A five-year long study into the 1959 meltdown of a nuclear reactor near Simi Valley in California has concluded that it could have caused between 260 and 1,800 cases of cancer. The report could not be more specific because the U.S. Department of Energy and Boeing, the parent company of Rocketdyne, refused to provide the weather data crucial to modelling where the radioactive pollution went.

In an overview of the changes occurring in the Maldives, a cluster of islands to the southwest of India, reporter Meera Selva sketches how the repressive president, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, is failing to respond to the either the democracy movement or the growing influence of Islamic fundamentalism. "The government is aware that the problems facing ordinary Maldivians may affect its tourism industry, but its response has been cynical rather than hopeful," Selva writes.