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Hunger strikes are often used in India as a method of protest — but try being on one for 12 years.

That's how long it's been since Irom Sharmila last ate on her own. She is protesting an Indian law that suspends human rights guarantees in conflict-ridden parts of the country. The government is force-feeding her through a tube. And on Monday, Sharmila was charged with attempted suicide.

First, some background: Sharmila is protesting the Armed Forces Special Forces Act, an Indian law that gives special powers to the country's military in restive regions. The law is in force in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, as well as across the country's northeast, the scene for decades of several separatist movements. Sharmila is from Manipur, one of these northeastern states. Here's how The Associated Press describes the law:

"Under the law, in effect in Indian-ruled Kashmir and parts of the country's northeast, troops have the right to shoot to kill suspected rebels without fear of possible prosecution and to arrest suspected militants without a warrant. It also gives police wide-ranging powers of search and seizure."

There are more than 1,400 billionaires in the world right now, according to two sources — one in the U.S., and one in China. But the tallies by Forbes and Hurun Report differ on key points, including whether there are now more billionaires in Asia than anywhere else.

Forbes says its list of billionaires, released Monday, "now boasts 1,426 names, with an aggregate net worth of $5.4 trillion, up from $4.6 trillion." Shanghai's Hurun Report, which compiled its first global list this year after long tracking China's wealthy, says it found 1,453 billionaires, with $5.5 trillion in combined worth.

Those numbers aren't far from each other, especially considering recent volatile economic conditions in global markets. And they show that the amount of money held by fewer than 1,500 people — let's split the difference, and call it $5.45 trillion — would earn them a spot as the world's fourth-largest GDP, if we were the type of people who conflate producing wealth with holding onto it.

Both of the lists are topped by Carlos Slim Helu and his family, of Mexico. And they agree that the U.S. has more billionaires than any other country.

But a key difference between the lists arises when Hurun Report states, "Asia was home to the highest number of billionaires this year with most of them operating in real estate sector."

Forbes says the entire Asia-Pacific region has 386 billionaires, while the Hurun list says Asia has 559 of them — not including the 17 who are in Oceania.

So, why the disparity? It could certainly come down to fluctuations in individuals' net worth — Forbes cites Brazil's Eike Batista, "whose fortune dropped by $19.4 billion, or equivalent to about $50 million a day," in 2012.

The differences might also reflect the difficulty of tallying the wealth of people whose holdings are often spread across continents and industries. And not all of them want to advertise their wealth — particularly in China, which Hurun Report says has 317 billionaires.

As The Vancouver Sun reported yesterday, China's wealthy use many means to smuggle their money overseas, hoping to insulate themselves from both the tax office and political shifts.

Citing Global Financial Integrity's estimate that $602.9 billion fled China in 2011, The Sun's Zoe McKnight writes that the methods ranged from using "underground banks" to putting suitcases full of cash on airplanes.

"For every billionaire that Hurun Report has found," the magazine company's chairman Rupert Hoogewerf says, "I estimate we have missed at least two, meaning that today there are probably 4000... billionaires in the world."

The magazine concluded that "valuing the wealth of China's richest is as much an art as it is a science."

Rats have been a problem for many years in Tehran. As the BBC reported in 2000, officials back then launched a poison control program that they hoped would kill many of the estimated 25 million rats in the city.

Well, now there are reports that the poison isn't working that well and that the rat population still outnumbers the Iranian capital's humans. So, as The Times of London and Abu Dhabi's The National report, sniper squads have been deployed.

The National says:

"Ten teams of sharpshooters armed with rifles equipped with infra-red sights have bagged more than 2,000 of the brutish rodents in recent weeks, city officials told state media. That's a drop in the ocean: Iran's rat population easily outnumbers the sprawling capital's 12 million inhabitants. The city council is now boosting the number of sniper squads to 40, officials said.

" 'It's become a 24/7 war,' a grim-faced Mohammad Hadi Heydarzadeh, the head of Tehran municipality's environmental agency, declared on state television last month."

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II was just seen leaving London's King Edward VII hospital, where she had been admitted over the weekend to be treated for symptoms of gastroenteritis.

As NPR's Philip Reeves reported earlier, her stay in the hospital was said by Buckingham Palace to be "a precautionary measure. It was so that doctors could better monitor the 86-year-old monarch. She first became ill last week, forcing her to call off a trip to Wales Friday. Her engagements for the coming week are now postponed or cancelled."

Sky News says the queen is reportedly in good spirits.