A new round of UN climate talks opened in north China's Tianjin Municipality on Monday, which is expected to pave the way for the year-end Cancun summit in Mexico. About 3,000 delegates from party and observer countries under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol are attending the meeting on Oct. 4-9. They are expected to discuss the negotiating text reached at the Bonn talks in...

India's hurried quest for development and its disregard for road safety have resulted in a major public health problem that demands serious thought and action. The high mortality and morbidity associated with road traffic injuries are a major public health challenge worldwide. Every year, road traffic crashes kill an estimated 1.2 million people. The figure for the injured is over 50 million. Significant increases in these estimates are projected over the...

Latin America, the poster child of bad economic policy in the 1980s and early 1990s, is leading the way in one rapidly evolving area of social development: conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes. These schemes provide cash payments to poor households that meet certain behavioural requirements, generally related to children’s healthcare and education. The idea here is to support minimal levels of consumption through income transfers, while encouraging long-term human development. The...

Trade unions and labour rights activists blame the high suicide rate in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, on the practices of the garment industry. TIRUPUR has carved out a niche for itself in the world of garments. Its phenomenal growth in the highly competitive global scenario, particularly in the past two decades, has been made possible by the entrepreneurial spirit of its manufacturers and exporters and the sweat and labour of thousands of...

Swaths of the world inhabit a modern dark age, with lack of electricity and modern cooking facilities condemning billions to deep poverty, the top UN energy body said Tuesday. According to the International Energy Agency, more than 20 percent of the global population, or 1.4 billion people, lack access to electricity, while about 40 percent rely on the likes of wood stoves for cooking. "This is shameful and unacceptable," the IEA said...