-The Economist Growing inequality is one of the biggest social, economic and political challenges of our time. But it is not inevitable, says Zanny Minton Beddoes IN 1889, AT the height of America’s first Gilded Age, George Vanderbilt II, grandson of the original railway magnate, set out to build a country estate in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. He hired the most prominent architect of the time, toured the chateaux...

-The Hindu Intelligent management of ecosystems can help to turn local economies around and give destitute households a chance to increase their incomes Protecting biodiversity is humanity’s insurance policy against the unprecedented biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation which has occurred in recent decades, undermining the very foundations of life on earth. This is why this week’s 11th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Hyderabad, which India is hosting, is...

-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...

-Mid Day 'Mafia' set up these establishments across the state to usurp government grants, reveals report submitted by state child rights commission; many of them were being run as hostels and coaching centre Corruption is now so rampant in every sphere in this country that it has become a child’s play for the perpetrators. MiD DAY has learnt that the Congress-led Democratic Front government is sitting on a sensational report submitted by...

-The Telegraph The Planning Commission has proposed a separate quota for single women in central schemes instead of clubbing them under the larger “family” category as is done now. If the move is cleared, even women who have never married will be included under the head “single”, along with widows and divorcees. “Not much progress could be made in this direction (towards having a separate category). This can be attributed to two factors....