The global youth unemployment rate is at a record high and is expected to climb even higher as the year progresses, the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) announced today. According to a new report, of the world’s 620 million economically active youth between the ages of 15 and 24, 81 million were out of work at the end of 2009, the highest number ever. The youth unemployment rate climbed from 11.9...

The officials of the labour department decided to extend accidental insurance cover to 12,000 workers who worked 100 days in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) works. These workers will get accidental insurance cover up to Rs 2 lakh. They are eligible for pension scheme also implemented by the labour department. The Women workers are entitled for maternity benefit. If they contribute to the pension fund, they will get pension....

Ergonomics is no longer the privilege of those working in plush offices. If things fall in place, Rajasthan may be the first state to take it to the absolute grassroots -- at the NREGA worksite. In a pathbreaking move, the MIT Institute of Design in Pune, under the National Knowledge Commission, has taken the plunge for fine-tuning traditional tools used for digging and moving earth specially in NREGA so as...

The UN's food and agriculture arm today advocated the use of jatropha for producing bio-diesel and said the crop can help farmers improve their financial condition in dry areas. "Using the energy crop jatropha for bio-diesel production could benefit poor farmers, particularly in semi-arid and remote areas of developing countries," said a report published by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Jatropha curcas grows...

HIV prevalence in India and South Asia is growing among sex workers and other high risk groups due to widespread failure to prevent stigmatising of people living with AIDS, according to a new report. Despite prevention and other efforts to reduce high-risk behaviours such as unprotected sex, buying and selling of sex, and injecting drug use, HIV vulnerability and risk remain high, says the report by a team from the...