-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...

-IPS News UXBRIDGE, Canada- Growing water shortages in many countries are a major threat to global security and development and should be a top priority at the U.N. Security Council, a panel of experts said in a new report. However, that report ignores the biggest threat to water security: neoliberal policies of the free market economic system laying waste to the natural world and turning water into a commodity, activists counter. China...

-IPS News World Water Week recently concluded in Stockholm with a special emphasis on the linkages between water and food security. From the worst drought in 56 years in the United States Midwest, to the Karnataka’s drought in India, to the protracted drought in the Sahel region of West Africa, we have also seen how in our globalised world the nexus between lack of water and food security in one corner of...

-The Times of India The official version of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech at the National Board of Wildlife (NBWL) on Wednesday changed thrice in the space of one day. In a highly unusual sequence of events, the version of Singh's speech released by the PMO on its website on Wednesday was withdrawn on Thursday afternoon only to return in its original form by late evening. The flip-flop-flip is perhaps the...

-Live Mint Despite a directive, and later a final warning from the Supreme Court, some states are yet to notify core areas that include tiger breeding grounds The Supreme Court will on Wednesday assess whether state governments have complied with its order to notify core and buffer areas of tiger reserves in line with the provisions of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, after banning organized tourism in breeding grounds of the big cats...