Two days after a clash at the proposed Posco site that left one person dead, the Orissa government on Friday shifted senior IAS officer Priyabrata Patnaik from the post of chairman-cum-managing director of Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO) even as the opposition continued to demand a CBI or a judicial probe into the incident. With just about a year to retire, Patnaik, a 1976 batch officer, has been posted as additional...

Remember the over 100 farmhouse plots allotted in Noida measuring at least 10,000 sq m each without an auction or a draw of lots, including two to Supreme Court advocate Shanti Bhushan and his son Jayant Bhushan? An audit has now found that not only was there no transparency in the allotment of these plots — 101 in all — but that the Noida Authority had fixed a very low rate,...

-The Deccan Herald   Farmers have demanded a compensation of Rs 50 lakh per acre for their land notified for acquisition by the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB) for the Vemgal Industrial Area in the taluk. V R Sudarshan, MLC, who submitted a memorandum to Deputy Commissioner Manoj Kumar Meena on Monday, said the KIADB should leave no room for controversy in the process of acquiring the land. He said the KIADB had offered...

After pushing for financing adaptation at the just-concluded United Nations climate talks at Durban, India is hitting every button for aid in executing its low-carbon growth plans. This despite India (and China) refusing to sign new climate agreements at the U.N. Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s 17th conference of the parties (COP 17) in the South African city.  India, in fact, has a well-drawn out policy and action plan for climate...

-The Telegraph   The main points agreed upon in the Durban talks: Kyoto protocol extension After the failure of Copenhagen in 2009 to come up with a new, internationally-binding deal and only incremental progress a year later in Cancun, a partial legal vacuum had loomed as drafting a new UN treaty is extremely time-consuming. Sunday’s deal extends Kyoto, whose first phase of emissions cuts run from 2008 to the end of 2012. The second commitment...