-The United Nations   Environmental deterioration threatens to reverse recent progress in human development for the world’s poorest, warns a United Nations report released today, calling for urgent action to slow climate change, prevent further degradation and reduce inequalities.   The annual UN Human Development Report, this year entitled Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All, argues that human development is intricately linked to environmental sustainability, and that this in turn must be...

-Reuters   Chinese and Russian firms are the most likely to pay bribes while operating abroad, and the most corrupt sectors are public works contracts and construction, according to Transparency International's latest "Bribe Payers' index". China and Russia rank bottom, in 27th and 28th place respectively, in the 2011 index released on Wednesday, while the Dutch, Swiss, Belgians, Germans and Japanese get the top scores. Britain and the United States rank eighth and...

Team Anna on Thursday pressed for as many as 34 fresh additions to the proposed Lokpal bill that have already been incorporated in the Uttarakhand Lokayukata bill and renewed their demand that constitutional amendments bringing violation of citizens' charter and conduct of MPs in Parliament within the purview of the Lokpal also be introduced. The additions include widening the definition of corruption to include individuals who have given or taken benefit...

-EPW   The media noise shed little light on the Important issues involved in deciding the coverage of welfare programmes. The context for the Planning Commission’s (PC) affidavit on the official poverty line was the deliberation in the Supreme Court on how many people could be covered by the public distribution system (PDS). But while the sound and fury over the poverty line – Rs 32 per capita per day in the urban...

As the Right to Information Act (RTI) celebrated the sixth year of its coming, there has been much heated discussion, often emotional, of the benefits that it has brought and also the challenges with which it has confronted government. This debate came to a head with the prime minister’s inaugural address to the Annual Convention of the Central Information Commission on October 14. It is accepted in all circles that the...