The year 2010 ranked as the warmest on record – together with 2005 and 1998 – according to the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which added that last year also witnessed a large number of extreme weather events, including the heat wave in Russia and the devastating floods in Pakistan. In 2010, the global average temperature was 0.53 degrees Celsius (0.95 degrees Fahrenheit) above the mean for the period from...

The Centre has signed deals or is in talks with 78 countries besides Switzerland to amend double taxation avoidance treaties to facilitate information-sharing on slush funds held by Indians abroad. These countries include Mauritius, Brazil, Canada, Italy, the UK, the US, the UAE and the Channel Islands. The Swiss parliament is set to ratify the tax treaty with changes which will allow India to gain access to information on black money held...

In India, people are upset about onions. Expensive cooking oil is causing hoarding in China, a practice banned by the government. Meanwhile, flour and bread are the main source of riots in Algeria and now Jordan. Worries over food prices are gathering pace and triggering alarm among politicians across the world. For there is nothing more likely to bring down a government than ignoring starving citizens, as Marie Antoinette found to...

New CRZ notification sparks off fears, upsets fisherfolk The new Coastal Zone Regulation (CRZ) 2011 which has opened up construction along the sea has sparked off fears of Mumbai being ringed with high rises and mutating into a ‘desi' Manhattan. It has triggered furious debates on development and upset the fisherfolk who are planning to hit the streets across the country to agitate for better coastal protection. Since 1991 when the first...

Microcredit is losing its halo in many developing countries. Microcredit was once extolled by world leaders like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair as a powerful tool that could help eliminate poverty, through loans as small as $50 to cowherds, basket weavers and other poor people for starting or expanding businesses. But now microloans have prompted political hostility in Bangladesh, India, Nicaragua and other developing countries. In December, the prime minister of...