekly arrangement with just such a rent-a-dad. "My two boys are growing up without a father figure in their lives," she says. "I need someone who can talk to them about their education, their futures."

To be sure, the tradition of paying someone to be nice to you has a long history in Japan, dating back to the dawn of the geisha. Consequently, there's no stigma attached to the fact that the so-called cousin at your side is clocking up the yen by the hour.

Girls Gone Geeky

Professional video-game tournaments—traditionally the province of the 300-pound dorky guy next door—are starting to look more like a Spice Girls show, thanks to female teams like the Frag Dolls. The Dolls are one of a handful of girl groups going head-to-head with the guys at Major League Gaming contests. The question: Did we really need to bust into this male bastion?

Some say yes: An estimated 94 percent of teen girls now play video games—it's part of the culture, like it or not. And Major League Gaming is on a roll, boasting thousands of competitors and a content deal with ESPN; the top prize at events can reach $100,000. For players like the Frag Dolls—who go by names such as Brookelyn, Phoenix, Psyche, and Rhoulette—gaming is a career opportunity; they get paid by a software company to compete in tournaments, work the booths at trade shows, and do press stunts, like teaching Kim Kardashian how to play Nintendo Wii.

It's not a bad gig for young women such as Brookelyn (Brooke Hattabaugh, 28). Before joining the Dolls, she was a shy, depressed high-school student who had burned down her mother's Kansas home while frying a chicken patty. The Frag Dolls forced her out of her shell. (After the Dolls? She wants to write children's books.)

Of course, not everyone's thrilled about the tarting up of the game world. Male bloggers gripe that women can't play in the NFL or NBA, so why are they allowed in Major League Gaming? But other guys dig it. At a recent tourney in Texas, Brookelyn, clad in a black corset, with a pair of diving doves tattoos on her shoulder, was swarmed by an army of preteen worshippers. "Can I get a picture?" one asked. "My buddy'll be so jealous." Indeed. Some boys even like to brag that they've made out with Brookelyn and her gal pals. Dream on, dudes.

Christy Turlington Burns: Postcard from Tanzania

The first time I saw Africa, I was doing a shoot for a British fashion magazine on a small island off the coast of Mombasa, the Kenyan port city. While the trip was extremely lovely and memorable, it wasn’t quite the Africa I had anticipated. So the following year, I returned, this time to Tanzania. On the flight over, I remember looking out at Mount Kilimanjaro from my airplane window and promising myself: The next time I come back, I will climb that mountain.

That was nearly 20 years ago. Over the years, I did make it back to sub-Saharan Africa several times, spending time in Madagascar, Swaziland, South Africa. I returned to Tanzania and Kenya and stayed with a friend who lived in the Masai Mara, beside a river packed with wild hippos. And yes, I did climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. This year, I decided to make the journey again, to Tanzania—but with a much different purpose. As an advocate for maternal health, I wanted to help ensure that mothers live to see their children grow up.

Exact numbers are hard to come by, but recent surveys suggest that for every 100,000 babies born in Tanzania, nearly 1000 mothers lose their lives in childbirth. Tanzania recognizes the magnitude of the problem; the country’s president, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, says he is committed to reducing maternal mortality by 75 percent by the year 2015. With the help of development partners like the World Bank and the Swiss government, President Kikwete plans to further educate hundreds of doctors, nurses, and midwives over the next 10 years, and train clinicians to perform emergency services like C-sections.

Underneath the Burka

Joumana Haddad is fed up with the notion that all Arab women are silent, submissive, and hopelessly oppressed. The Lebanese poet, author, and publisher of an erotic magazine lets loose in her new book, I Killed Scheherazade (in reference to the man-pleasing heroine of Arabian Nights). We checked in with the Carrie Bradshaw of Beirut.
What's the biggest sexual taboo in the Arab world?
Having sex before marriage. The honor of the whole Arab world lies between the Arab woman's legs. It's really heavy. I don't know how she can walk. There's so much hypocrisy, like the practice of "hymenoplasty" — getting your "virginity" back before getting married. So many women here do that. They don't think they have a right to a sexual life. They have sex in secret, then go and become virgins again — I'm talking about Muslims and Christians alike. I have acquaintances who have done that. What kind of man needs this illusion to be the first in order to feel strong?

