-PTI The World Bank has praised India's evacuation of nearly 10 lakh people in odisha and Andhra Pradesh, which ensured minimal loss of human lives, before the cyclone Phailin made landfall and attributed it to its years of disaster management preparedness. "Successfully evacuating a million people is not a small task. This cannot be merely achieved by kicking the entire state machinery into top gear for three-four days following a cyclone warning,"...

-The Hindustan Times A new study has put the number of people in modern slavery worldwide at an estimated 29.8 million. India tops the list for nation-wise figures, with almost 14 million people trapped in different forms of slavery. These shocking figures, released in a new Global Slavery Index report, measure debt bondage, forced marriage, sale or exploitation of children, human trafficking and forced labour across the world. The index, released by the...

-The Hindu     "Workers may take their families with them when they leave" BHUBANESWAR: The large-scale devastation caused by cyclone Phailin in odisha's Ganjam district is expected to trigger ‘distress migration' of hordes of affected people to faraway places such as Chennai, Mumbai, Goa, Surat and Ahmedabad. Experts on migration and activists working on the ground warned that the flight of workers was imminent from Ganjam, which traditionally sends half a million migrant labourers...

-Down to Earth Prevalence of underweight children down from 76 to 43 per cent for boys, 74 to 42 per cent for girls over past four decades, says National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau Food intake of people in rural India has been declining over the past four decades, but the status of nutrition among children has improved over this period. This was revealed in third repeat survey by National Nutrition Monitoring...

-The Times of India BHUBANESWAR: With lakhs of people hit by floods in the wake of cyclone Phailin, odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday sought immediate release of Rs 1,523 crore from the Centre for relief and rehabilitation. "I request the Centre to release an advance of Rs 1,000 crore over and above the corpus of Rs 523 crore available in the State Disaster Response Fund for the year 2013-14," Naveen...