Agreement may be worked out before closure of conference   India maintained silence on listing of endosufan under the Rotterdam Convention at the fifth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention, which opened in Geneva on Monday. The Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade requires the exporting countries of listed chemicals to provide the importing countries with advance information on...

-The Hindu   Concerned at the Supreme Court's stringent stand on large-scale misappropriation of MGNREGS funds, the Centre on Wednesday warned that officials and districts would be held responsible if the money did not reach beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. At an emergency meeting here of all project directors of the District Rural Development Agency and the chief Executive officers of zilla parishads, Rural Development Minister Vilasrao...

Orissa is all set to renew its memorandum of understanding (MoU) with steel major Posco with a one-year retrospective effect by June 30th. The MoU for the proposed 12 million ton steel plant had expired on June 22, 2010 after a period of five years. State steel and mines minister Raghunath Mohanty said all formalities required for renewal of the MoU will be over shortly and the government would revalidate...

-The Economic Times   The ninth and final session of the Lokpal Bill drafting committee dispersed with little meeting of minds between civil society representatives and their government counterparts. Forget the six points on which differences have been enumerated; the basic disagreement is on the essential nature of the proposed ombudsman. The civil society representatives seek to create a new body that is all-powerful, gets appointed with minimal participation by the...

-Live Mint   The investigating agency has been placed on the same footing as security and intelligence agencies—something that exempts them from RTI The government’s total exemption of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) Act could not have come at a more inopportune time. The investigating agency has been placed on the same footing as security and intelligence agencies—something that exempts them from RTI. It does...