In the West, men aren't so eager to find a virgin.
Right. Who would want a virgin? In Islam, some say that if you're a good Muslim, a good man, you'll be rewarded with 72 virgins when you die. Who would want 72 virgins? That sounds like a lot of work. That's the opposite of a reward.
What are other sexual taboos in Arab society?
Homosexuality is very discriminated against. And talking about sex — you cannot discuss it in the open. But polygamy is not a taboo. Neither is pedophilia. Shouldn't that be a taboo?
Your book notes that there are more than 50 million child brides in the world, mostly in Muslim countries. Why do some men want to marry a child?
I think it has a lot to do with low self-esteem. They want to pick the fruit as soon as it becomes ready. But it's also the responsibility of mothers and fathers who agree on marrying their daughters at that age.
You argue that Arab women are liberated. But then we read that a Saudi woman is lashed for the "crime" of being raped.
I'm not trying to present a different reality. The stories are true. I try to promote the good examples — beyond the sad stories that make the news in the West — to show that there's another Arab woman out there.
Is it true that men in conservative countries watch the most porn?
You saw the reports of Osama bin Laden having a stash of porn. Even if this is not true, how many people are like that in the Arab world? How many people preach about being religious, yet in secret they have these perverse practices because they are not able to have a healthy sex life? This is when you get sick — when you're not allowed to live your life normally. You become obsessed with everything that is forbidden. The most Googled word in Arabic is sex.
We hear and read stories of Arab women wearing sexy lingerie under the burka. Is that a fair representation?
It is exaggerated. Some Western men like to imagine a sexy, hot creature under that black veil. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't.
You grew up in a conservative Christian family in Beirut. How did you become so outspoken about sex?
It started when I was 12, when I read a book from the top shelf of my father's library — by the Marquis de Sade.
You're 40 now, a married mother of two, and you run the erotic magazine Jasad (Body). How do you get away with that job in Beirut?
When I started it, it was as if hell's doors opened in front of me. I received serious threats. It's also a financial challenge: I haven't had one paid advertisement since I started it two years ago.
Is the "Arab Spring" really bringing about change for women?
Nothing has changed. The women we see protesting get pushed aside after the revolution, at the moment of real change. It's scandalous. The real thing that makes me angry is that there aren't enough angry people in the world.

From the Front Lines of Libya

Lynsey Addario stands in front of a roomful of journalists at the Mandarin Oriental in New York City. She has just received an award from the Overseas Press Club for her photojournalism, and she's having a hard time getting through her acceptance speech. Two of her friends and fellow photographers, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, were killed a week earlier during a mortar attack in Libya. The moment Addario says their names, her face crumples, and she begins to cry.
Addario barely got out of Libya alive herself. Held captive for six days in March, she and three other journalists, on assignment for The New York Times, endured intense physical and psychological abuse. The ordeal began when Libyan soldiers detained the journalists at a checkpoint near a rebel-held town of Ajdabiya, beating them, forcing them to their knees, and ordering them to lie facedown on the ground — to be shot. The journalists' lives were spared that day, but the week that followed brought beatings, sexual aggression, and threats of murder. Bound and often blindfolded, they were moved from truck to truck, before finally getting released amid international pressure.

