Focus may be on forestry issues and reducing emissions from deforestation This beach resort, swarming with tourists and sports utility vehicles and having opulent hotels and evident unsustainability, may not be the ideal place for a climate change conference but the real issues of climate change are too critical not to be debated anywhere. The United Nations Climate Change Conference that gets under way here on Monday may not result in much...

Aiming to arrest the spread of Red terror in the country, the Union Cabinet cleared a Rs 3,300 crore special plan for 60 Naxal-affected districts across nine states to ensure overall development of these areas. Earlier, 35 districts were slated to receive the funds. Under the special plan -- Integrated Action Plan (IAP) for Selected Tribal and Backward Districts -- each of the 60 Naxal-hit districts would get Rs 25 crore...

It is quite likely that a few weeks from now someone will be knocking at your doors and asking for your fingerprints. If you agree, your fingerprints will enter a national database, along with personal characteristics (age, sex, occupation, and so on) that have already been collected from you, unless you were missed in the “Census household listing” earlier this year. The purpose of this exercise is to build the National...

The Expert Appraisal Committee of the Union ministry of environment & forests will submit its report soon to the ministry on the Posco project after scrutinizing the Comprehensive Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) submitted by the company. "The EAC would submit its report soon to the MOEF after scrutinizing the Comprehensive EIA submitted by Posco India. The EAC met yesterday for over three hours and there we reiterated our stand on issues...

Three basic necessities of life — tapped drinking water, electricity connection and sanitation — together are not available to 82% of rural Indian households, a government survey has revealed. The three elements were key in the defining of India's new poverty line earlier this year by the Suresh Tendulkar committee, which said that 46% of rural Indians were poor. The poverty line was based on National Sample Survey Organisation report of...