Full Coverage: South Asia

31.07.2006 PESHAWAR, Jul 31 (IPS) - Two Afghan journalists, who spent three years in the infamous United States military prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have released a new chronicle on life in the now famous iron cages.

31.07.2006 Greenpeace, a non-governmental organisation working for the conservation of the environment, on Tuesday alleged that the information technology (IT) company, Wipro, had failed to keep its promise to develop a policy to phase out toxins from its products.

31.07.2006 At least 30 families in India's Belwa village are starving--with many cooking food only once every four or five days--even though local news agencies have reported on the problem and human rights groups have lodged complaints with authorities, activists warned Friday after the death of a nine-month-old girl.

28.07.2006 The objective of the Workshop is to address problems related to safe motherhood and to learn from national and international experiences in improving maternal health and safe motherhood. The focus would be on strategies to overcome specific issues & challenges in this area and to identify technological interventions that can provide remedial measures with special focus on Rajasthan.

28.07.2006 With the monsoon surging across Madhya Pradesh, a sharp increase in cases of water- borne diseases has been reported.

28.07.2006 Two fresh cases of polio have been detected in Ghaziabad district , Uttar Pradesh- according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

28.07.2006 About 300 persons living with HIV/AIDS led by the Tamilnad Network of Positive People (TNP+) staged a fast in front of the Government Guest House on Thursday to focus attention on several right to life issues.

28.07.2006 The government of Japan has agreed to provide a grant assistance of Rs.190 million (456 million yen) for the intensified pulse polio immunisation (IIPI) campaign in India this year.

28.07.2006 In a bid to establish a communication channel to support all its e-governance initiatives, the State Government of Haryana is planning to deploy a statewide area network that will connect the state head quarter office at Chandigarh to all the district head quarters at the Block/ Sub-Division/ Tehsil/ Sub- Tehsil levels.

28.07.2006 The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), in collaboration with the Ramakrishna Mission (RKM), is empowering the women of the Sunderbans to promote the use of solar power. This pilot project has successfully created viable enterprises, targeting women entrepreneurs, who provide solar products as well as services in remote and interior villages.

28.07.2006 The UN has urged the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil rebels to resume peace talks so that the nearly 300,000 internally displaced people can return to their homes. UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said after a trip to Sri Lanka that conditions should be created all over the country that allow people to return home.

27.07.2006 from interim thoughts blog:
Modern American farming uses the energy equivalent of three or four tons of TNT per acre each year. Can India leapfrog this oil-rich approach to farming?

27.07.2006 All women will now be inducted into the Army, along with their male counterparts, through the Short Service Commission (SSC). Until now, the only entry point for them was the Women Special Entry Scheme (WSES). The long-delayed notice was finally issued by Army Headquarters on July 20, just days ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament.

26.07.2006 Indian trade experts are unanimous that no deal at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) augurs better for India than a bad deal but developed nations will continue to put pressure on developing countries to open up their markets.

26.07.2006 "Let the infection end with us," and "We will not spread the infection" are the two zealous motives that keep the Society of Visakha Network of Positive members (SVNP Plus) go ahead with its work.

26.07.2006 With the monsoon season underway, the Government has taken up a comprehensive campaign to vaccinate 11 million children against Japanese encephalitis (JE), a viral infection that claimed more than 1,800 lives last year.

26.07.2006

UN Study

A new U.N. report in India has warned that the country's booming economic growth could slow if HIV-AIDS continues to spread unchecked. The United Nations says 5.7 million people are infected with HIV in India - the largest number in any country in the world.

26.07.2006 Lakhs of the world’s poorest farmers, many of them in India, will remain shackled to the existing system of rigged rules and double standards in trade rules following the suspension of the Doha round of development trade talks, says a press release by British charity Oxfam.

26.07.2006 Despite spending the last three months engaged in peace talks with the Nepalese government, Maoist rebels are still not prepared to demobilise, disarm or integrate, their leaders said in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu.

26.07.2006 The Indian Cabinet has approved key amendments to the landmark Right to Information that will restrict citizens’ access to ‘notings’ made by government officials on all files except those related to social and development projects. Angry activists say that such a measure will “take the life out of the law.”