Full Coverage: Pakistan

28.06.2006 The Pakistan government has announced setting up of a joint Steering Committee to monitor and check the prevention and control of avian and pandemic influenza in the country.

27.06.2006 The Lahore Police Department has shifted its recently established Domestic Violence Counter (DVC) at Police Rescue 15 to the WomenÂ’s Police Station, Racecourse Road, to ensure that women would feel awkward about voicing their grievances in detail

26.06.2006 The Ministry of WomenÂ’s Development and Youth Affairs has decided to train approximately 28,000 women councillors. The ministry is executing the task under a $4.5 million Norway-funded project titled WomenÂ’s Political School (WPS) in collaboration with the UN Development Programme.

23.06.2006 A workshop on ethical guidelines for reporting HIV and AIDS was organised by the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) in collaboration with UNICEF to educate the people about the disease.

23.06.2006 A balance between the demands brought on by Lahore's development imperatives and the right of its residents to live in environment-friendly surroundings needs to be struck. At the very least, Environmental Impact Assessments should be conducted by the government and made public.

23.06.2006 The figures cited by the government for people living below the poverty line have come to be widely questioned. With poverty alleviation being the buzzword these days in our economic and social development and a key criterion for aid givers, it is understandable that the policymakers are desperately trying to prove the success of their strategy in terms of falling poverty levels.

22.06.2006 The World Health Organization (WHO) handed out 23 newly constructed Basic Health Units (BHUs) to health authorities in earthquake-affected Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

18.06.2006 In a society that frowns upon alternate lifestyles, most lesbians in this country prefer to live their "illegal" love lives under the quilt.

16.06.2006 Eight thousand families in northern Pakistan left destitute by last OctoberÂ’s devastating earthquake that killed around 80,000 will receive financial and technical support to rebuild their houses and buy livestock through a new project supported by a $26.4 million loan from the UnitedNations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

14.06.2006 Fouad Riaz Bajwa, the Head of the FOSS Foundation of Pakistan, sent and open letter to all concerned global FOSS Bodies, ICT stakeholders & UN-GAID, protesting the selection of members of UN-GAID Council and Committees. During the process, the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Movement was completely ignored.

09.06.2006 The budget for the next fiscal year, presented by the Pakistan minister of state for finance, Omar Ayub Khan, in the National Assembly on Monday, carries a substantial package of relief for the common man. However, here it must be emphasised that the practice of narrow targeting to tackle the problems of poverty and inequality, as some of the proposed measures envisage, has very rarely yielded the desired results.

08.06.2006 The government of Pakistan's Sindh province has been accused of ignoring the plight of 200,000 fisherfolk in auctioning inland fishing rights to a few rich corporations and individuals.

08.06.2006 The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) plans to end its active engagement from Pakistan's quake-affected areas. More than 75,000 people were killed and thousands more injured on 8 October after a powerful 7.6 magnitude quake in north and west Pakistan.

08.06.2006 The Pakistan Press Foundation reports that the government has once again banned Blogspot in the country. The Pakistani government banned the site after receiving an order from the Supreme Court because of the controversy related to the prophet.

07.06.2006 Researchers have genetically modified a plant to make it tolerate low levels of boron, a nutrient often lacking from soils, especially in southeast China and Pakistan.

06.06.2006 Pakistan's Larkana district health department organised an anti-polio walk in connection with a three-day special campaign beginning today for the eradication of the disease.

06.06.2006 Pakistan government recently announced the highest ever Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for financial year 2006-07 at Rs 435 billion (gross), with a federal share of Rs 320 billion and focus on infrastructure and social sector development.

05.06.2006 Pakistan's health care system is hamstrung by an acute shortage of nursing professionals -- the result of poor training facilities and an extremely difficult work environment.

05.06.2006 During the past four fiscal years, the Pakistan government had released an amount of Rs 484 million against the required amount of Rs 655 million for the AIDS control programme.

05.06.2006 The public health sector in Pakistan suffers from considerable inadequacies with only one doctor available for 1,310 patients, one dentist for 25,297 people and one nurse for 4,636, according to the Economic Survey 2005-06.