India has lost nearly a half-trillion dollars in illegal financial flows out of the country, says a new study by Global Financial Integrity. India is losing nearly Rs.240 crore every 24 hours, on average, in illegal financial flows out of the country. The nation lost $213 billion (roughly Rs.9.7 lakh crore) in illegal capital flight between 1948 and 2008. However, over $125 billion (Rs.5.7 lakh crore) of that was lost in...

Editorial space being sold daily: Nayar Favours abolition of contract system “Newspapers becoming pro-establishment” Former Member of Parliament and veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar on Tuesday called for the setting up of a press commission to go into issues such as “paid news.” Noting that the last time a press commission was set up was in 1977, he said it was time for a fresh one in the light of developments over the past three...

India will on Tuesday release its first assessment report on the impact of climate change on four sectors, including agriculture and water, in the country's four climatic hot spots like the Himalayas and the North East. "The first 4x4 assessment report will be released on November 16. Prepared by Indian Network of Climate Change Assessment, it will assess the impact of climate change on four sectors of the economy - agriculture,...

As environment minister Jairam Ramesh gets close to deciding the fate of $12 billion Posco’s steel plant in Orissa, civil society pressure from India and around the world is mounting to scrap the project. Around 40 business schools professors have urged Ramesh to look into the dubious data produced by Orissa to convince importance of the Posco’s project of steel plant and a port. The professors, who analysed reports submitted by different...

The Director-General of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, Dr. Jacques Diouf, announced at the Inter-Governmental Committee on World Food Security (CFS) that the combination of global food crisis and economic recession had taken the number of people affected across the world to over one billion. He described the number as “unacceptably high,” higher than in 1996 when the heads of states and governments committed themselves to reducing hunger by...