Julie McCarthy

Can tigers and tourists coexist? The debate is rumbling through India, where the Supreme Court has temporarily banned tourism in core areas of the country's 41 tiger reserves. The unexpected and controversial ruling is aimed at protecting the last of India's 1,700 tigers.

Up until the late 1960s, big game hunters trod the forests of Rajasthan's Ranthambore National Park, part of a sprawling tiger reserve southwest of Delhi. Under the court's recent ban, spotting one of India's big cats — a tiger or the more elusive leopard — inside the park is forbidden.

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The blackout that recently disrupted electricity across northern India is said to have affected more people than any previous power outage ever. It covered an area that's home to some 670 million people; that would be roughly 10 percent of the world's population. Still, large numbers of Indians living in the blackout zone barely noticed it happened. From New Delhi, NPR's Julie McCarthy explains.

India's parliament was adjourned briefly today as the opposition called for the resignation of the prime minister, saying he was complicit in what has become known as "coal-gate."

The uproar stems from an official audit issued last week accusing the government of selling coal mining rights for too low a price.

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India's government has persuaded companies to shut down more than 150 websites. Authorities blame those sites for circulating claims that led to panic. The claims fueled fears of violence during the Muslim festival of Eid. NPR's Julie McCarthy reports.

Pakistan's National Assembly has been summoned to elect a new prime minister for the fragile coalition of President Asif Ali Zardari. A consensus candidate, current Textile Industry Minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin, emerged soon after the Supreme Court's dramatic firing of outgoing Premier Yusuf Reza Gilani.

The court disqualified Gilani from office this week for defying court orders to pursue dormant corruption charges against President Zardari.

With Pakistani President Zardari given a last-minute invitation to the NATO summit, U.S. and Pakistani officials were scrambling to finish a deal that would allow NATO supply convoys to pass through Pakistani territory on their way to Afghanistan. The convoys have been halted since last November's errant cross-border U.S. airstrikes that left 24 Pakistani soldiers dead.

In the chill of the world's highest combat zone lies the prospect of warmer relations. Pakistan's army chief said Wednesday that there's a need to resolve the conflict that has Indian and Pakistani troops facing off at frigid altitudes of up to 20,000 feet in the Himalayan Mountains. An estimated 3,000 Pakistani soldiers have died from the atrocious weather conditions since deployments on the Siachen glacier began in 1984.

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In Pakistan, a joint session of parliament has unanimously passed list of tough demands regarding that country's relations with the U.S. They want to restrict the U.S. military presence in the country with demands the U.S. is likely to resist, like banning drone missile attacks. The new guidelines are all part of an effort by the parliament to redefine Pakistan's relations with the U.S. NPR's Julie McCarthy reports from Islamabad.

Extending the political crisis that has churned up a media frenzy and put the nation on edge, Pakistan's Supreme Court has given the Prime Minister ten more days to answer contempt of court charges

Prime Minister Yusef Reza Gilani drove himself to the imposing Supreme Court building framed by stormy skies this morning. Facing contempt charges, he stood in the well of the packed court and defended his refusal to re-open a graft case against his boss, President Zardari.

In Pakistan, transit routes for NATO supply trucks heading to Afghanistan remain shut. The CIA drone missile program has gone quiet in Pakistan's tribal area. Pakistan's government has called for a re-negotiation of its troubled relationship with the U.S.

All of this is fallout from an attack on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border last month in which NATO fire from helicopter gunships killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

After 15 years on the fringes of Pakistani national politics, Imran Khan is now at the epicenter.

He first rose to prominence decades ago as the rakish star of Pakistan's cricket team, the country's national passion. He's now trying to reshape Pakistan's political game, outmaneuvering old-time political pros with his Tareek-e-Insaf (Justice Party).

In Pakistan, several high-profile kidnappings reveal the cunning of the captors and confusion among police.

American aid expert Warren Weinstein was seized from his home in Lahore in mid-August. Two weeks later, publishing scion Shahbaz Taseer was snatched from his Mercedes at gunpoint, also in an upscale neighborhood of the Punjab capital.

The trail is leading investigators to Pakistan's militant-dominated tribal areas. North Waziristan, on the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border, is now believed to be a destination of choice for militant kidnappers.

Washington is no longer demanding that Pakistan launch a military offensive against the Haqqani network which is based along the Afghan border. Instead, the U.S. wants Pakistan to supply intelligence on the militants and get them to the negotiating table.

