She was just 14, and as she waited at home on Monday for her parents to return, two boys broke in. They tried to rape her, and she fought back. Fed up, the two boys, both under 18, poured kerosene all over her, set her on fire, and left her house. Neighbours rushed to the fields where her parents were working. When they got home, their child was still alive. They...

Delhi’s mayor wants owners of industrial units in and around the city to shut down a month before the October 3-14 Commonwealth Games to give the nation’s capital a cleaner and "world class" look. After all, he says, "the Chinese did the same" ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The mayor, Dr Kanwar Sain, said in his appeal on Wednesday that traders and industrial unit owners should cooperate in the "national...

The impact of the global financial downturn has been felt keenly in the Middle Eastern emirate of Dubai - and that in turn is affecting the remote Indian village of Akhopur in the state of Bihar, from where Amarnath Tewary reports. In August 2008, Bharat Bhushan Tiwari - from Akhopur village in eastern Indian Bihar - took a loan of 71,000 rupees ($1,500) from a village moneylender to pay a...

Well-known PR firms, professional designers, and ad agencies served the richer parties and candidates. They made up “news” items in the standard fonts and sizes of the desired newspapers and even “customised” the items to make them seem exclusive in different publications.  So you thought you’d had enough of Page 3? Newspapers in Maharashtra think otherwise. Some of them had more than one, on several days during the recent state...

After Copenhagen, there is no “developing world” — there are several.  About 45,000 travelled to the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen — the vast majority convinced of the need for a new global agreement on climate change. So why did the summit end without one? Key governments do not want a global deal: Until the end of this summit, it appeared that all governments wanted to keep the keys to...