-PTI NEW DELHI: The World Bank usually tames wild economies and helps countries stabilize their fluctuating finances, but in a global first, the banker for the world has gone to a zoo that too in India! This is a new addition in the portfolio of the bank as part of its ever-expanding work on urban regeneration. A zoo is nothing but a bank of captive animals. In a novel initiative, the World...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In a jolt to hundreds of builders who have completed housing projects without Environment clearance, the Supreme Court on Friday termed such constructions illegal, conceding that it might have committed a mistake by previously staying a National Green Tribunal (NGT) order halting construction of these projects. The NGT had struck down the UPA government's 'office memorandum' (order) in 2012 and the amendment to it in 2013,...

-Down to Earth These rules, if implemented, will lead to dilution of the Forest Rights Act The campaign for rights under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, received yet another setback in November 2015, according to government orders which recently became available in the public domain. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA), the nodal agency for the implementation of the Act, issued a memorandum endorsing the Village Forest Rules (VFR) notified...

-The Indian Express While Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands display high numbers of criminal activity, India stands with Yemen and Lebanon in the lower zone. Last month, when women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi was pushing through amendments to Juvenile Justice Act in Parliament that would lower the age of culpability as an adult from 18 to 16, she cited a rising number of crimes by juveniles. In the year...

-The Hindu While the Delhi government’s spirit of experimentation is to be lauded, the right lessons need to be learnt from the odd-even trial. It is now amply clear that no credible data supports the Delhi government’s claim that the odd-even trial has reduced pollution or improved air quality. In fact, the quality of air in the first week of January was worse compared to previous weeks. Data obtained from the National...