-PTI   Highlighting that 42 per cent children were underweight in a country witnessing high growth, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today described it as a national shame and said the government could not rely solely on ICDS, a programme for early childhood development, to address it.  "...The problem of malnutrition is a matter of national shame. Despite impressive growth in our GDP, the level of under-nutrition in the country is unacceptably high," he...

She has spent considerable time researching female infanticide. Sharada Srinivasan talks about why elimination of the girl child is prevalent all over the country. Daughter elimination is very much prevalent in Tamil Nadu even if not as intense as in other parts of the country. Sharada Srinivasan, assistant professor in International Development Studies at York University Toronto, has spent a considerable amount of time researching this subject. Her book Daughter Deficit:...

-Reuters   Kyoto Protocol extended; environmentalists, small nations say deal lacks ambition, does not do enough Climate negotiators agreed to a pact on Sunday that would for the first time force all the biggest polluters to take action on greenhouse gas emissions, but critics said the action plan was not aggressive enough to slow the pace of global warming. The package of accords extended the Kyoto Protocol, the only global pact that enforces carbon...

With only three more days of negotiations to go, UN chief Ban Ki-moon says agreement may be 'beyond our reach – for now' A global legally binding deal on climate change is likely to be off the table, at least "for now", the United Nations secretary-general has said in his most downbeat assessment of the talks. Assessing the nine days of negotiations at Durban so far, Ban Ki-moon told delegates: "It may...

-The United Nations   Temperatures this year are the tenth highest on record since 1850, and the highest ever in a year which experienced a La Niña event, a meteorological phenomenon which is supposed to have a cooling influence on Earth’s atmosphere, a United Nations agency reported today. The findings are among the highlights of the provisional UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Statement on the Status of the Global Climate, which provides an...