Over the past month, Pakistan has experienced its worst flooding on record. A fifth of the country is under water.

The world has responded with aid but it has been slow and minimal. And although they have their reasons, it could make the battle against the Taliban a lot more difficult.

The flood

The heavy rain began in late July in the northern province of Khyber Paktunkhwa. From there water surged down the Indus River to Punjab and Sindh provinces, where heavy rain had also fallen.

On Saturday, Australians will vote in their country’s federal election in what is shaping up to be an extremely tight race.

However, the contest itself – perhaps due to its closeness – has been both a dramatic and dull affair.

After gaining a new prime minister only two months ago, the election debate eventually stumbled towards things like broadband, a mining tax, parental leave and immigration, but without offering anything particularly impressive.

Last week, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, was convicted and sentenced at the Cambodia Tribunal for the role he played in the brutal five-year reign of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s.

He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for overseeing the murder of 14,000 people.

His sentence of 35 years (reduced to 19 due to time already served) has been mocked, given he’ll now only serve half a day for each victim. Others criticise the tribunal itself for being slow, costly and possibly unwarranted.

As Japan warms to its fifth Prime Minister in just three years, the economic power house faces serious problems.

These include rising unemployment, deflation and the biggest national debt in the industrialised world – all against a worrying backdrop of an aging and declining population.

New Prime Minister Naoto Kan has warned that Japan faces financial ‘collapse’ similar to that of Greece if the government continues to run at a loss (deficit) and borrow to make up the difference.

Saturday 10 July was the 25th anniversary of the 1985 sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior by French Secret Service agents in Auckland, New Zealand.

But while the ship’s captain Peter Willcox attended an anniversary ceremony in Poland to mark the building of a new Rainbow Warrior, the bigger story still lingers.

What Greenpeace was protesting against all those years ago was French nuclear testing in the Pacific. This has stopped, but the deadly after-effects that they predicted remain.

The sinking

It was a bold move by former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to take on the Australian mining industry. And in the end it cost him his job.

Rudd was proposing to increase the tax on excessive mining profits in order to spread the wealth more fairly.

But now Australia’s new, and first ever female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard has backed down to pressure and proposed a much softer set of taxation rules for the country’s wealthiest industry.

The popular leader

Over the past four days, tens of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks have fled their homes after brutal ethnic violence erupted across Southern Kyrgyzstan.

Those lucky enough to have escaped made their way across the border to neighbouring Uzbekistan after Kyrgyz men began killing them at random in a scary resemblance to the ethnic Rwandan war of 1994.

Meanwhile, those left behind are too frightened to go outside as the rampage continues in the country’s second largest city.

The current situation

It took more than 25 years, but on Monday a court in India finally convicted and sentenced seven former employees to 2 years in jail for their role in the Bhopal Disaster.

On a December night in 1984, a major toxic gas leak from an American pesticide plant in the city of Bhopal left 20,000 people dead.

It’s by far the worst industrial accident in history, and despite Monday’s rulings and an earlier settlement, many believe the company and its employees have literally gotten away with murder.

The Bhopal Disaster

Three hours after a Government deadline to vacate their campsite in the middle of Bangkok's glossy shopping and hotel district, anti-Government 'redshirt' protestors remained defiant.

36 people have died since last Thursday in street fighting at a number of locations around the main rally site.

The redshirts have set up another stage on a highway beyond the main area, countering the army's drive to blockade the main rally area.

Battery acid is thrown over a Bangladeshi girl and her brother while they are sleeping. A screaming Cambodian woman is forcibly restrained as acid is poured over her face.

These aren’t scenes from some sick video but real life examples of a terrible crime that is ruining the lives of thousands of people around the world.

These acid attacks take place mainly in Cambodia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, although there have been rare instances of them occurring in the West.

The reasons behind such attacks are various.