The news today that Pakistan's cabinet has moved to normalize trade with India — giving its neighbor "Most Favored Nation" status — is being viewed as a positive first step toward the possible normalization of diplomatic relations between the two nuclear rivals.

Crowds protested in Pakistan's major cities Friday, against the death sentence handed down last week to the self-confessed killer of Punjab province's Gov. Salman Taseer. One of the governor's bodyguards, Mumtaz Qadri, shot him in cold blood outside a café in Islamabad in January.

Religious parties supporting Qadri rallied in solidarity one day after Qadri filed an appeal challenging the death sentence handed down by an anti-terror court.

An end to the war in Afghanistan is slowly beginning to come into view, 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks. Few countries have been as deeply affected by the decade of fighting as Pakistan.

Since 2001 Islamist extremism fueled by the Afghan conflict has claimed the lives of 35,000 Pakistanis — 30,000 of them civilians.

Pakistan's long list of problems has a new addition this summer: vicious communal violence in Karachi.

More than 300 people have been killed in recent weeks, some under grisly circumstances that include decapitations, torture chambers and bodies placed in gunnysacks and dumped on the side of the road.

In a landscape where decent clinics are scarce, the Umrana Mumtaz Healthcare Trust Hospital is a beacon of hope.

And a bustling one: on a sweltering afternoon worried mothers wrapped in traditional white robes and headscarves crowd the hospital's shaded amphitheater clutching their ailing babies. More than 120-thousand patients, mostly women and children, have received free basic health care at this facility since it opened just three years ago.

The whereabouts of an American development expert are still unknown 24 hours after he was abducted by a group of armed men in Pakistan. NPR's Julie McCarthy reports on the abduction of Warren Weinstein, who was within days of leaving the country when he was kidnapped Saturday during a brazen early morning raid on his home.

In Pakistan, family planning is an uncomfortable topic fraught with religious overtones.

But in one of Asia's fastest growing populations, a story of women giving birth challenges stereotypes, including what Islam has to say about women's health and family planning.

According to a new government survey, Pakistan is producing nearly 4 million babies every year, and most are born into poverty. The World Bank says 60 percent of Pakistanis live on less than $2 a day.

Pakistan's army is deploying alternative methods to deal with the menace of militants.

The same Pakistani army that crushed the Taliban extremists two years ago in the Swat Valley is trying to deradicalize some 200 young militants from that conflict. Doctors, teachers and psychologists are taking up the challenge.

Speaking in Swat, Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani told a first-of-its-kind conference on the subject, "There is no military solution to terrorism."

Access to the young men is extremely limited.

While Pakistan battles an Islamist militancy that seeks to overthrow the state, another lesser-known conflict rages on its soil. In the southwest province of Baluchistan, separatist fighters are clashing with security forces and killing anyone they see as the enemy.

Saleem Shahzad is the latest journalist to be killed in Pakistan. Over the last 18 months, at least 16 journalists have been killed there. Last week, other members of the media held a 24-hour sit-in across from Parliament to say the killers of Shahzad would be uncovered regardless of where the trail leads.

Pakistanis who fed information to the CIA in advance of the raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound have been arrested by Pakistan's intelligence agency. While people have been taken into custody, there are differing reports about who they are.

John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is the first American emissary to visit Pakistan since the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He is known to be a friend of Pakistan, and what he is told by Pakistani army and civilian leaders could be key to American policy going forward. Kerry arrived late Sunday and went quickly to see army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, handing him the list of U.S. demands.

Pakistan's parliament unanimously approved a resolution condemning the U.S. Bin Laden mission as a "violation of Pakistan's sovereignty" on Saturday, calling to review the country's "terms of engagement with the United States." It warned Pakistan could cut supply lines to American forces in Afghanistan if there were more such attacks.

The Parliament also said all U.S. drones attacks "must be stopped forthwith."

Most Pakistanis say it is inconceivable that the army chief of staff and the head of intelligence knew that Osama bin Laden was hiding in the country.

Linda Wertheimer speaks with NPR's Julie McCarthy in Islamabad about Pakistan's reaction to the U.S. led operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, host:

The compound where Osama bin Laden was killed has been sealed off since yesterday by Pakistani troops. News reporters were kept several hundred yards from the building until just a short time ago.

NPR's Julie McCarthy managed to reach the outer perimeter of the compound. After spending the day speaking with neighbors, she joins us now.

Julie, can you tell us what you're seeing?

Helicopters descended on a fortified compound in a wealthy Islamabad suburb and a small contingent of the U.S. military killed Osama bin Laden in a raid.