Full Coverage: Asia and the Pacific

31.10.2008 A deterioration in press freedom in Sri Lanka has been found by an International Press Freedom mission, confirming the country's lowest rating of any democratic country worldwide.

30.10.2008 Development agencies fly teams into the area of Pakistan struck by an earthquake on Wednesday.
+ Thousands homeless after Pakistan earthquake
+ MSF team dispatched to villages hit by earthquake in Balochistan
+ World Vision ready to respond as survivors face frigid temperatures

29.10.2008 Emteaz Hussain says she ran away and took shelter in a women’s refuge when she was 16, so it’s not surprising that the central characters in her first play, Sweet Cider, are two young British Asian women who have run away from home.

24.10.2008 A controversial nickel project run by Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton has been imposed on a Philippine island community through bribery and poor information, a report claims.

24.10.2008 A cash for work programme has been launched in northern Afghanistan with the aim of providing around 5,000 families with enough food to cover at least half of their daily requirements throughout the winter.

22.10.2008 “I don’t want to be a martyr and get it banned and boast about it,” says actress Nandita Das of her directorial debut, Firaaq. But she is aware that her film about people caught up in the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002 might be controversial.

21.10.2008 The Israeli Occupation Forces have killed more than 860 children in the Occupied Territories since the beginning of the second Intifada (Uprising) in September 2000, says a report by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

20.10.2008 Two aid workers have been killed - in Afghanistan and Somalia.

20.10.2008 Waltz with Bashir is about director Ari Folman's search for the missing memories of his experiences in the Israeli army in Lebanon in the early 1980s. It is a brilliant film about appalling events.

15.10.2008 About 190,000 people have been displaced from Pakistan’s Bajaur agency bordering Afghanistan since fighting started in mid-August, UN refugee agency teams report.

14.10.2008 The money spent by the US trying to secure oil supplies by invading Iraq would have been better invested in developing renewable fuels, Britain’s former chief government scientist told a meeting in London on Monday.

13.10.2008 One of India’s most isolated tribes is preparing to stop the British company Vedanta from mining aluminium ore on their sacred mountain, after police and hired thugs forced protestors to dismantle a barricade over the weekend.
+ Uncontacted tribe’s plight sparks mass Indian plea to president
+ Amazon tribe’s protest shuts down dam site

10.10.2008 At least 1,252 people were executed in 24 countries last year - though the real figure is certainly higher - with 88 per cent occurring in China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the US.

09.10.2008 Malaysian palm oil is finding its way into British petrol tanks despite concerns about its carbon balance and the rainforest being destroyed to produce it, claims a new report.

08.10.2008 I Come From There: New Plays from the Arab World runs at the Royal Court on 11-15 November.

07.10.2008 Malaysian palm oil exported for use in food, biofuels and cosmetics is far from "green", contrary to claims by Malaysian producers, according to a report
released today.