Economy

Throughout China, workers making goods for export use outdated—sometimes jerry-rigged—machines that lack safety features standard in the U.S., causing workers to lose legs, arms, hands or fingers.

Workers producing Char-Broil stoves in China were given only thin gauze masks that do nothing to prevent metal dust from entering their lungs. Many end up contracting lung diseases like silicosis.

Most American businesses that import from China are small and medium-sized. Many have never visited the factories, and are unaware of any dangerous working conditions surrounding their products.

Over a 12-month period, Pulitzer Center grantee Loretta Tofani visited more than 25 factories in China to document the risks Chinese workers go through to supply American consumers with cheap goods.

HYDERABAD, India - An aggressive push by Indian state security forces over the past two years has blunted the Maoist insurgency in the state of Andhra Pradesh, a long-time guerrilla hotbed, but many have regrouped in remote parts of neighboring states where police remain ill-equipped to combat a surge in violence.

The Camisea Natural Gas Project in Peru is one of South America's largest energy developments. With six pipeline ruptures since 2004, it's also one of the most controversial.

The Naxals are getting more lethal. So the Asian Center for Human Rights (ACHR), a Delhi-based think tank, concludes in its latest report. According to their estimate, at least 384 people were killed in the Naxalite conflict from January to September of this year.

While consumers in the U.S. are enjoying cheap products made in China, factory workers in the world's most populous country are exposed to hazardous working conditions. Loretta Tofani reports.

Muzaffarpur, India -- Looking out over gray waters that have inundated the rice paddies that are his livelihood, Bhavat Nagar swore no flood he could recall came close to the latest monsoon deluge that washed away most of his village and a neighbor's child.

"This is the worst it has been," he said, shaking his head. "We always lose a little, but now we have lost everything. I don't know what to do."

Pulitzer Center grantee Loretta Tofani offers a glimpse into the life of Chinese factory workers dying from occupational diseases that have been maimed as a result of making products for America.

It seems mother nature has no remorse. As water levels were finally beginning to recede, another round of flash floods has undercut millions across eastern India and Bangladesh who had taken first steps in the long recovery.

In its annual 'State of the States' survey, India Today magazine – the South Asian equivalent to Time, right down to its red window cover – put Bihar at the bottom among large states in eight categories ranging from economic output to electricity consumption. This hardly comes as a surprise as Bihar has earned an 'F' each year since rankings were first published five years ago.