Asia

"The walls and ceiling of the Nanshan mine shimmer black, carved straight into a 200 million-year-old coal seam running 1,300 feet underground. Black veins of Jurassic-era coal deposits still thread Shanxi province in China's north, enriching public coffers and keeping generations of miners steadily employed."

"Global warming is likely to make India’s monsoon season wetter and more dangerous, new research suggests."

"A cargo ship carrying tonnes of chemicals is sinking off Sri Lanka's west coast, the country's government and navy said on Wednesday, in one of Sri Lanka's worst-ever marine disasters."

"China plans to strengthen controls in industries such as steel and aluminium which involve high energy use and produce high emissions, in an effort to promote low-carbon developments, the environment ministry said on Monday."

"This March, as Mongolian herder Batsaikhan Enkhee tended to his sheep, the sky suddenly darkened. The wind picked up, filling his shoes and shirt with coarse, heavy sand. A massive sandstorm had engulfed the Mongolian grasslands."

"More than 150,000 people were left homeless in the aftermath of a cyclone that unleashed storm surges in eastern India and Bangladesh, officials said on Thursday, with heavy rains hampering relief work in some low-lying coastal areas."

"Danny Fenster, an American journalist working in Myanmar, was detained today by local authorities and prevented from leaving the country."

"In the boreal forests of the planet’s far north, where the climate is warming faster than almost anywhere else in the world, some wildfires are surviving winter snows and sparking back up again in spring."

"China’s population is growing at its slowest pace in decades, with a plunge in births and a graying work force presenting the Communist Party with one of its gravest social and economic challenges."