Overseas news archive

12.07.2006 Vanuatu, Colombia and Costa Rica top a new global measure of progress, the "Happy Planet Index", with Central America emerging as the best region, thanks to relatively good life expectancy, high life satisfaction and above-average ecological impact. Self appointed world leaders score badly, with UK coming 108th in the list, the US 150th and Russia 172nd. Zimbabwe ranks as unhappiest country.
* Happiness is...a tiny island in the Pacific

12.07.2006 Efforts to assist more than 700,000 Angolans – mostly young children and returning refugees – will come to a halt unless new donations are received by the end of July, the World Food Programme warns.

12.07.2006 The Bush administration’s belated decision to recognise the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to terrorism suspects in military custody does not extend to detainees held by the CIA and thus represents only partial compliance with the recent US Supreme Court ruling.

12.07.2006 Chinese blogger and documentary filmmaker Hao Wu has been released after nearly five months in detention.

12.07.2006 Asia Pulp & Paper continues to threaten forests in Indonesia that are important to both wildlife and people, despite earlier commitments and pledges made by the company to its buyers, an environmental group claims.

12.07.2006 UNICEF says it will construct 500 permanent schools and around 70 permanent rural health centres in areas devastated by Pakistan’s 2005 earthquake, as part of its $150 million contribution to the recovery plan for affected areas.

12.07.2006 G8 leaders may be fighting a losing battle to kick-start the Doha trade talks because Europe and the US are continuing to skew their farm subsidies so heavily in favour of their biggest agricultural producers, says an international development charity.

12.07.2006 A coalition of youth from 21 countries has appealed to G8 leaders to re-think their “Draft Plan of Action on Energy Security", which recommends spending trillions of dollars on non-renewable energy.

12.07.2006 Escalating violence in Gaza will lead to a humanitarian crisis for over 1.3 million Palestinians, say Save the Children UK, Christian Aid and Oxfam International.

11.07.2006 This Thursday's British government policy paper on aid needs to explain how it plans to deal with corruption and poor governance in Africa and the impact of China and India on the world and "how to rationalise an aid industry that is sprawling out of control", a development think-tank said today.

11.07.2006 UN refugee agency chief António Guterres yesterday urged European and African nations work together to uphold the rights of people in "mixed migratory movements" in which migrants and refugees move alongside each other, using similar routes and methods of transport.

11.07.2006 The Malaysian authorities have been slammed for banning 18 books in the last month on the grounds that they may "disrupt peace and harmoney".

11.07.2006 Escalating attacks on teachers, students and schools in Afghanistan are shutting down schools and depriving another generation of education, a leading rights group says in a new report today. Girls' schools have been hit particularly hard.

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11.07.2006 Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has extended the deadline for the end of talks with the rebel Lords' Resistance Army, to 12 September.

11.07.2006 Increasing violence between the Sri Lankan government and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has displaced 40,000 people in the north and east and driven another 2,800 to seek safety in India - and is a bitter blow to the 300,000 already displaced people and hundreds of thousands of others who are largely cut off from development assistance.
+ OneWorld Guide to Sri Lanka

10.07.2006 Bangladeshi medical and legal experts have expressed frustration over the rejection of a lawsuit worth millions of pounds in compensation to victims of arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh.

10.07.2006 Grave concern about the severe impact of the current fighting in Gaza has been voiced by a group of international NGOs.

10.07.2006 The UN world conference on small arms has collapsed without agreement, after a small number of states, most prominently the US, blocked key issues.
+ US will miss chemical treaty deadline

10.07.2006 Beatings, electric shocks and the forced ingestion of dirty water, urine and chemicals are among the methods that continue to be used by Algeria's security forces with systematic impunity, Amnesty International said in a report published today.

10.07.2006 More big US companies now include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policies, according to The Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s annual State of the Workplace 2005-2006 report.