Full Coverage: Asia and the Pacific

31.01.2006 The women of the Tistung village in Nepal have formed the Tistung Women’s Association, according to reports from a researcher, Mr.Ekaram Singh. The panel of women has been constituted with the objective of raising awareness among the locals on health, education and culture.

31.01.2006 The Sudanese refugees remaining in detention in Cairo will not be deported, an Egyptian official has said. They were detained shortly before the New Year after police violently evicted them from the protest camp they had erected in a Cairo neighborhood to support their demands for resettlement to a third country.

31.01.2006 As China's car fleet gets bigger by the day, the cars themselves are getting smaller, thanks to a series of government-implemented carrots and sticks, including stricter fuel efficiency standards and preferential pricing for parking and oil.

31.01.2006 Military Families Against the War says that the death of the 100th British soldier in Iraq yesterday will be marked by protests in towns across the country.

31.01.2006 As representatives of more than 70 countries sit down today with Afghan Government leaders to shape the reconstruction framework, the UN Children's Fund urges delegates to maintain a clear focus on the development needs of children and mothers.

31.01.2006 China's skies have darkened over the past 50 years, possibly due to haze resulting from a nine-fold increase in fossil fuel emissions, according to researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy.

31.01.2006 ICT professionals in New Zealand will soon be able to upgrade their business qualifications while they work, thanks to a postgraduate certificate approved by the Tertiary Education Commission.

31.01.2006 A fresh round of research missions is set to probe the seafloor rupture that triggered the devastating tsunami of 2004. But when researchers arrive in the Indian Ocean, they will find some areas are off-limits. Geologists want access to Indian waters to understand the devastating seafloor earthquake in 2004.

31.01.2006 THE TALLY is growing. First it was confined to the frontline agricultural State of Punjab. But now the ultimate symbol of growing rural despair — putting villages up for sale — has spread to central India. Dorli, a sleepy village in Maharashtra's Wardha district, has sounded the bugle.

31.01.2006 International agency Oxfam has said that rich countries must change their attitude to world trade negotiations and show leadership to deliver reforms that lift people out of poverty. It wants the EU and US to stop making excuses for not reforming agricultural trade rules and to end their unreasonable demands for developing countries to open industry and services markets.

31.01.2006 Sri Lanka sold a record 308 million kilos of the commodity to overseas buyers last year, a brokering house said on Monday. The tea exports in 2005 were 2.83 per cent higher than in 2004, maintaining a small but steady increase seen in the past three years, the Asia Siyaka Commodities said.

31.01.2006 Crops grown by small farmers are central to food security, health, economic growth, poverty reduction, and social stability in these regions. In determining how best to exploit the existing capacity for genome sequencing, therefore, we believe that crops essential to resource-poor farmers in developing countries should be given highest priority.

31.01.2006 Mina Swaminathan has been trying for over a year now to get the 120 agricultural universities in India introduce a short 18-hour module on gender issues in agriculture and rural livelihood, but without success. She says that the entire agricultural bureaucracy is gender insensitive.

31.01.2006 The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) is holding a four-day training programme between February 21-24, 2006 and is inviting nominations by February 10, 2006.

31.01.2006 While the Union Budget is being prepared on a war-footing, Finance Minister P Chidambaram comes under pressure from both the Prime Minister's Office and the office of the Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, to enhance Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) to take care of the social sector.

31.01.2006 A fresh round of research missions is set to probe the seafloor rupture that triggered the devastating tsunami of 2004. But when researchers arrive in the Indian Ocean, they will find some areas are off-limits. Geologists want access to Indian waters to understand the devastating seafloor earthquake in 2004.

31.01.2006 The leprosy eradication mission, which started at Independence reached a milestone with transmission of the disease reaching negligible levels. For the first time in 50 years, less than one in 10,000 persons contracted the disease last year

31.01.2006 Uzbek authorities blocked access to the trial of a human rights defender who had spoken out about last May's Andijan massacre, an international rights group said today.

31.01.2006 Aid to the Palestinian government will be reviewed in light of a number of conditions, including recognition of Israel and a commitment to non-violence, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in London in a statement on behalf of the "diplomatic Quartet", which also includes Russia, the European Union and the US.

30.01.2006 The minister of industries in Tamil Nadu, Nainar Nagendran inaugurated the state government’s multimedia campaign to popularize schemes of the state government.