Full Coverage: Asia and the Pacific

30.09.2004 Sangath, an NGO working for the welfare of children, is organising an in-depth 12-day workshop from 25th October to 6th November for teachers and parents on understanding learning disabilities and intervention skills.

30.09.2004 An international rights groups says that young offenders imprisoned in the tribal Areas of Pakistan, are subjected to degrading and inhuman punishment.

30.09.2004 An Indian NGO has created a gene bank for local varieties of rice to ensure food security and sustainance for farmers.

30.09.2004 According to a joint UN-government report, educational prospects for Afghan children have improved in recent years, though much work remains to be done to compensate for decades of conflict.

30.09.2004 Afghanistan along with WHO and UNICEF recently organised a polio vaccination programme for a million children, below five years of age, in most provinces.

30.09.2004 Rag pickers and deserted children in New Delhi, the capital city of India, will now enjoy basic lessons and health care facilities to be provided by the local municipal body.

30.09.2004 A Bretton Woods project says it is shocking that the Bank continues to advocate privatisation as 'the policy option', when there have been serious problems in the Indian power sector.

30.09.2004 US trade representative Robert B Zoellick and Pakistani minister for commerce Humayun Akhtar Khan announced that the two countries would begin negotiations on a bilateral investment treaty.

30.09.2004 China is clamping down on internet access like never before. Authorities have closed several independent websites, including an online encyclopaedia that carries articles on human rights abuses. One of the country’s most popular discussion forums that has nearly 300,000 regular users too has been blocked.

30.09.2004 Grameen Foundation USA has merged with Digital Partners, a US-based non-profit organisation, to strengthen the use of ICTs in reducing poverty. The project is expected to expand Grameen Foundation’s Village Computing Project that seeks to connect India’s rural poor through internet kiosks.

30.09.2004 Despite President George W. Bush’s continued insistence that its efforts in Iraq are making steady progress, a new report by two Washington-based think tanks argues that the situation has deteriorated since the handover of “sovereignty” from the U.S.-led occupation authorities to the interim Iraq government.

30.09.2004 Doctors at the radiation hospital in Baghdad have attended to about 7,000 cancer patients so far this year, a sharp increase from figures for previous years which stand at about 4,000. Though there is no scientific explanation for this development, increase in other radiation-related ailments is fuelling suspicion that the cancer cases may be linked to radiation left over from the 1991 Gulf War.

30.09.2004

Protest in Iraq © In These Times

Most Iraqis are of the opinion that the U.S occupation is the source, not the solution to the violence in their cities and, according a poll conducted in June, they want U.S. forces out. This, says Erik Leaver, is one of ten compelling reasons why the U.S. should end its occupation of Iraq.

29.09.2004 “Community Radio is one platform where each and every member can participate in some form or the other,” says Kavita Bisht, member of a radio listeners’ club in India’s Uttaranchal state. Till the Indian government allows licences for independent community radio stations, five groups in Uttaranchal are narrowcasting local stories through a cable network.

29.09.2004 Project Concern International/India (PCI/India), will organise a year-long project, AIDS Walk for Life, in Delhi on World AIDS Day from December 1, 2004 to educate rural and urban residents.

29.09.2004 Thailand has come forward to provide anti-retroviral drugs and condoms to Myanmar to save migrant workers from HIV/AIDS as the first part of a three-year commitment to support Myanmar's health facilities.

29.09.2004 Microsoft India is planning to expand its IT education project, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, to enable access to technology for students at an early age.

29.09.2004 Microsoft India is planning to expand its IT education project, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, to provide access to technology to students at an early age.

29.09.2004 International press freedom organization Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) has urged the European Union (EU) to condemn China's latest crackdown on independent websites and publications while holding a dialogue on human rights with the EU, even as a report by media freedom group, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says 42 journalists are currently imprisoned in China, with insurance companies in the country listing journalism as the third most dangerous profession in the country.

29.09.2004 Study looks at the link between stock prices and firms’ environmental track record in India. It finds that the market penalises environmentally unfriendly behaviour.