Broadcasters attending the United Nations-backed fourth World Electronic Media Forum (WEMF 4) have called for sustained and concrete global action to address the murder of journalists in peacetime and in war. “Most journalists are killed not in war zones but in their own countries as they try to shine the light of the truth into the darkest recesses of their societies,” they said in a declaration adopted unanimously at the...

A Human Rights Watch report emphasises the need for a system of recording and investigating all maternal deaths.  THE maternal mortality ratio (MMR) is calculated by the number of maternal deaths for every 100,000 births. Consider this: In 2005, India’s MMR was 16 times that of Russia, 10 times that of China and four times higher than that in Brazil. Why should there be such high maternal mortality rates in...

The plight of the hungry in developing countries is needlessly aggravated by farmers losing up to half of their crops after gathering the harvest, the United Nations agricultural agency said today, stressing that adequate investment and training could drastically cut the losses. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said that excessive rainfall, droughts, extreme temperatures, contamination by micro-organisms, and premature harvesting are among the causes of these post-harvest losses, which...

Demonstrates very high levels of social capital, but overall ranking brought down by low levels of education, internal security and health LONDON, October 26, 2009 – The third edition of the Legatum Prosperity Index, published on 26 October, 2009 ranks 104 countries (covering 90% of the world’s population), based on a definition of prosperity that combines economic growth together with measures of happiness and quality of life. According to this year’s Legatum...

While India could play a “constructive part” at the Copenhagen negotiations on climate change that will take place in December, it cannot accept mandatory emission limits, according to Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In an opinion piece that is appearing this week in the journal Nature, the head of the international body that assesses the scientific evidence on climate change said that India expected...