Addario, a 37-year-old Connecticut native, certainly knows the risks of her profession: For the past 15 years, she has traveled the world covering conflict and women's issues for publications such as National Geographic, Time, and Newsweek, in addition to the Times. In 2004, she was held captive by gunmen for eight hours in Iraq. In 2009, while on assignment in Pakistan, her collarbone was broken in a car accident when the driver fell asleep at the wheel, killing himself in the process. We talked to Addario as well as her husband, Paul de Bendern, a Reuters bureau chief in New Delhi, India, where the couple is currently based, about how they got through the latest ordeal — and what drives them to report from war zones.
Lynsey, you were lying facedown on the ground with your colleagues when you heard a Libyan soldier say: "Shoot them." What goes through your mind when you think you will be killed?
Lynsey Addario: For me, I just pray. And I'm not very religious at all — I was raised Catholic, but probably haven't gone to church since my Holy Communion, when I was about 6 or 7. I think that there's nothing you can do when you're in that situation, so for me, I go into this sort of altered state, almost begging: Please. Please. Please. You can't do anything. You really can't. So you just hope that they don't kill you.
During your captivity, soldiers were alternately groping your breasts and punching you in the face. At one point, a soldier caressed your head while threatening to kill you. How did you keep your sanity?
Lynsey: I was lucky because there were four of us. We were together, and that really helped tremendously in terms of dealing with things along the way. There were many times when we weren't allowed to speak to each other, but just the fact that we knew the other people were present was a big help. When we could talk, we said just a few words like, "We'll get through this. You have people at home who love you. Don't worry, we'll be fine." We constantly were reassuring ourselves, and each other.
Did you think, If I get out of here alive, there's something I must do — or did you think, I just need to get out of here alive?
Lynsey: I was thinking I need to get out of here alive. I was also thinking, Maybe it's time to get pregnant. I was thinking I've had a lot of close calls, and maybe this is a sign.
Paul, what did you do when you heard Lynsey had been captured? How do you keep your thoughts from going to the darkest place?
Paul de Bendern: I've been a journalist for Reuters for about 16 years, living in North Africa, Latin America, Europe, and now in Asia. So I've been in difficult situations and have had to make decisions about reporters in harm's way. But of course it's a very different thing when it's the person you love most in the world. The first moment you realize something is wrong, everything goes through your mind: What happens now? Am I ever going to see her again? There's a series of worst-case scenarios. The first night I had quite a few whiskeys, but that didn't really help. Then it was continuous calls — to the Times, to colleagues on the ground in Libya. I tried to keep my mind busy. I focused on getting her home. I tried to keep it together — it doesn't help to break down and completely become a basket case. After 24 hours, when no bodies had been found, I knew it was likely that they were alive. Most likely the government had taken them, because the it wasn't in the rebels' interest. But this was not confirmed for several days, and it felt like years.
Lynsey, when soldiers were groping you, you knew not to fight back, but to plead for mercy. How did you know to do that?
Lynsey: I've worked for over 11 years in the Muslim world, and the one thing that I feel like I've learned — who's to say if it's true or not true, it's just my experience — is that men don't like to see really strong, aggressive women in that area of the world. So I think that when I elicited the most sympathy, and when they did in fact stop, was when I was crying and pleading. I didn't even try and scream and kick, because that's never worked for me in that part of the world. Also I know that it's against Islam to touch another man's wife, so if I said, "Look, I have a husband. You are Muslim," those are things that I felt would garner more sympathy and support to leave me alone.
Your instincts might have helped keep you alive.
Lynsey: I don't know; I think a lot of it also is luck. At the end of the day, the fact that we weren't killed in the crossfire in the first 15 minutes or the first eight hours when they just held us on the front lines, tied up, it's pretty miraculous that none of us were killed.
Paul, at one point you went on CNN to appeal to the Qaddafi regime.
Paul: Yes, you have to be careful what you say publicly, but a friend of mine at CNN said, "Look, the Qaddafi regime is weird and unpredictable, but they care about America and this kind of stuff — if you do a personal appeal, it can be very powerful." It was very difficult to do and very emotional. I didn't know if I could deal with it.
Paul, you met Lynsey in Tunisia after her release. What was it like to be reunited?
Paul: I met her at the airport in Tunis. No one realized how bad it had been — the Times had warned me that they had suffered beatings and gropings, but we didn't know yet the full extent of it. When I saw her, I ran up to her, kissed her and hugged her. It was very emotional. But I think both of us were kind of in a state of shock. It wasn't like a complete breakdown when we saw each other. It's not like the movies, where it's all dramatic. We went to the hotel that night and got champagne and sat on the balcony, and rested. Over the days and weeks it's something we digested. I think we still are.
Lynsey, when you were freed, the blogosphere started buzzing with comments about how women shouldn't be covering war — and the Times shouldn't have sent you there.
Lynsey: Mortars and artillery don't discriminate against gender. We all saw what happened to Tim and Chris. Journalists dedicate their lives to covering war — they make many personal sacrifices, and it's not something that's gender-based. In a place like Libya where there's heavy fighting, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman.
But there are stories where gender makes a difference, in a good way…
Lynsey: Absolutely, for example when I'm working on women's stories in a Muslim country. In a place like Afghanistan where the society is completely segregated, women have access to women. Men cannot always photograph women and cannot get the access that I get.
Paul: When you hear that women shouldn't cover this or that, it's a joke. When you look at some of the stories Lynsey has covered — maternal mortality in Sierra Leone, burn victims in Afghanistan — do you think a guy who's a macho photojournalist is gonna make that happen? No. It is very important that these stories are communicated. And reporting these stories, this is not easy stuff. Lynsey is helping people understand that.

Why Are These Women in Jail?

