As miraculous as India’s economic growth has been over the past two decades, systemic discrimination has ensured that religious groups and low-caste Indians remain excluded from India’s new-found wealth. Things have gotten so bad that Muslims have adopted the names and appearances of Hindus to increase their chances of employment.

China just took another step toward easing its water crisis. Water began flowing along the Eastern Route of the unassuming sounding South-North Water Diversion Project a few days ago. The project is perhaps the largest and most expensive infrastructure enterprise in the history of the human race. It will draw water from China’s fertile south to the parched north, through three sets of canals and tunnels called the Western, Middle, and Eastern routes. Why? Because northern China is dying.

China’s pension problem may be even worse than we previously thought. The country’s pension systems were already facing high debts and low annual returns, but in the past year, growth has slowed by an alarming 71 percent, and many areas have already resorted to raiding the future retirement funds of future workers to pay pensions for the currently retired. This comes despite the fact that many private companies contribute 20 percent of their employees’ wages to the funds.

Facing massive losses and declining mail volumes, Canada Post, the country’s primary mail delivery service, has announced that it will begin phasing out door-to-door delivery in urban areas in an effort to return to solvency. Meanwhile, Congress continues to forbid the USPS from making any changes to its organizational structure despite even bigger losses.

Sometime last Thursday, the US Navy said in a statement today, an American guided missile cruiser was on course to collide with a Chinese warship in the South China Sea. The close call between the USS Cowpens and the PLA warship is a sign that tension in east Asia is not going away, and that the risk of a dangerous incident is growing, not easing. And with countries throughout the region building up navies, coast guards, and maritime air forces, the area is only going to get more crowded.

For the first time since 2001, the State Bank of Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves fell to $2.9 billion, prompting a mini-economic crisis in the country. Pakistan now has barely enough in the kitty to pay its import bill for three weeks. As a result, the inflation rate has gotten even higher and the Pakistani rupee continues to tank, putting further pressure on finances.

How corrupt is the Yanukovich government? Extremely, says Anders Åslund of the Peterson Institute for International Economics: “The Ukrainian government’s budget deficit of 6 percent of GDP or $11 billion is driven by what is commonly called the “Yanukovich family” siphoning big money from the state budget.”

The Education Department has just released an early draft of its plan to limit federal aid to colleges, and for-profit schools are squarely in the spotlight. Under the new proposal, for-profit colleges and career training programs at community colleges whose average graduate debt exceeds certain benchmarks will become ineligible for Pell Grants and other forms of federal aid. This is a decent start, but it could go much further.

This week India announced it would train Vietnamese sailors, a clear sign that military cooperation between Vietnam and India is strengthening. In general, policy-makers in Hanoi and New Delhi know that the relationship between their two countries is mutually beneficial. The announcement is also a sign that the coalition of Asian nations seeking to cooperatively balance a rising and aggressive China is growing stronger.

US leadership and innovation over the past 12 years has helped reduce the death rate from malaria among children under five by 51 percent. The mass production of life-saving technologies at affordable prices is beating back one of humanity’s oldest and costliest diseases.