Overseas news archive

26.04.2006 Several years of poor rainfall, compounded by the lack of a national food security policy and chronic poverty, have brought two million people – nearly one in three of Burundi’s population - to the brink of starvation, says a development charity.

26.04.2006 Women should not use lemon or lime juice to protect themselves from HIV infection, as it could be unsafe, researchers have concluded.

26.04.2006 British Prime Minister Tony Blair has replied to campaigners' demands that world leaders spend at least 12 pence in every pound of money for HIV and AIDS on services for affected children and families and that he should attend a forthcoming UN Summit on the issue. Read his reply - and the activists' response.

26.04.2006 Another Filipino activist has been killed and several others seriously wounded, in what a rights group describes as "yet further examples of the alarming level of incidents of extra-judicial executions across the country".

26.04.2006 Under the pressure of soaring oil prices and growing environmental constraints, momentum is gathering for a major international switch from fossil fuels to renewable bioenergy, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

26.04.2006 Afghan President Hamid Karzai's new Cabinet currently includes no women, since he did not reappoint the three who had previously served in the 25-member ministerial body.

25.04.2006 The Nepali people's victory in forcing the king to reinstate parliament may lead to the end of the monarchy, says a statement by a leading Asian rights group.

25.04.2006 A Vietnam veteran battling to ensure safe disposal of US chemical weapon stockpiles, a Liberian who explosed the illegal logging that funded his country's civil war and a Brazilian behind the creation of the world's largest area of protected rainforest are among the six winners of this year's Goldman Environmental Prize.

25.04.2006 The demobilisation of about 250 children in Sudan's Upper Nile State is the biggest of its kind since the January 2005 peace agreement that commits both government and rebels to child demobilisation throughout the country.

25.04.2006 Hours before a suicide bomber blew herself up inside Sri Lanka's army headquarters today, seriously wounding the country's army commander, the government was accused by an international rights group of failing to respond adequately to recent attacks by armed groups on ethnic Tamils and their homes and businesses.

25.04.2006 The ongoing flooding of the Danube in Romania is the result of bad land use planning and mismanagement along the entire length of the river, according to an environmental lobby group.

25.04.2006 European fishing subsidies risk creating unemployment for fishermen in the Baltic region, says a new report.

25.04.2006 Poor people in Nepal are facing growing hardships, with economic growth down to two per cent, inflation approaching double figures, and public services not functioning effectively, an international development charity warned yesterday as political unrest continued in the Himalayan kingdom.

25.04.2006 About 1,000 Iraqis in a village near the former Tuwaitha nuclear site are living inside an area contaminated by radioactive residues and ruins, says the International Atomic Energy Authority.

25.04.2006 Britain is now the largest user of laboratory animals, with academic institutions using more animals than the pharmaceutical industry, according to a dossier released to mark World Lab Animal Week.

25.04.2006 Twenty years since the biggest-ever industrial accident - the explosion at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine - the catastrophe is still unfolding.
* US nuclear industry fires up public relations campaign
* IAEA asked to help clean Iraq
* Red Cross Red Crescent thyroid cancer detection programme can prevent hundreds of premature deaths

24.04.2006 Hundreds of thousands of Africans are dying because of lack of commitment in delivering artemisinin treatments, the Roll Back Malaria campaign said in a statement marking Africa Malaria Day on Tuesday.
* Malaria still kills needlessly in Africa

24.04.2006 Alarmingly few African malaria patients are getting treatment that could cure them in a few days, says a leading medical group in a statement ahead of Africa Malaria Day, 25 April.

24.04.2006 World Bank and IMF interference in Africa has done more harm than good, according to a leading US Africa lobby group.

24.04.2006 Efforts to counter human trafficking for sexual exploitation or forced labour have been "uncoordinated and inefficient", the UN Office on Drugs and Crime says in a report that states: "Governments need to try harder."