High in the Hindu Kush Mountains, a 16-year-old girl named Badia used to lie awake at night, sharing a wool blanket with her newborn daughter and 40-year-old husband. She had become this man's bride at age 12. Almost every day after their wedding, he had beaten her with the broom she used to sweep the dirt floor. "A healthy boy will never come from such a worthless girl," he would say. It was Badia's fault that he had to take a second wife, he announced. She was lucky he was a kind man: No one in the village would have condemned him for killing her, and her child.
Welcome to Afghanistan, one of the worst places on earth for women.
Badia eventually escaped, sort of. One snowy night, the shivering teenager slipped from her bed, baby pressed to her chest. Then she ran, barefoot, up a footpath as old as Genghis Khan. But she didn't get far. She got sent to prison, convicted of the "moral crime" of leaving her husband's home without his permission. She recounts her story while staring at a concrete wall surrounding the women's prison in remote Nangarhar Province. "I'm a criminal in my village," she says, stroking the raven hair of her daughter, now 2. Together, mother and child have served two years of their 10-year sentence.

In Afghanistan, the most commonly practiced form of judicial "due process" simply requires two men to accuse a woman of a crime. Case closed. No burden of proof or defense. A group of respected male elders hands down the sentence. (Men also appear before this council, or jirga, but usually to settle debts or property disputes. Their wives and daughters are often traded and enslaved to resolve such debts.) For women, typical "moral crimes" punishable by prison—or death—include refusing to marry a rapist, having an affair (or simply getting accused of having an affair), and murder-by-proxy, wherein a male family member kills someone and assigns the prison sentence to a female.
An estimated 860 women are currently behind bars in the country, along with 620 girls between the ages of 12 and 17, and 280 children, according to the U.S. State Department and the Corrections System Support Program, or CSSP, a private U.S. contractor tasked with reforming Afghan prisons. Ninety-five percent of these women are convicted of "moral crimes."
Kinah, 21, is a striking beauty with the black-coffee eyes of many in Balkh Province. She sits in one of two rooms that imprison 40 women and 18 children, rocking her 6-month-old daughter, who is nestled in a sheet tied to a chair and bedpost. At age 6, Kinah was promised in marriage to a 40-year-old man, but at 16, she ran away, marrying a young man she loved. She is now a convicted adulteress and widow, as her former fiancé tracked her down and shot her husband. The murderer was sentenced to 10 years; Kinah was sentenced to 12. The room echoes incessantly with children's coughing. The courtyard offers the only escape, where tents serve as shelter from below-freezing temperatures. "Sometimes we have no milk for the children," Kinah says, holding her baby close.
Mercifully, CSSP and a handful of nonprofit groups such as the Afghan Women's Education Center, or AWEC, are working to improve imprisoned women and children's lives. CSSP works in eight of the country's 34 provinces, repairing crumbling buildings, raising operating standards, and training Afghan wardens. Says Rita Thomas, a CSSP on-site adviser, "What's most heartbreaking are the girls." When funds allow, nonprofits will provide literacy classes, emergency medical services, and counseling.
Mike Runnells, CSSP director in Kabul, says the group plans to be in every district by the end of 2011. He admits that these intentions could prove difficult where insurgents still rule with impunity, adding, "Our first priority is the safety of our workers." One adviser was killed in 2007, when her vehicle was targeted in a suicide bombing.
For aid groups in the region, yearly budgets are slim. These groups stay afloat thanks to donations, intermittent federal grants, and iron-willed directors who often work without salaries. But you can help.

Breaking China's One-Child Law

During lunchtime one day last April, Wei Laojin, 35, was cooking spicy pork for her two young sons at home in southern China when she got a frantic call from her husband. His brother had been arrested, he said. A dozen Chinese officials had beaten down the man's door and dragged him away. "What has he done wrong?" Wei asked in alarm. "Nothing," her husband replied. "He has been jailed because he is related to us."
Wei, a bird-thin woman with bobbed hair, let lunch burn on the stove as she heard more. "My husband said we had broken the law by having two children. The authorities were imprisoning his brother until we were punished," she says. "As soon as I learned it was about birth control, I began to cry and shake." Family-planning officials in the southern county of Puning, in Guangdong province, were going to shocking new extremes to catch and punish violators of the country's infamous one-child policy: They were seizing family members of women who had given birth illegally and were holding them hostage. The aim? To coerce the women into submitting to sterilization. Says Wei, "The officials said there was only one way to get my brother-in-law released: I had to undergo forced sterilization."

