Most travellers oppose the use of mobile phones on aeroplanes but would not mind striking up a chat with their seatmate, a survey released to AFP on Monday showed.

The survey by global market research firm Synovate found that many travellers would rather look for cheaper flights than curtail their travel plans due to rising costs.

Customers in five Asian markets — Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand — were surveyed along with those in Brazil, Brita…

US immigration officials on Monday announced moves to ease and speed up visa-processing for HIV-positive visitors to the United States, months after a 21-year entry ban on people with the virus was lifted.

Under the new rules, US consular offices overseas will have the authority to grant temporary, non-immigrant visas to HIV-positive applicants who meet “all of the other normal criteria for the granting of a US visa,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement. br…

A spokesman for British sweet maker Cadbury has said the company has found traces of the industrial chemical melamine in Chinese-made products recalled in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia.

The chemical was found in tests carried out following the recall of products made at its Beijing plant, in the latest fallout from the toxic milk scandal which has killed four Chinese infants and made 53,000 others there ill.

“The tests have shown there were traces of melamine,” said Ton…

In a shocking report the United Nations has revealed that some 200,000 children could not be vaccinated during a three-day polio immunisation drive in southern Afghanistan because of Taliban-linked violence in their areas.

The UN launched the three-day vaccination campaign in six Afghan provinces on its Peace Day, September 21, with an aim to immunise 1.85 million children under five against the crippling disease.

But “regrettably 190,000 children, most of them in distric…

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has said that paid maternity leave would be introduced in the country soon. He noted that it was time the country adopted a system to reward women for caring for their infants.

The Productivity Commission recommended a taxpayer-funded scheme under which the primary carer of a child would receive 18 weeks’ paid maternity leave at the minimum wage rate, now 544 dollars (449 US) a week.

Employers currently only have to give women 12 month…

For the first time, rural clinics in Madasgar have “light” thanks to solar power being employed throughtout the country.

Elisabeth’s 13 children were born by candlelight. Her daughter, who has just become a mother for the first time, was more “fortunate”.

Now, in Antasahadinta hospital in rural Madagascar, the use of solar energy means stories like Elisabeth’s have been consigned to history — a small success for a power source so abundant yet so hard to tap on a contine…

Mumbai’s Kranti Maidan saw a gathering of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender activists on August 16, 2008 for a “queer” rights march—the first of its kind to be held in Mumbai. According to media reports, what made this march special was the good number of “straight” supporters who joined in to show their solidarity for the socially ostracized people, in their struggle for acceptance into mainstream society. Apart from some members of the general public, friends and family members of the gay and transgender community and human rights activists like Flavia Agnes and Anand Patwardhan, there was a contingent from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences that marched as an official group with its faculty’s permission. The hopes of those activists who participated in the Queer Azadi March must have soared when the Union Health Minister Dr.Anbumani Ramadoss recently observed that homosexuality would have to be de-criminalized in India in order to facilitate health interventions especially in preventing the potential killer HIV/AIDS.

Concurrently, according to the Union Home Ministry in India, the law enforcement against same gender sex is upheld in view of the Indian social ethos and moral values. Section 377 of Indian Criminal Code brackets homosexuality with bestiality (sex with animals) and pedophilia as an “unnatural” offence that can punish a person with a jail term of up to 10 years. In 2005 the Union Home Ministry in India dismissed a petition to have the law changed, citing examples of other countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa where homosexuality was considered illegal. While dismissing the petition to repeal the law the Ministry declared,
“Public opinion and the current societal context in India do not favor the deletion of the said offence from the statute book.”

The Central government is currently entangled in the crucial question—to allow or to continue to disallow gay sex. The Delhi High Court last week censured the Central government for speaking in two voices on the issue of same gender sex among consenting adults. The Union Health Ministry has proposed the abolishing of penal provision that can incriminate homosexuals and lesbians, and members of the transgender community because it drives such people underground fearing consequences and hampers health interventions in serious cases like HIV/AIDS. The Health Minister has suggested legalization of homosexuality as a way to help in better treatment of people suffering from AIDS. The Union Home Ministry on the other hand has told the Delhi High Court to ignore Health Minister Ramadoss’ views on allowing the practice and requested the court not to de-criminalize gay sex on moral grounds. Latest news is that Health Minister Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss is piqued by the Union Home Ministry’s observation and is to take up the issue with the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh soon after his return from foreign visit. Guess the Indian public will just have to wait and watch what emerges from this tug-of-war between the Union Home Ministry and Health Ministry in India.