Participants at a United Nations summit today outlined a 10-year plan to support the world’s most vulnerable countries overcome poverty, calling on the private sector to play a greater role in the fight, urging wealthy nations to step up their aid commitments and demanding the elimination of many trade barriers. The Istanbul Programme of Action to spur development and economic growth was made public at the end of the Fourth UN...

Directive comes in the wake of turmoil in Greater Noida Supplementing political offensive with a dose of administrative endeavour, in the build-up to the next round of Assembly elections, focussed on Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minster Manmohan Singh has asked Union Minister for Rural Development Vilasrao Deshmukh to finalise at the earliest the two amended Bills on land acquisition and rehabilitation and resettlement. Confirming Dr. Singh's directive, Mr. Deshmukh told The Hindu...

The arrival of large quantities of wheat in the grain markets of the Punjab-Haryana region is a heart-warming sight, while poor storage is a matter of national shame. It was in April-May 1968, that the country witnessed the wonderful spectacle of large arrivals of wheat grain in the mandis of Punjab like Moga and Khanna. Wheat production in the country rose to nearly 17 million tonnes that year, from the previous...

The polluting cement plant will harm the ecosystem: expert body ‘It is considered a valuable common property resource by the locals' In a victory for the farmers of Gujarat's Bhavnagar district, the Environment Ministry has decided that the site of Nirma Industries' proposed cement plant there is a wetland and an environmentally sensitive area. The plant will have to be relocated, the Ministry told the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The Ministry accepted the...

Tihar jail today has the largest collection of charged or convicted top officials, a powerful ex-minister, sundry politicians and officials. Maharashtra had a teflon-coated chief minister who was ‘sacked’ to a cabinet post in Delhi after being long untouched by many scandals. Another just exited. A former Jharkhand chief minister is in jail on charges of looting his state treasury and accumulating funds abroad. The powerful founder of the Nationalist...