Full Coverage: Asia and the Pacific

29.02.2008

29.02.2008 The 22-member Arab League recently introduced a regional policy to regulate satellite television broadcasting services that will "restrict freedom of expression and information," writes an international human rights watchdog.
From: Human Rights Watch

29.02.2008 A program in the poverty-stricken Central Terai region of Nepal seeks to improve women's and girls' health by training young people as peer educators, community activists, and counselors in the fields of health, family planning, and HIV/AIDS.

29.02.2008 India has announced its budget for the next financial year. In a move to provide a major relief to the small farmers, the government has decided to cancel their entire debt. It may be noted that for past many years now the farmers have been committing suicides due to indebtedness and other related reasons.

29.02.2008 International non-governmental organisations in Pakistan have come under considerable pressure after an attack on a UK-based Plan International office in Mansehra near Islamabad, in which four people had died. In recent years, threats have been directed against NGOs and their staff, particularly women.

29.02.2008 Two studies by the Urban Health Resource Centre talk of maternal and newborn care among the poor in central India and state of urban health in the national capital. Apart from highlighting the need for better access to healthcare facilities, the reports underline the cultural factors and prevalence of poverty as obstacles.

28.02.2008 Despite the global interest in the rise of China, no-one is paying much attention to its ideas and who produces them. Yet China has a surprisingly lively intellectual class whose ideas may prove a serious challenge to western liberal hegemony, says Mark Leonard.
From Prospect

28.02.2008 Alarming local and international rights activists, several officials in the Thai government are speaking freely about the 'necessity' of using extra-judicial killings as part of a national clampdown on narcotics.

28.02.2008 An international media freedom group has voiced concern over the health of detained Chinese cyber-dissident and human rights lawyer Yang Maodong, who has been on hunger strike for 11 weeks.
+ CPJ Highlights China's Poor Press Record

28.02.2008 According to a recent study, around a million people will die of smoking in India alone in next two years. The country is on the threshold of a tobacco-unleashed epidemic, says Ramesh Menon, a journalist cum documentary filmmaker and recipient of the 2006 Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism.

28.02.2008 Hundreds of children who had witnessed a blast in Afghanistan’s Baghlan city last November are still traumatised, suffering from paranoia, dizziness, stress and sleeping disorders. Health experts are of the view that children in the conflict-affected country are at risk of suffering deep scars of war.

28.02.2008 There are approximately 60 million persons with disabilities in India. Most of them are poor, living in rural areas. It is pity that only 1.5% of them are the beneficiaries of various poverty alleviation and welfare schemes.

27.02.2008 Leading Indian politicians have outrightly rejected the idea of a U.S.-imposed deadline after a team of U.S. senators warned that a new inhabitant of the White House might quash a potential deal on the transfer of nuclear technology.

27.02.2008 It’s been more than a year now since the State of Emergency was imposed in Bangladesh. More than 250,000 people have faced arrests during this period. The Asian Legal Resource Centre has documented numerous cases of arbitrary arrests, often carried out at a scale that is difficult to fathom in many other countries.

27.02.2008 Former SAS soldier Ben Griffin blasts Britain's involvement in "Extraordinary Rendition" and its role in maintaining secretive prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan in which individuals face torture.
From Stop the War Coalition

27.02.2008 When a dalit widow was appointed as cook in a government-run school in northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, no one was ready to eat the food cooked and served by her. Everyone conspired to sack her and saw to it that she was never reinstated.

27.02.2008 At least five Nepali gays will contest elections for the Constituent Assembly, scheduled to be held this April, to take up the issue of discrimination against their community. In a nation that treats homosexuality as illegal and immoral, this is an attempt to fight exclusion.

27.02.2008 Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies is organising a three-day event called eINDIA2008 in New Delhi in July 2008. The event will bring together representatives of the ICT industry, government, civil society, academia and private sector from across the world to share the best practices and digital opportunities for development.

27.02.2008 Over half the top 20 countries in the world where people are most under threat of genocide or mass killing are in Africa, says Minority Rights Group International.

26.02.2008 A former high-ranking official from Pakistan's "shadowy but powerful" Inter Services Intelligence admitted to having manipulated the 2002 elections in favor of President Musharraf and is now saying the organization's political activities should be laid down.