KYRGYZSTAN:  Spared but Near Starving
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BISHKEK, Jan 29 (IPS) - The central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan has  adopted a new constitution specifically banning all taking of  life and lawyers are now drafting revisions to its legal code  replacing the maximum criminal sentence of death by firing squad  with long prison terms.
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Parliament convenes in Kyrgyzstan, as rows continue over the results of Sunday's election.
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Kyrgyzstan's Supreme Court casts doubt on Sunday's election result by scrapping a key poll requirement.
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BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - Medical officials in the ex-Soviet state of Kyrgyzstan confirmed the prime minister was poisoned after receiving death threats but said they have not yet identified the toxin.
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Central African Republic has struggled for more than a year to contain a rebellion in the northwest. Now, a new insurgency in the northeast near Sudan's Darfur region has compounded this fragile nation's troubles and displaced tens of thousands of people.
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TASTUPEK, Kazakhstan -- In the cool of one recent evening, after tending to his herd of 19 camels, Puzblay Seytpembetov and four companions pushed his small single-engine boat out onto the placid waters of the Aral Sea to lay fishnets. In the morning, he predicted, he would haul in flapping carp ...
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ASHGABAT: The Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan said yesterday it had carried out a threat to cut gas supplies to Russia and Ukraine but was ready to turn the pumps back on in return for higher prices.
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MARKHAYANOVA, Russia  - The Kolyma used to be a river of death for prisoners in some of the harshest camps of Josef Stalin's Gulag empire. Now the camps are long gone, but so too is the activity of a once-bustling Soviet Arctic outpost.
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Hunger-striking television journalists at Channel 5 in Ukraine ended their week-long fast last week after authorities unfroze the station's bank account, meeting one of the strikers' demands in regards to a ...
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During long years of war and severe poverty in Vietnam, milk and meat were true luxuries only the rich could afford. Many children went blind from lack of vitamin A. Countless others experienced stunted growth that has kept the whole population short and thin. But after 30 years of peace, the communist country has overcome many of these problems and is now boasting unprecedented economic growth that it hopes will translate into building a taller, stronger people.
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Chechnya is often called a breakaway republic, but the militant separatists who have harried Russian forces for more than a decade and struck with bold attacks within and beyond the mostly Muslim region's borders are a relatively small segment of a population long tired of bloodshed.
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The UN's World Food Programme warns that Tajikistan is experiencing emergency food shortages.
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Text of report by Tajik news agency Asia-Plus website  Khorugh, 16 February: The volume of TV and radio broadcasts have been reduced two-fold in the Mountainous Badakhshon Autonomous Region [in eastern Tajikistan] due to an accident at the Pamir-1 hydroelectric power station.
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KHARTOUM, 17 October 2004 - Sudan yesterday questioned UN estimates that up to 70,000 people had died from hunger and disease in its remote Darfur region since a rebellion began 20 months ago.
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EL FASHER, Sudan  - Tribal clashes, banditry and  troop movements are blocking crucial deliveries of food aid in  North Darfur state despite recent peace agreements, African  Union and United Nations officials said Sunday.
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The Young Pioneers, a Soviet youth organization, is experiencing an unlikely revival in Kyrgyzstan, a corner of the old Soviet Union.
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BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan -- A US Air Force officer who went missing for three days says someone stuffed an object in her jeans pocket with a note saying it was a bomb and telling her to go to a site in Bishkek, where kidnappers grabbed her, Kyrgyz authorities said yesterday.