A high-level meeting on racism, scheduled to take place later this month under the auspices of the General Assembly, is threatening to split the world body and trigger a North-South confrontation. Expressing unfounded fears the meeting might turn out to be anti- Israel, several Western states, including Canada, Germany, the United States, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Austria, have indicated they will not participate in the meeting. The boycott...

The Anna Hazare movement demands no activism from its followers, not even a clear understanding of the specific demands. “COMBATING corruption”, like “promoting peace”, can mean anything to anyone; and precisely because of this “fuzziness” it appeals to everyone. Some join the anti-corruption movement because they are against “corporate loot”; others join because they are against the Nehru-Gandhi “dynasty”; and still others join because they oppose the “corrupt practice of...

-The Times of India   It is known to most media watchers that Kasturi & Sons Ltd, the company that publishes The Hindu, is caught in a bitter family feud. N Murali, who recently retired as managing director of the company, wrote a farewell letter to the employees of the company, lamenting that the Hindu's rich tradition of credibility, objectivity, balance and editorial primacy had of late been compromised. Later, in an...

-The Times of India   First the good news: India has recorded a 33% drop in newborn deaths between 1990 and 2009. Now, the bad news. Despite the sharp drop, over 9 lakh newborns died in 2009, the highest in the world. The most comprehensive newborn death estimates so far - covering all 193 countries and spanning 20 years released by the World Health Organization, Save the Children and the London School...

-The Economist   The number of deaths among babies is declining The first 28 days of life are among the most vulnerable in a human’s existence. In 2009 3.3m children died before they were four weeks old, down from 4.6m in 1990, according to a new  paper from the World Health Organisation. However progress has been too slow to meet the fourth of the UN's Millennium Development Goals—to cut child mortality to one-third...