As Wei panicked in her kitchen, the same scene was playing out in households all over Puning, a region of 2.2 million people, about six hours by bus from the provincial capital of Guangzhou. In early April, the local Family Planning Bureau, which oversees population control, launched what it termed an "Iron Fist Campaign," targeting 10,000 women who had more than one child.
According to state-owned media—which proudly reported the news on local channels—a task force of more than 600 officials was deployed to storm homes across 28 Puning townships and seize family members of women who had broken the law. They took grandparents, siblings, teenagers, even infants. The relatives were to be jailed indefinitely until the targeted women showed up at government clinics to undergo "remedial surgery," or sterilization.
The campaign was unprecedented in recent Chinese history. According to He Yafu, one of China's leading independent experts on family planning, there had been occasional reports of relatives being detained in the past, and forced sterilization has been an abuse associated with the one-child policy since it was introduced in 1978, but this was a crackdown on an unusually large and draconian scale.
Certainly, the campaign came out of the blue for most Puning inhabitants. Family planning in the region had grown lax because the local population had been consumed with breakneck economic development. Guangdong province is the most successful manufacturing region in mainland China, with a per capita income of $5,965—almost twice the national average. A snaking backdrop of lush green mountains is rapidly being devoured by urban sprawl, and the air is clogged with construction dust. "People in the south are different. They feel that laws in the rest of the country don't apply to them," says Chinese economist Dean Peng. "It seems that many people here believed they could have a large family without serious repercussions."
Wei, a seamstress, was well aware she had breached the one-child policy by having two sons, Xiaojie, now age 6, and Xiaoming, age 4. (In deference to China's ingrained preference for sons, the government sometimes allows couples to have a second child, but only if the firstborn is a girl.) As punishment, the authorities refused to officially register the younger boy, who is mildly disabled, thereby denying him access to state health care and education. The family was also ordered to pay a fine of 5,000 yuan ($750), amounting to a third of their annual income (the heaviest fines for birth-policy violators are up to six times a couple's annual income). Wei knew there would be consequences to having two kids, but says, "Children mean happiness to people here. The bigger your family, the greater your joy. It's as simple as that."
The Chinese government disagrees. As the world's most populous country, with 1.4 billion people (one in five humans worldwide is mainland Chinese), the state believes limiting the birth rate is vital to preserving resources and creating sustainable economic growth. In the past, when most people worked in state-owned factories and on farms, officials enforced family-planning quotas with brutal efficiency. Their methods included giving women forced abortions up to even the ninth month of pregnancy, and smothering newborns and dumping them in the trash. Female workers were required to prove they were menstruating by showing supervisors a soiled sanitary napkin every month. But as the country has gradually abandoned mass state enterprise in favor of private commerce, authorities have had to resort to even more inventive methods to keep tabs on women and prevent illegal pregnancies.
Interestingly, headlines in the U.S. this year have said that China is "relaxing" its birth-control laws. The reports emerged due to possible pilot programs to allow two children per family in cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, where births have fallen too dramatically. But the government denies that regulations are being eased nationwide, and the hostage campaign confirms that.
Wei loves her country—there's a giant map of her homeland in her living room—but thinks family comes first. In fact, she wanted a third child: "I desperately wanted to have a daughter so my two boys would have a little sister and I'd have a female ally in the family. We were saving up to try for a girl." She was out of time. After her husband's call, Wei left the boys with a neighbor and rushed to the grim government lockup where her brother-in-law Hong-Li, 51, was being held. "The guards deliberately let me see how bad the conditions were. Hong-Li was in a damp, cramped cell with more than 100 other people. There was standing room only and no blankets or food," says Wei. "It was unbearable to see him suffering." The sense of duty toward family in traditional China is precisely why the authorities employed the tactic of jailing relatives. "It was blackmail," says Wei. "I knew my brother-in-law could lose his job if he stayed in jail, and he has children of his own to feed. I had no choice but to comply with the authorities."
Across Puning county, by mid-April, a total of 1,377 relatives of birth-policy offenders were being detained, state media reported. Many of them were elderly—couples' retired parents who had the misfortune to be home when officials targeted their houses. Meanwhile, surgeons at government clinics were sterilizing hundreds of women daily. A doctor named Zeng told Puning TV: "We are working nonstop from 8 a.m. through 4 a.m. to complete the mass sterilization program."
In tears, Wei presented herself at her township family-planning clinic—a concrete building that looks plain enough, except for a sign bearing the slogan: "Have Fewer Children. Eugenics for a Happy Life, a Happy Family, and a Harmonious Society." She told officials she would have the surgery, but asked if they would wait because she had her period. (To prevent complications, experts say sterilization should not be performed until at least three days after the end of menstruation.) They refused. "They wouldn't even let me take a shower," says Wei. "Before I knew it, I was on an operating table in a room where three other women were also being sterilized under local anesthetic."
Today, family life with her husband and two boisterous boys has returned to normal, on the surface. Her brother-in-law was freed (he describes his incarceration as "intolerable," but says he doesn't blame Wei), and he kept his job. Yet Wei can't move on. She says she feels violated, and is still suffering from bouts of crying. "Everyone says it's over, forget about it," she says. "But I have to speak out because if I don't, who will know this ever happened? Family-planning officials locked up hundreds of people and forcibly sterilized mothers, and nobody is even talking about it anymore."

