-AP   A UN climate conference reached a hard-fought agreement Sunday on a complex and far-reaching programme meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change for the coming decades. The 194-party conference agreed to start negotiations on a new accord that would put all countries under the same legal regime enforcing commitments to control greenhouse gases. It would take effect by 2020 at the latest. The deal also set...

Delegates clashed over attempt to make agreement legally binding until deal was struck in pre-dawn hours Countries have agreed a deal in Durban to push for a new climate treaty, salvaging the latest round of United Nations climate talks from the brink of collapse. The UK's cimate change secretary, Chris Huhne, hailed the deal, finally struck in the early hours of Sunday after talks had overrun by a day and a half,...

Over two and a half years after President Pratibha Patil announced the government’s plan to enact a food security law, the Union Cabinet on Tuesday is slated to consider three separate versions of the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) for introduction in the current session of Parliament. These three versions arise out of differences between the Food Ministry and the Law Ministry over the issue of grievance redressal mechanism. The Legislative...

-The Hindu   On the orders of the Special Lokayukta Court here, the Lokayukta police on Thursday filed FIR against three former Chief Ministers as well as 11 senior civil servants of Karnataka. External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, and MPs N. Dharam Singh and H.D. Kumaraswamy will be investigated by the Lokayukta police in a case in which they have been accused of complicity in the alleged multi-crore mining scam. The investigating agency will...

-PTI Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda today said all sections of society should come forward to ponder over how a permanent solution could be found in rooting out extremism. "Naxal problem is a serious issue and there should not be any politics in it. It requires participation of all people to discuss and find a solution," Munda said here. He was responding to a media query on the Maoist attack on former speaker...