An international committee reviewing the "processes and procedures" of the UN's climate science panel is set to report on Monday. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has faced mounting pressure over errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007. The review was overseen by the Inter-Academy Council, which brings together bodies such as the UK's Royal Society. The findings are to be unveiled at a news conference in New...

The Centre plans to open over 1,000 residential schools for girls in backward and remote areas as part of its plan to universalise education. The National Sample Survey has found out that over 81 lakh children aged 6 to 13 years remain out of school and that most of them are girls. The human resource development ministry has told the finance ministry it wants to set up 1,073 new Kasturba Gandhi Balika...

What are the poor most concerned about? After meeting families in 175 Indian villages in the last decade, Anirudh Krishna, says the poor's greatest worry is their children's future. With a manner of a school teacher, Professor Krishna, who teaches at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University in the US, has led a team meeting poor families to find out why poverty persists. The research also includes...

Kendriya Vidyalayas will no longer be the sole preserve of children of government employees. From the next academic year, 981 KVs will start implementing the Right to Education Act and give 25% reservation to poor children in the neighbourhood. Highly placed sources in the HRD ministry said, "RTE will be implemented in KVs. We are working out the details. We have enough time before the next session begins." To ensure...

The 2010 Seeds Bill that has been introduced in Parliament does address some of the major concerns in the aborted 2004 version, but strangely a number of important correctives – on regulation, consistency and punishment – that had been incorporated in the 2008 version (which lapsed in 2009) have now been modified or dropped altogether. What forces are pushing the government to act against the interests of India’s farmers? The third...