Full Coverage: International Cooperation

29.12.2006 The suspension of Doha Round negotiations in July this year has brought into focus not only the substantive issues which are the subject of discord, but also institutionalised asymmetries which continue to pervade WTO after its emergence from GATT.

29.12.2006 The Asian Development Bank has agreed to provide a loan assistance of Rs. 2124 million and a grant assistance of Rs. 141.6 million to the Government of Nepal for the implementation of Education Sector Programme 1 and the Capacity Development Project, respectively.

28.12.2006 In October 2006, eight years after India and Pakistan crossed the nuclear threshold, the world witnessed yet another breakout, when North Korea exploded an atomic bomb and demanded that it be recognised as a nuclear weapons-state. Talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons, in return for security guarantees and economic assistance, collapsed last week.

27.12.2006 The Centre plans to declare 2007 as Water Year — Year of More Crop and Income Per Drop of Water.The Union Ministry of Water Resources has accepted a suggestion to this effect and will soon approach the Union Cabinet for approval.

26.12.2006 A dozen village information centres functioning in the tsunami-hit coastal villages of Tamil Nadu get Internet connectivity. This facility would provides the fishermen have access to video conferencing, weather reports, local market network on fishing trade in these villages.

21.12.2006 A resolution was adopted today by the Committee on Development of the European Parliament urging the Government of India to stop the violence against Dalits (formerly called ‘Untouchables’) and the widespread practices of untouchability.

20.12.2006 The new modernised and enlarged Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) was signed today at the South East European summit of Prime Ministers in Bucharest. Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Kosovo (SRSG) Joachim Rucker, together with Kosovo Minister for Trade and Industry Bujar Dugolli and Deputy Head of UNMIK Pillar IV Andreas Wittkowsky, participated in the signing ceremony on behalf of Kosovo.

20.12.2006 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), IBM and Oracle today announced a joint research initiative to help Asia-Pacific countries share and create strategies, blueprints and policies for adopting the right blend of open standards and technology services. The goal will be for more countries to develop universally compatible applications and networks to make internal and external government services and transactions more automatic, affordable and efficient.

20.12.2006 Endorsing Prof Stiglitz’s view that neither the developed economies nor the developing world can afford to ignore or reject globalisation, Dr. Manmohan Singh said: "We have to learn to deal with (globalisation), cope with and manage it.

19.12.2006 Developing countries have successfully resisted pressures to “move first” to end the current stalemate in the Doha Development Round of WTO negotiations. This is a sign of “growing maturity” and is of critical importance as this may well be the “last opportunity” to put the development dimension at the centre stage of WTO negotiations, opined Gopal K Pillai, Commerce Secretary, Government of India and the country’s chief negotiator at the WTO here today.

19.12.2006 A public hearing has been organised in the Development Committe of the European Parliament to address human rights slot on the situation of the Dalits in India

18.12.2006 The UN General Assembly has adopted a landmark disability convention, the first human rights treaty of the twenty-first century and one that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said represents the "dawn of a new era" for around 650 million people worldwide living with disabilities.

15.12.2006 Com esse programa, o governo cubano quer devolver a visão a dez milhões de latino-americanos pobres. Em apenas dois anos e cinco meses, já foram atendidos mais de meio milhão de pessoas de 28 países do Terceiro Mundo.

15.12.2006 New law guaranteeing rural employment may be changing centuries-old power relations in India's villages. Dirt-poor villagers, denied work or cheated, have dared defy local authorities and testify against them in a people's court attended by top government officials.

15.12.2006 The World Bank today approved a US$154 million credit to the Indian state of Punjab designed to increase access of the state's rural communities to improved and sustainable water supply and sanitation services.

15.12.2006 The bill that seeks 27 percent of seats for students of Other Backward
Classes (OBCs) in the central higher education institutions in the country
was passed unanimously in the Lok Sabha.

14.12.2006 The Ranbaxy group is planning to diversify into two new areas — retail and education. It would set up two separate companies for the new ventures and both these ventures would have synergy with the group’s existing focus on pharma and healthcare

13.12.2006 Voicing concern over Pakistan’s non-implementation of South Asian Free Trade Area (Safta), the government said Islamabad’s Safta notification on July 1, this year, was limited to tariff concessions for India on items in the positive list.

13.12.2006 In Afghanistan's pervasive culture of violence, women and girls are powerless to resist being traded to settle family disputes and debts; rape and abduction; and forced marriages. Violence is widely tolerated by the community

11.12.2006 Canada's first woman Chief Justice,Beverley McLachlin, speaks softly but robustly on the institution of the judiciary and its place in a democratic set-up. Excerpts from an interview during her recent visit to India.