– NEW YORK For more than 30 years, he has fitted the city’s wealthiest and famous residents, and now, Mohan Ramchandani is using his skills and foothold in the custom tailoring market to dress some of New York’s underprivileged. He has partnered with the Hope Program to provide suits worth $1, 000 each to 17 recent graduates entering the job market.

With one of the world's most expensive yachts and a cricket and Formula One team, billionaire Vijay Mallya is known as India's Richard Branson or simply, the "King of Good Times". Owner of the world's second-largest liquor maker, it is his chairmanship of debt-ridden Kingfisher Airlines that is currently making headlines, not the usual write-ups in society pages of his jet set lifestyle.

Hindu holy man Tarkeshwor Giri sat naked at Nepal's biggest annual religious gathering on Monday as throngs of pilgrims sought his blessings at a centuries-old temple in Kathmandu. Devotees bow before Giri, who has travelled from Rudra Prayag in Uttaranchal in India, and offer him coins, rice and sweets. He places his palm on their heads and paints a streak of ash on their foreheads.

Pope Benedict, putting his mark on his Church's future, on Saturday inducted 22 men including India's George Alencherry into the exclusive group of cardinals who will one day elect one of their own to succeed him as leader of the world's 1.3 billion Roman Catholics.

“Women demand mobile phones…not toilets. That isthe mindset we have,” Jairam Ramesh on Friday told a conference in theIndian capital debating the Asia-Pacific Millennium Development Goals.   India’s national agency, Press Trust of India,characterized the remark as a lament.

Bashiran Bibi and her husband fought everyday because money was too tight. Their hungry children's screams tormented her. She began begging in Pakistan's streets. But that didn't help. So the maid, 25, decided there was only one way to deal with crushing poverty. She jumped in front of a speeding train with her two sons and daughter, all under the age of 3.

Though deeply rooted in the classical and folk traditions of Assam, Angaraag Mahanta is a rock star in his own right. The singer, known popularly as Papon, aspired to be an architect before realising music was his true calling. Papon has a musical heritage by birth -- his parents are doyens of Assamese music -- but he always wanted to be a self-made artist.