-The United Nations A United Nations treaty entering into force today will extend the labour and social rights of some 53 million domestic workers around the world. From today, the Domestic Workers Convention will be legally binding for signatory countries. The treaty was adopted in 2011 by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and is the first of its kind. "Today's entry into force of Convention 189 sends a powerful signal to more than...
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Pick your favourite emission-Nitin Sethi
-The Hindu The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) new Summary for Policymakers on the science of climate change is set to feed in to a key concern at the climate negotiations which will take place this November: should the global community prioritise the fight against the short-lived climate change gases or straight-up tackle the biggest contributor to climate change - carbon dioxide emissions? The decision on this could end...
More »Gas-guzzling government talks austerity, burns crores -Sidhartha & Surojit Gupta
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: While ministers toy with all kinds of ideas to curb consumption of oil, including bizarre ones such as shutting down petrol pumps at night, it might help if they looked inwards. For, the biggest and most profligate oil consumer in the country is the government itself. Petrol flows like water in the government. Not just ministers and officials of the central and state governments, even PSUs...
More »Taking the mass RTI road to land rights
One landmark law, the Right to Information Act, has helped over a thousand adivasis in north Maharashtra in getting closer to their rights under another landmark law – the Forest Rights Act. The latter was legislated in 2006 giving forest dwelling and other adivasi communities individual and community rights to lands they had traditionally cultivated and occupied. But communities in rural India have faced an uphill battle in getting the...
More »10% of bottled water samples fail test
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The common perception of packaged drinking water manufacturers flouting norms has come true. During 2010-11 and 2011-12, at least one in every 10 samples picked up for quality testing failed. The percentage of failing samples was higher in the Delhi-Noida region and Maharashtra and Goa combined. In a written reply in Lok Sabha last week, consumer affairs minister K V Thomas submitted details of samples collected...
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