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.

Now that same sex marriage is here to stay, a new frontier in the marriage wars seems ready to open. A George W. Bush-appointed judge in Utah has struck down important parts of the state’s anti-polygamy law, though for now at least it is still illegal to have more than one valid marriage license at the same time.

From China’s airpocalypse to the ACA’s fail fractal, Canada’s Arctic ambitions to Ukraine’s restless protesters, this week was a busy one. Here are some posts you may have missed.

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.

While most news coverage tends to look at the state of Ukrainian street protests to gauge how things are going, there is lots of evidence that the real power in Ukraine rests with the zillionaires and billionaires who emerged from the twilight of Communism, getting their mitts on everything that wasn’t nailed down in the country. There are signs that the debate among the oligarchs is tilting toward the EU affiliation, but this may have more to do with power dynamics than the size of crowds on the street.

The smog over Beijing was touted as a potential missile screen earlier this week, but more pressingly—and distressingly—it’s causing problems for airplanes attempting to land in China’s capital. To reduce flight delays, China’s civil aviation regulatory body will require pilots traveling in to the city on especially smoggy days be certified in instrument-only flight.

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.

Randy Schekman, a Noble-prize winning biologist, is protesting the way top science journals push shoddy, flashy research by refusing to publish in them. Sheckman’s protest might just be a flash in the pan, of course, but if it’s indicative of any sort of wider frustration in the field, other leading scientists might be able to bring some collective pressure on journals to tighten things up a bit.

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.