‘Government does not have mandate to conduct parleys without discussion'Several areas of concerns in texts being negotiated for the India-EU FTAThe Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Saturday expressed concern over the “veil of secrecy” around negotiations for the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement (FTA), and re-emphasised that the Manmohan Singh government did not have the mandate to conduct parleys on it without discussion within the country.Referring to the EU...

The world is a more corrupt place now than it was three years ago, a poll suggests.Some 56% of people interviewed by Transparency International said their country had become more corrupt.In Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iraq and India more than 50% of people said they had paid a bribe in the past year - many of them paying off the police.Meanwhile, a BBC poll suggests that corruption is the world's most talked...

About 54% Indians paid a bribe in the past year, according to a global survey by Transparency International (TI), which pegs the extent of corruption in India at levels comparable with Cambodia, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Senegal, Uganda and Liberia. TI’s Global Corruption Barometer survey, released on global anti-corruption day, measures public perception on corruption across the world. One metric asks respondents if they had paid a bribe during the past 12 months...

The United Nations human rights chief voiced concern today over reported ‘cyber war’ pressure on private companies to sever links with the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, saying this could amount to attempted censorship in breach of international covenants. “If WikiLeaks has committed any recognizable illegal act, then this should be handled through the legal system, and not through pressure and intimidation, including on third parties,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi...

Pfizer tried a new antibiotic on 200 children, allegedly without sufficient documentation. When federal authorities pressed charges, the pharma giant hired investigators to probe attorney general Michael Aondoakaa's and put pressure on him to drop the federal cases.The world’s biggest pharmaceutical company hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him to drop legal action over a controversial drug trial involving children...