-Article-14.com One of the issues that brought Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power in 2014 was corruption, the antidote to which was to be a Lokpal, a public ombudsman. His government reluctantly set it up only five years later, after a Supreme Court order. In 2021, it received no more than 30 complaints, with critical posts of inquiry and prosecution chiefs vacant, a third of its budget unused and a former...

-Down to Earth By the end of 2020, 86 per cent people displaced across borders lived in countries with developing economies.    Forced displacements need more equitable and predictable responses, for which the global community needs to show more political will, a new report has flagged. Three years after the launch of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), the international community has yet to deliver on its promise to better share responsibility for...

-Hindustan Times Covid-19 cases had risen in Europe for the fifth consecutive week, making it the only world region where the infections are still increasing, WHO's headquarters in Geneva said on Wednesday. As many as 53 countries in Europe and Central Asia face the “real threat” of a resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic in the coming weeks or are already battling a new wave of infections, exacerbated by the more transmissible Delta...

-The Telegraph Challenges to economic recovery in India and the world remain The International Monetary Fund revealed its outlook for the world economy last week. A year and a half after the pandemic, global recovery remained reassuringly strong: the world economy is expected to grow a tad slower (10 basis points) this year at 5.9 per cent and at an unchanged pace — 4.9 per cent — next year. But the exit...

Media reports indicate that at the start of the southwest monsoon season, lightning strikes caused the death of over 70 people in the states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh on a single day i.e. 11th July, 2021. Prior to those separate events related to human casualty caused by thunderbolts, eighteen elephants were found dead on a hilltop at Kandali Proposed Reserve Forest situated in Assam's Nagaon district on...