India

Nepal officially abolished its monarchy on May 28.

For the first time since the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, a royal dynasty has been toppled. A newly sworn-in parliament ended Nepal's 239-year Hindu monarchy and declared a secular republic in its place. King Gyanendra, grim and gloomy and out-of-touch, was given 15 days to vacate his pink palace in the center of Kathmandu.

Tata Motors buys Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford for $2.3 billion.

Here’s a huzzah for the post-colonial purchase of the car brands of viceroys, district commissioners, and other pukka sahibs. And one for the visionary leadership of Ratan Tata, who has snapped up everything from Tetley tea to aerospace design companies in his successful effort to create a world class conglomerate. But spare me, please, the over-the-top headlines like “Indian Tiger Rides Jaguar,” or the quotes from Indian commerce minister Kamal Nath that “the most important thing is that world is recognizing India’s credibility.”

The Kingdom of Bhutan, for over a hundred years an absolute monarchy under the Wangchuk Dynasty, held its first elections.

"All things," Lord Buddha reminds us, "are ephemeral." The two Buddhist autocrats who saw their power eroded this week in South Asia might have kept this advice in mind. From his Dharmasala lair, His Holiness the Dalai Lama lamented helplessly as the violent protests in Lhasa -- and the crackdown by Beijing -- proceeded apace, not obviously affected by his pleas for calm. And Jigme Khesar Namgyel, son of the Scourge of Thimpu, watched his subjects vote for a national assembly for the first time, in a ballot he himself decreed, but that still diminishes his authority. MORE

Pakistan elected a new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

Though most consider Gillani a cipher who is merely housesitting for Asif Ali Zardari, the PPP's notoriously corrupt leader-in-exile, many think Pakistan has a rare opportunity to renew itself.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates returned mostly empty-handed from India, with India's ruling coalition still sitting on a landmark bilateral deal on civilian nuclear cooperation.

Gates's setback says more about the frailties of Indian coalition politics than about a cooling of bilateral ties. The U.S. and India are much cuddlier strategically than during my days as a foreign service officer in Bombay in the late 1980s, when the CIA station chief had to use a rickety sailboat from the Royal Bombay Yacht Club to snoop on India's western fleet (or maybe that was just his excuse to go sailing on Uncle Sam's dime). From 2006 to 2007, U.S. military assistance to India more than quadrupled to more than $1 billion (up from near zero in my day), the Indians recently agreed to buy six C-130 cargo planes, and the U.S. may win a $10 billion deal to supply fighter jets. (Last year, India was -- after China -- the world's second biggest buyer of military hardware, mostly from Russia and Israel.) And Indians feel a lot warmer toward the United States than your average Pakistani, despite billions in assistance over the years to that putative "ally." MORE

El Cheapo kidneys, get them while they're warm

In the grossest violation of the Hippocratic Oath since Mengele, a gang of surgeons in Gurgaon, India, allegedly rounded up beggars and day-laborers, drugged them, and sliced out their kidneys.  Other poor Indians surrendered their kidneys to the doctors for handfuls of cash. In all, the gang bought or stole as many as 500 organs in a nine-year medical crime-wave -- then installed them, for a price, in the renally-diseased bodies of rich Indians and foreigners. Leaving aside the surgery-at-gunpoint and the forcible anesthesia, two gruesome facts stand out.