John Vidal, who was in Rio for the '92 Earth summit, looks back at that momentous event, and how the 2012 version compares Helicopters thundered up and down the chic Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. Tanks guarded the bridges and tunnels. The favelas were in lockdown, Schools closed and supermarkets stood empty. Unexpectedly, George H W Bush, the 41st US president, flush with success at the collapse of communism, had arrived in...

-PTI The Maoist are recruiting and indoctrinating children and had constituted children's squads and associations as part of mass mobilisation, a UN report said. The annual report of the UN secretary-general on children and armed conflict, submitted to the Security Council last week, said information has been received on recruitment and use of children by Naxalites, particularly in Chhattisgarh and some districts in adjoining states. "Maoist armed groups were recruiting and indoctrinating children,...

-The Hindustan Times Two years ago, nine-year-old Vishal got beaten up real bad by the class bullies at the government School in Lal Kuan in south Delhi. The bullies also tore up some of his School texts and threw away others. After that day, a petrified Vishal just couldn’t muster up enough courage to go back to School. Worse still, he couldn’t tell his parents — Radhe Shyam and Manju — about...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: Activists campaigning for universal education on Monday called for a common School system that would offer education free of cost for all children in the country and help stop the commercialization of education.  Briefing reporters about an all India conference to be held in the city on June 30 and July 1, All India Forum for Right To Education presidium member Anil Sadgopal said, "There is widespread...

-The Christian Sciences Monitor Wealthy Western nations are financially exhausted and unwilling to commit to help fund greener development for poorer nations. Will this week's conference in Rio find any solutions? So what happens if you hold a UN conference on sustainable development, and world leaders make speeches, and sign treaties, and then nothing happens? This, of course, would be absurd. The problem, says Bill Easterly, a development expert at New York University,...