North Korea has resumed construction work on an experimental light water reactor (ELWR) in a move that could extend its capacity to produce more material for nuclear weapons, website 38North reported on Thursday.

Based on April 30 satellite images, work halted in December at the reactor had now re-started, said the website (38north.org), run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University and former U.S. State Department official Joel Wit.

After scripting a success story in tiger conservation at home in the past few years, India is now planning to revive a two-year-old offer to help save the big cat in the world’s largest tiger reserve in Myanmar, which is suffering from dwindling tiger numbers. The political reform in the South Asian country during the past few months, giving democratic forces a chance, has made Indian officials optimistic that the offer for collaboration — practically locked in the cold storage by Myanmar in the past — can be refreshed through diplomatic channels.

Kohima, May 8: Civil society groups have objected to the construction of a hydel project at Tamanthi on the Chindwin river in Myanmar. A memorandum submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today by the civil society groups said the construction had so far displaced over 45,000 Naga people living nearby. According to the memorandum the dam is estimated to wipe out an area of approximately 1,400 square km.

India has escaped a standoff — a repeat of the South China Sea squabble — with neighbouring Bangladesh following a ruling by International Tribunal for Law of the Sea (ITLOS) that India’s natural gas assets in Myanmar were outside Dhaka’s maritime limits. Clarifying the ITLOS ruling on water boundary between Myanmar and Bangladesh, the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) has informed that blocks A1 and A3 would “remain within Myanmar side”. The blocks collectively hold about 6 trillion cubic feet of discovered gas and state-run Indian firms hold 25.5 per cent equity in each.

In course of a decade, Nepal and four other countries in the South-East Asia Region, namely Bhutan, DPR Korea, Thailand and Sri Lanka have brought down the number of confirmed malaria cases by more than half, WHO said in a statement issued on the occasion of the World Malaria Day, which is observed on April 25.

WHO noted that the estimated malaria incidence per 1,000 population at risk was reduced by 27 per cent from 30 in 2000 to 22 in 2010 in the region.

Agartala: Timely vaccination of birds and animals, access to standard laboratories and maintaining bio-security are among the measures required to curb the sporadic outbreak of bird flu in India’s northeast, says a team of international and Indian experts touring the region.

Experts of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and India, who are on a five-day visit to Tripura to probe the causes of frequent bird flu outbreaks, have asked the northeastern states to maintain stipulated protocols to stop the contagious disease from resurfacing.

About 4 million hectares of crops are suffering from a severe drought in China that has hit 13 provinces including the major farming province of Sichuan in southwest China, state news agency Xinhua said.

The drought has left 7.8 million people and 4.6 million livestock without adequate drinking water in provinces including Yunnan, Hebei, Shanxi and Gansu as of Thursday, Xinhua said.

The dry spell has dried reservoirs and threatens spring planting, the agency said, citing the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.

A parliamentary committee in Nepal has given the go-ahead for China Three Gorges Corp.'s $1.6 billion hydroelectric-power project after the Chinese state-owned company threatened last month to pull the plug on its investment.

Lawmakers had raised concerns that Nepal's government had awarded the contract without opening it up to international bidding, prompting the Chinese company to threaten in a letter to the government in March that it would scrap the project unless things moved forward.

The average life expectancy of people in the South and South-East Asia will rise to 75 years in less than 40 years, WHO said Monday, insisting the number of aged people over 60 years will triple by 2050 from its current figure of 142 million.
‘Approximately 142 million people or 8 per cent of the population of WHO’s South-East Asia Region are (now) above the age of 60 years. The number of aged people will be doubled by 2025 and tripled by 2050 compared to 2000,’ said a release of the New Delhi-based South-East Asia Regional Office of the World Health Organisation.