Sex for Diesel

They're called ribeirinhas, or river people, those who live along the straits of the Amazon River in northern Brazil. For them, life has always been about survival. In the village of São Francisco da Jararaca, the only viable work disappeared with the closing of a wood-cutting factory years ago. Now many young women turn to cruising cargo ships to make a living.
Every day, women and girls row up and down the river in canoes, chasing the ships. Once they catch one, they climb aboard, offering the sailors items for sale: Some are peddling shrimp and fruit, but increasingly, many are selling themselves. But the women aren't having sex for money — they're out to earn diesel, the most coveted commodity in this area where electricity is scarce and those who can afford it use diesel-operated personal generators.
Few ribeirinhas see the work as prostitution, in part because many women frequent one sailor, creating a dynamic that resembles a committed relationship. Some families even have dreams that the sailors will become more than customers. "I hope my daughter will get together with a ship captain so she can get out of here," said villager Dona Raimunda, who has worked the straits for years. Otherwise, "she is going to end up living the same life as me, on these rivers, from one cargo ship to the next." Married women work the ships, too, while their husbands wait at home eagerly for their earnings. It's survival.

A Tragic Baby Boom

On the heels of the devastating quake that claimed more than 200,000 lives in January 2010, Haiti experienced a population spike, with the birth rate tripling in urban areas within months. But it's been hard to find many ecstatic dads pacing delivery rooms. A shocking number of these newborns have been the products of rape.
According to new data, rampant sexual assault continues to plague the country's women and girls, especially those living in the overcrowded displaced-persons camps that dot the capital of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas. Since the earthquake, some 1,000 rape cases have been documented in 22 of the 800-plus camps, according to the advocacy group Commission of Women Victims for Victims, or KOFAVIV. (Because the majority of rapes go unreported, this is just a grim snapshot.) In another sickening finding, of 2,000 pregnant adolescent girls surveyed by PotoFi, a global coalition of Haitian women, 64 percent said they had conceived through rape.
The camps are unsa
fe due to inadequate lighting, lax security, and tents that are too easy to access. Adding to the lawlessness is the breakdown of the family structure, say aid workers. "The men don't have jobs, and they smoke pot and drink," explains Malya Villard-Apollon, a cofounder of KOFAVIV. "When they're high, they act on their frustrations."
KOFAVIV has recently organized brigades of men and women who patrol camps at night armed with flashlights and whistles. The group is also teaching women how to navigate Haiti's byzantine justice system should they decide to pursue action. (To make a rape arrest, the police require the victim to get a certificate proving she sought medical treatment within 72 hours — a high bar for women who are essentially homeless.)
Also attempting to improve conditions, the U.N. has set up police stations in the seven largest camps and has installed hundreds of solar-powered lamps. And Villard-Apollon notes that some 40 men have been arrested for sexual assault, among them a police officer who raped a teen. To much of the world, that might seem like scant progress, but in the camps of Port-au-Prince, that's 40 fewer men to have to survive on the way to the bathroom at night.
WHAT YOU CAN DO

Are Pregnant Women's Rights at Risk?

