View Articles

New York: Three million poor people in Africa and South Asia, the majority of them women, will gain access to low-cost mobile phone numbers as part of technology firm Movirtu’s partnership with the United Nations-backed initiative that enlists the private sector in efforts to fight poverty.

New Delhi: The much-hyped Lokpal Bill-2011, a proposed legislation to set up an Ombudsman, was introduced in Lok Sabha by the UPA Government on Wednesday amid objections from BJP and its NDA partners over exclusion of Prime Minister in its ambit.

Should the civil society activists led by Anna Hazare continue their agitation against the government sponsored Lokpal bill? What would be the end result? Will the government bow to their wishes and change the provisions of the bill and if it does, what would be the fate of other controversial bills?

BHOPAL: On July 31, 2011 the Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan lashed out at corrupt leaders of his own party. While addressing the concluding function of the BJP state executive meeting at Singrauli, he asked the state party Chief Prabhat Jha to take appropriate action against the party workers who owned PDS outlets and indulged in unfair practices. But on that day, he lacked the moral authority to talk of action against corrupt elements belonging to this own party. For, on that day, a case accusing him of corruption was pending in a court.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala CPI(M) politics has well and truly hotted up with the official faction led by State party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and leader of the opposition V S Achuthanandan squaring up for a showdown.

LUCKNOW: With the crucial elections to the Uttar Pradesh assembly due in early next year, there is a big churning in the state politics with the Samajwadi Party taking the lead in challenging the ruling Bharatiya Samaj Party at ground level. SP is witnessing largescale influx from the ranks of the BSP and interestingly, many senior members of the ruling party of the state are indicating their despair at the current functioning of the chief minister Mayawati.

US Congress finally voted to raise the sovereign debt ceiling of 14.3 trillion on August 2, hours before the deadline for the Federal Government to lose its borrowing authority, thereby helping to avert a first-ever default, which would have triggered a financial tsunami across the world. For weeks USA had run the risk of its highest rating being downgraded with calamitous consequences for global currency, equity and commodity markets. The warring factions in divided Washington fought bitterly before striking a compromise involving spending cuts of trillions of dollars in no way balanced with new tax revenues sought by the White House. The entire process was damaging for confidence in USA.

New Delhi: Finally a peace accord has been struck between the Congress-led ruling UPA coalition and the Opposition for smooth functioning of the Parliament.

New Delhi: An IAF MIG-21 aircraft crashed in the precincts of Nal airbase in Rajasthan soon after take off at around midday on Tuesday.

Exactly two decades ago, Dr Manmohan Singh, then the Finance Minister, launched India on a new economic policy course of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG). Dr Singh exploited a short-term foreign exchange crisis to push through a far-reaching long-term agenda. Ironically, on the 20th anniversary of the event, the sleaze associated with neoliberalism, with its all its cronyism, criminality and plunder of public wealth, is on full display. But neoliberalism’s diehard supporters strain to deny a link between LPG and scandals.