-The United Nations   As the world population approaches seven billion, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today stressed that ending global poverty and inequality is the key to unleashing the great human potential for prosperity and peaceful coexistence, while protecting the planet and safeguarding the natural resources that sustain humanity. “Later this year, a seven-billionth baby will be born into our world of complexity and contradiction,” Mr. Ban said in a message to mark...

In his fields, Badhia Naval Singh , a farmer tilling 8 bighas of land in the Bagli tehsil in Madhya Pradesh, has been seeing something strange for a while now. Earlier, if he pulled out a tuft of grass, he would see earthworms . "Ab woh dikhna bandh ho gaye hain (they don't show up any longer)," says the 45-yearold . Also, he says, when he ploughed earlier, the soil...

The United Nations commemorates World Population Day next week against the backdrop of an upcoming landmark event: global population hitting the seven billion mark by late October this year. According to current projections, and with some of the world's poorest nations doubling their populations in the next decade, the second milestone will be in 2025: an eight billion population over the next 14 years. Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the U.N....

-The Economic Times   A group of ministers formed to approve the draft mining Bill, has agreed to earmark 100% of the royalty paid by major mineral mining companies , to compensate people displaced by such projects. The panel, chaired by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee , which met on Thursday , also agreed to earmark 26% of the profit made by coal mining companies, in favour of people directly affected ,...

It is a question that journalists in India are often asked without affection. “Don’t you have anything good to say?” A positive story, a happy story? The rebuke, when it is an e-mail or an online comment in response to an unflattering article about India, is sometimes accompanied by abuses or a general description of the journalist’s mother. And it is particularly passionate when it comes from the expatriate Indian whose...