May 2012

The men with the poison-filled syringe arrived two days before Li Juan's due date. They pinned her down on a bed in a local clinic, she says, and drove the needle into her abdomen until it entered the 9-month-old fetus. "At first, I could feel my child kicking a lot," says the 23-year-old. "Then, after a while, I couldn't feel her moving anymore." Ten hours later, Li delivered the girl she had intended to name Shuang (Bright). The baby was dead. To be absolutely sure, says Li, the officials--from the Linyi region, where she lives, in China's eastern Shandong province--dunked the infant's body for several minutes in a bucket of water beside the bed. All she could think about on that day last spring, recalls Li, was how she would hire a gang of thugs to take revenge on the people who killed her baby because the birth, they said, would have violated China's family-planning scheme.

Hong Kong’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community may have received a boost from local pop star Anthony Wong’s very public coming-out last month, and there may have been visible improvements in public attitude in recent years—the city has hosted a number of Pride parades since 2008—but a new survey shows that hostility continues in the workplace.

Two years ago, Art Basel directors Marc Spiegler and Annette Schönholzer came to this city on a mission: to start a new contemporary art fair in Asia. But after scoping out the competition, they decided to change tack. The Hong Kong International Art Fair, also known as Art HK, “was not only a popular show, but a show whose quality was rising from year to year,” said Mr. Spiegler. After that, he said, “this idea of working with the existing team made a lot of sense.” Art Basel’s owner, MCH Group, bought a majority stake in the Hong Kong fair last year.

As Christian Bale approached an impromptu checkpoint leading to this tiny village in eastern China, four men blocking the narrow path started marching toward him in menacing unison. "I am here to see Chen Guangcheng," the "Dark Knight" actor said and I translated, with correspondent Stan Grant and cameraman Brad Olson next to us.