BEI BEI SHUAI was 33 weeks pregnant in December 2010 when she learned that her boyfriend, Zhiliang Guan, had no interest in marrying her — and planned to return to his wife and two kids. Distraught, the then-34-year-old Chinese immigrant, who worked with Guan at a restaurant in Indianapolis, wrote a letter telling him that she was killing herself and taking the baby with her. She then swallowed rat poison, lay down in her apartment, and waited to die.
But Shuai's dose wasn't lethal enough to kill her, and hours later she drove to the home of a friend, who took her to the hospital. Doctors filled Shuai's stomach with charcoal and vitamin K to counteract the poison, and managed to stabilize her. A week later, Shuai gave birth to a baby girl through emergency C-section. Doctors soon discovered that the baby's brain was bleeding and her blood would not clot; she died within days. Grief-stricken, Shuai spent a month in the psychiatric unit.
But her ordeal had only just begun: Five weeks later, in the first case of its kind in Indiana, the state charged Shuai with murder and attempted "feticide," the act of killing a fetus. If convicted, Shuai faces up to 65 years in prison. Her lawyers argue that the case is bogus: Neither murder nor feticide laws apply, they say. Shuai didn't kill her fetus; the baby was born alive. Plus, attempted suicide isn't a crime in Indiana. But prosecutors insist that Shuai's suicide note is all the proof needed to show she intended to kill her unborn child. In late May, Shuai was released from jail after more than a year. She now awaits trial set for later this year.
What happens to Shuai could have consequences that reach beyond her own life: If she's convicted, her supporters say, it would set a dangerous precedent in legal action against pregnant women. Thirty-eight states have feticide laws. But when these statutes were written — often after brutal crimes against expectant mothers — lawmakers never intended for them to be directed at the mother herself, say women's advocates. "Pregnant women are winding up victims of these laws instead of being protected by them," says Suzanne Goldberg, director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School. (Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry, who brought the charges against Shuai, counters that the laws don't explicitly exclude mothers.)
Women's advocates see the case as the latest example of punishing expectant mothers for their behavior. Some cases involve women who drink or take drugs. For example, under a state "chemical endangerment" law in Alabama, at least 60 women have been arrested for doing drugs while pregnant. But not all women caught up in these laws have substance-abuse issues. In Iowa, a pregnant woman was charged with attempted feticide after she fell down some stairs. Initial police reports said she intentionally fell, which the woman denies. (The charges were dropped three weeks later.)
Now Shuai's case is gaining national interest: More than 3,000 people have signed a petition asking Curry to drop the charges. National Advocates for Pregnant Women, Shuai's co-counsel, uses a daily Twitter feed to chronicle how many days Shuai has been imprisoned. Eighty medical and public-health groups — including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists — have filed amicus briefs in support of Shuai. Many contend that if a pregnant woman thinks that she will be thrown in jail for her behavior, she'll be less likely to seek care from her doctors, or may even terminate her pregnancy. "You can think of thousands of examples where this could be applied," says Linda Pence, one of Shuai's attorneys. "When the laws are interpreted this way, you make every pregnant woman a target of a criminal investigation unless she's perfect."
Not so, says Curry. "We have no intention to build upon this to criminalize [pregnant women's] behavior, and that's not the law," he says. "Had the defendant sought counseling, this could have been avoided. It is not our intent to discourage women from seeking appropriate care."
If the case against Shuai prevails, couldn't a woman be held criminally liable for a miscarriage or stillbirth? Curry insists that wouldn't happen. "I've seen those suggestions: What's next? If a mother smokes while pregnant? Are we criminalizing behavior?" Curry says. "Clearly not. What gets lost — what makes this case different — is that the defendant wrote a letter saying, It is my intention to kill myself and this unborn baby."
For now, Shuai must wait for the courts to decide whether she's a murderer — or a victim of depression who's paying the price for a desperate, lonely act.

