Overseas news archive

27.03.2006 Organisations and individuals promoting fair trade in Africa are set to meet in Bénin next month for a four-day symposium that will draw a plan of action for its development.

27.03.2006 Sanctions against countries failing to take action to stop the trade in orangutans have been demanded by a group of 40 conservation organisations.

27.03.2006 A UN delegation has arrived in Burundi for consultations on the setting up of a truth and reconciliation commission and a special court.

27.03.2006 A $20 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant was announced at a meeting in London yesterday at which UK representatives of leading food and retail companies were asked to help distribute affordable fortified foods around the world.

27.03.2006 Past winners of the Right Livelihood Award - often described as The Alternative Nobel Peace Prize - have written to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert urging him to act against a threat by an election candidate against peace activist Uri Avnery.

25.03.2006 Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Saturday that Liberia is “free to take” its former president, Charles Taylor, who is living in exile in Nigeria and is indicted for war crimes by a United Nations-backed court.

24.03.2006 The World Health Organisation's TB strategy has failed to contain the disease or provide proper treatment for the sick, according to a leading medical charity which describes the situation as catastrophic and forecasts "it will only get worse".

24.03.2006 China will continue its one-child policy, the director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, Zhang Weiqing, said in an online forum.

24.03.2006 Mikhail Gorbachev, Iran's first female vice president and an Ethiopian champion of the fight against patenting life forms are among seven people honoured by the UN Environment Programme.

24.03.2006 The governor of Brazil's Parana state vows to keep his state GM-free, in defiance of the federal government’s positive stance towards GM farming.

24.03.2006 Index on Censorship's annual Freedom of Expression Awards are announced, honouring journalists, writers, lawyers, campaigners, filmmakers and whistleblowers.

24.03.2006 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered US support for Argentina's military regime immediately after its coup, newly-declassified documents from the National Security Archive show.

24.03.2006 A challenge to a ban on “political” advertising – of potential importance to many charities – is likely to be heard in May.

24.03.2006 In another example of the crisis of Roma evictions which is sweeping Europe, two of Russia's most isolated and exposed vulnerable Roma communities are facing expulsion.

23.03.2006 Cases of “mad cow disease” worldwide are declining, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, which says they have been dropping by 50 per cent a year for three years.

23.03.2006 A land-grabber who has destroyed swathes of Amazon forest and a Swiss multinational illegally growing genetically engineered crops near a protected nature reserve - both targeted by Greenpeace - now face action by the Brazilian government for environmental crimes.

23.03.2006 A new formula for oral rehydration salts will help combat acute diarrhoeal disease - the second leading cause of child deaths worldwide - and advance the goal of reducing child mortality by two-thirds before 2015, the UN said today.

23.03.2006 The assertion that access to water is a human right was not included in the ministerial declaration adopted at the Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico.
* World Water Forum fails, say civil society groups

23.03.2006 The deterioration of the food security situation in crisis areas of Somalia is gathering momentum.

23.03.2006 British consumers of merbau hardwood flooring are being misled by high street retailers, DIY stores and leading brands into buying illegal timber from Indonesia’s remote Papua Province, say environmental campaigners.