Full Coverage: Asia and the Pacific

31.10.2005 Author Lauren Brodsky explores what the campaign efforts of one political candidate indicate about the state of democracy in Azerbaijan as the country prepares for November 6 general elections.

31.10.2005 Nepal's 3.5 million Dalits--formerly known as "untouchables"-- have no political representatives, and 80% live below the poverty line. But groups are now using technology, the media, and organizing tacticts to help fight against caste discrimination.

31.10.2005 In this paper presented at U.G.C. Sponsored Symposium on Macro Economic Policies and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) organized by the P.G. Department of Economics, SNDT women’s University, Mumbai-400020 on 30th and 31st August, 2005, Dr.Vibhuti Patel addresses the impact of Macro Economic Policies and Globalisation on the lives of women.

31.10.2005 Multinational and Indian seed companies are paying Indian farmers who are producing their cotton seed almost 40%- too little to enable them to hire adults for the local minimum wage of Rs.52 (€1,-) instead of children. The companies are multinationals like Bayer, Monsanto and Syngenta but also Indian companies like Nuziveedu Seeds, Raasi Seeds and Ankur Seeds.

31.10.2005 A team of ten members from the Movement for Empowerment of Indians and Anhad/Youth For Peace visited Kashmir to distribute relief material in more than 14 villages, hitherto not accessed by anyone but the army. Shabnam Hashmi of Anhad reports on the situation.

31.10.2005 Nearly two years after the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) took up the question in Geneva, the international community is yet to arrive at a consensus on creating a framework to manage the Internet. All countries today recognise the fundamental and growing role of the Internet as a facilitator of governance, commerce, and communication. An editorial in The Hindu addresses this question.

31.10.2005 The police combed the sites of three powerful blasts in New Delhi for clues to who carried out coordinated attacks that killed at least 61 people, just days before region important festivals Diwali and Eid.

31.10.2005 LAHORE: The federal government is all set to introduce a law making it mandatory for private schools and educational institutions to register with it (the government), government officials said. The proposed legislation, which was prepared after lengthy consultations and consensus with various stakeholders and existing laws for the registering private schools and educational institutions, was forwarded to the federal cabinet for final approval, officials added

31.10.2005 The UNICEF has supported the Ministry of Education in assessing the immediate needs of the children. UNICEF’s priority is to get children back to school as quickly as possible to help them cope with the trauma.

31.10.2005 BANGALORE: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is looking to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to provide it with technical know-how for establishing tele-education links.

28.10.2005 The Philippines government is being urged to stop the murders of church people, human rights advocates, journalists, trade unionists and political activists - said to total 100 this year alone.

28.10.2005 The murder of a relief worker in Afghanistan less than a week after the killing of five local aid workers threatens to further undermine the country's stability and its fragile recovery process, says a leading development charity.

28.10.2005 A Boeing 747 flight - donated to Save the Children by Virgin Atlantic - will leave for Pakistan on Monday with tents, tarpaulins and plastic sheeting to provide vital shelter for people left homeless by the 8 October earthquake.

28.10.2005 Correspondents report on how governments in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America plan to fight a possible outbreak of "bird flu" in the face of poor public health infrastructure.

28.10.2005 Some of the world's richest nations have come under fire from a leading corruption watchdog group for failing to take action against the companies that illegally profited from a United Nations-sponsored humanitarian programme in Iraq.

28.10.2005 As the remaining votes are tallied, it appears that Afghanistan's first fully elected parliament will be largely comprised of regional commanders suspected of having links to armed groups. Observers fear that disarmament may become more difficult as the militias gain power and legitimacy through elected office.

27.10.2005 UNITED NATIONS, Oct 27 (OneWorld) - The world's rich nations are under fire from international humanitarian aid groups for failing to provide enough funds for relief activities in northern Pakistan where millions of earthquake survivors are in dire need of help.

27.10.2005 OneWorld South Asia will host a panel discussion with Global Knowledge Partnership on local content in the upcoming Tunis Summit. The panel discussion “Local content: an answer to global problems” provides a knowledge-sharing platform for experts from the South to provide issues around using local content for poverty reduction.

27.10.2005 Three activists have won the prestigious Human Rights Defender Award: Omid Memarian, a journalist and web-blogger from Iran, Salih Mahmoud Osman, lawyer and human rights activist from Darfur, and Beatrice Were, an advocate for the rights of women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Uganda.
* The "ladies in white", wives and mothers of imprisoned dissidents in Cuba, this week received the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought, along with Nigerian lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim and Reporters Without Borders.

27.10.2005 The Mookambigai College of Engineering, Kalamavur in Pudukottai district, and Anna University in Chennai jointly organised a 12-day programme to train self-help group women to establish information kiosks on college premises.