Where the Boys Are

Yiguo Jin is not home. His wooden door is barred, his windows shuttered. Outside his weather-beaten, rural Chinese shack, a couple of chickens scratch in the dirt amid discarded beer bottles. It's all a bit forlorn. But nothing shouts "Here lives a lonely bachelor!" quite like the clothesline in Jin's yard. Its sole contents are a rumpled blue jacket and pants, an old T-shirt, and a pair of tattered briefs.
It's little comfort, says Jin later in the day when he returns from working in his fields, that there are 68 other unmarried men in his village. That just makes it worse. In the total population of only 284 in Jin's tiny hamlet in Da Xin township in China's Hunan province, the number of single women is zero. There hasn't been a wedding or a new home built here for a decade. "I'm poor and I'm no longer young," says Jin, who's 33 and still boyish-looking. "There are so many bachelors that I will never find a girl to marry me."
He's probably right. Due to China's alarming gender imbalance, there are now an estimated 10 percent more single men than women across the country. Within the next decade, the number of men unlikely ever to find brides is expected to reach 30 to 40 million — equivalent to the population of California. In rural areas, the imbalance is so acute it has led to thousands of so-called bachelor villages — remote communities like Jin's, full of single men who have never had a girlfriend, let alone found a wife.
China has always had a cultural preference for sons, but the situation has become dire over the past 30 years. Chinese traditionally believe daughters are "spilt water" — that is, a waste, because only sons carry on the ancestral line and provide for their parents. The Communist government's introduction of the one-child policy in 1980, which allows urban couples only one child and rural couples two, upped the ante for families to have a boy. Then ultrasound scans arrived, enabling sex-determination testing and prompting widespread abortions of female fetuses to ensure sons. "Chinese medics are banned from revealing an unborn baby's sex," says Mara Hvistendahl, author of Unnatural Selection, a book about global gender imbalances. "But a carton of cigarettes is enough to bribe some of them."
Today, an estimated 35 to 40 million women are "missing" from China's population. For years, demographic experts have predicted the huge surplus of young men would cause a rise in sexual violence and social instability. Now the first generation of children born since 1980 has reached marriageable age, and problems such as bride-kidnapping and forced prostitution are soaring.
The bachelors in areas like Da Xin are the least likely of all to find love. As the gap between rich and poor widens in China, uneducated rural men have little means of upward mobility. "I don't have any money to move away to look for a wife," says Jin. "I must stay here to work our land and support my elderly mother." (Jin's father died a few years ago, so his mother depends solely on him.)

A Neobux Strategy About Renting Referrals…

What you’re about to learn will only do you any good if you have an account at Neobux. If you don’t yet have an account with them, you can open a free account here:

>> Open A FREE Account At Neobux To Start Earn Money Now
The system is designed to enable anyone to earn a bit of cash by getting referrals or buying referrals. With that said lets discuss this Neobux strategy. The first thing you want to do is to click your ads on a daily basis, until you reach two dollars. After you have earned two dollars, you will want to transfer one dollar to your renting balance and then purchase a 3 referrals pack.
Now what you want to do is turn on auto-pay as this will allow you to get an extra renting day. Here is a tip though, make sure to recycle rentals who click on only 2 ads or less per day, or haven not clicked on any ads for that matter. Also make sure to renew referrals when they only have 20 days left. Basically you want to keep renting and recycling referrals on a weekly basis, as well as keep adding money to your rent balance.
Once you have 500 active referrals you will want to stop renting them. Recycle and renew referrals until you have ninety dollars and then become a Golden member. Now restart the strategy over again until you have 2000 referrals. By doing this Neobux strategy you could end up earning about forty dollars a day.

The Neobux Strategy About Getting Direct Referrals

Getting direct referrals is a great way to earn some good money on Neobux, and this is why a good direct referral Neobux strategy is important. The good thing about Neobux is that they have plenty of free methods of advertising for you too use. This is very good news as these methods are a great way to attract referrals. The question is where do you get free referrals?
Well, you can write a few articles about Neobux and then submit them to a few article directories and you can also create a few YouTube videos. Doing these two things might attract referrals and possibly make you some money. You will also want to tell people via social networking websites, as this can really help you out. As you can see, this strategy is extremely easy to follow.
You will also want to set up a blog or two and place Neobux banners on it. You can then direct people from YouTube, Social networking sites and article directories to go and visit your blog. This is a strategy that is proven to work. This Neobux strategy may be a little time consuming, spending around an hour or two a day on implementing it, but it is well-worth doing in the long run.

Neobux Video Strategy To Get More Referrals

As mentioned earlier you can get referrals from YouTube. Let me share a Neobux strategy that is solely meant for video sharing sites. The first thing you want to do is create a video talking about Neobux with a good ‘close to action’ (asking people to be your referral) and then have them click your referral link below the video.
Make sure you upload a video about Neobux to at least three other video sharing websites. This is better for search engine optimization. You can upload a new video discussing Neobux at least two times a week for four weeks. Once again, make sure to upload to other video sharing websites, and not just YouTube. After four weeks you might notice you have more direct referrals.
Another tip to keep in mind when using the video strategy is this: make sure to create videos that are about two minutes long, but no longer than three minutes. I find that people have short attention spans, so shorter videos seems like the best way to attract new referrals. Once you start making money, do not forget to upgrade and rent referrals too. If you do this on top of getting direct referrals, you could end up making quite a bit of money from Neobux.
When using a Neobux strategy, make sure to stick with it. If you stick with a good strategy, then you should make some good money using the site. I know many of you reading this is interested in being an online entrepreneur, making a living from your online ventures. So, if you are one of those people that want to have a complete business online, than check out how to make 100% commission and more by watching the video: