the-south-asian.com                                  February 2004

 

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February 2004 
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 Environment
 The Indian King  Vulture - threatened

 
 People
 
Dilip Chhabaria
 - designer forever

 
  

 

 Interview
 Reshma - "India and
 Pakistan are my two
 worlds."

 

 Music
 
Shujaat Husain Khan

 Theatre
 
Faisal Alkazi

 Sports
 
India's quaint greens

 Real Issues
 
Security for women 
 by women

 
 
Business
 
Gujranwala - its
 people & industries

 

 Coffee break
 In South Asian News

 

 the craft shop

 Lehngas - a limited collection

 the print gallery


 Books

 Between Heaven and Hell

  Silk Road on Wheels

 The Road to Freedom

 
Enduring Spirit

 Parsis-Zoroastrians of
India

 
The Moonlight Garden

 
Contemporary Art in
 Bangladesh
 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

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South Asian News Highlights

 

NASA's 'Indian Link'


Dr Amitabh Ghosh of NASA-AFP 7.1.2004.jpg (35245 bytes)
Dr. Amitabh Ghosh of NASA
Photo courtesy AFP

"America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) planetary geologist Dr Amitabha Ghosh  was the only Asian to take part in the Mars Pathfinder Mission Operations in 1997. He is currently participating in the Mars Odyssey Mission which orbits Mars to study the planet's composition and searches for water and buried ice, plus measuring deadly solar and cosmic radiation."

SAARC Summit - South Asia free-trade pact agreed

saarc leaders.jpg (36157 bytes)
Leaders from the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) member countries pose for a group photograph after the closing ceremony in Islamabad on January 6, 2004. Standing from L to R are Maldives' Foreign Minister Fathulla Jameel, Bhutan's Prime Minister Jigme Thinley, Sri Lanka's President Chandrika Kumaratunga, Pakistan's Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, Bangladesh's Prime Minister Begum Khalida Zia, India's Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nepal's Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa.



The seven South Asian nations (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka)  have agreed to put in place a free-trade zone, aimed at boosting economic co-operation and development in the region. It promises to open the markets of seven developing countries to each other, bolstering regional trade and firing economic growth. Foreign ministers from the seven nations in the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (Saarc) signed a pact at a summit in Islamabad. The seven agreed on the free trade area (FTA) at a summit which also set poverty reduction and welfare goals. The agreemment is set to take effect from 1 January, 2006. 

The main item on the agenda of the Islamabad summit, however, was the free-trade zone. Under the terms of the new agreement, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka will cut import tariffs to between zero and 5% within seven years of the pact starting. Saarc's remaining members will have 10 years to complete the process. Ahead of the Islamabad meeting, ministers also reportedly reached agreement on combating terrorism and on a social charter to raise living standards across the seven-member grouping. 

BBC NEWS Tuesday, 6 January, 2004

 

Gandhi Peace Prize

Gandhi peace prize-Havel-AFP-5.1.2004.jpg (32863 bytes)
Photo courtesy AFP

"President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam (second from L) presents the prestigious Gandhi Peace Prize for 2003 to the former President of Czechoslovakia Vaclav Havel (R) as Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani (L) looks on at Rashtrapati Bhavan (The Presidential Palace) in New Delhi on January 5, 2004. The Gandhi Peace Prize is awarded to people whose thought and action reflect the ideals of the late 'Father of the Nation' Mahatma Gandhi. Vaclav received the 10-mn Rupees ($219,249) prize for his 'historic contributions towards peace, championship of human rights, upholding the spirit of human dignity and his faith in non-violence."




Moon call goes out to scientists

By Richard Black 
BBC science correspondent, in Chandigarh 

"The Indian President, Doctor A P J Abdul Kalam, has issued an invitation to scientists to put their experiments on the country's first Moon mission. The Chandrayaan Mission, as it is known, will be an unmanned probe and is scheduled for launch in 2007 or 2008." 

BBC NEWS Wednesday, 7 January, 2004,

Hundreds of Mumbai police personnel test positive for HIV

"Hundreds of policemen in Mumbai tested positive for HIV in recent health examinations, prompting the police department to launch an AIDS awareness drive...Around 450 policemen have tested positive for HIV," Prem Kishan Jain, joint police commissioner for administration, told AFP. However, it is an open secret in Bombay that police are among the major patrons of sex workers. India officially has at least 4.58 million people with HIV/AIDS, second only to South Africa with five million.  Bombay policemen are known for their long working hours, high stress levels and poor pay. Police figures show nearly 200 policemen have died of cardiac arrests and hypertension in the last five years and another 200 have been infected with tuberculosis."

Agence France-Presse as reported in Hindustan Times
Mumbai, January 7



INDIA: SMALL FARMERS SET UP FIRST ORGANIC TEA FACTORY


"The Sahyadri Organic Tea Factory in Kerala was officially opened at the end of November. The organic tea factory is a unique project planned and organized jointly by the Peermade Development Society and Naturland e.V. Over 1,000 small farmers now have the opportunity to process and market the organically grown tea in their own factory, for which purpose the tea farmers have founded the Sahyadri Farmers Consortium. The factory is starting with a quantity of 600 tons of organic tea a year." 

http://www.naturland.de/n5/pressemeldungen/5_dezember_2003.html

BioFach Newsletter 5.1.2004

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