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A hysterical, well-orchestrated and organised campaign is underway to malign the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) as an agency of “Green Terror”, which is throttling India’s development by putting environmental obstacles to industrial, mining and hydroelectricity projects. The campaign, backed by Big Business and entrenched interests in real estate, coal, power and other infrastructure sectors, accuses the MoEF of imposing a new “license-permit raj” and throwing a “green noose” around the neck of industry.

It is a safe prediction that there will not be a single dull moment once Anna Hazare’s new team takes to the field. Initially, there may be a show of camaraderie between the anti-corruption crusader from Ralegan Siddhi and his former disciple, Arvind Kejriwal, who has launched his own campaign. But, since both will be catering to the same constituency of the urban middle class, there is bound to be some amount of jostling as each one of them tries to project himself as a bigger saviour of the nation than the other.

WTO members meeting as the committee dealing with food safety and animal and plant health agreed on 18–19 October 2012 to accelerate work on how to defuse disputes with the help of its chairperson.

“Land really is the best art”. Andy Warhol, American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art, may have said this in a different context. But India’s present generation of politicians has become unrivalled practitioners of the art. The more skilled among them holding reins of power use their skill to grab land for helping their favourites to build business empires or for filling their own coffers. Their usual modus operandi is to acquire farmers land “for public purposes” and then release the acquisitioned land to builders.

USA or ‘America’ is as much an idea as it is a swathe of land with people. It lives in different forms in minds of people all over the world, beyond the USA. A serious number of non-poor urban youth from the Indian Subcontinent have grown up with American sitcoms. Now they partly live that reality, fired by ‘onsite’ assignments and contract-labour opportunities in IT of the last two decades.

The Orient Express is in the news. For sure, this is not a train, although there was a train of that name running in Europe between Paris in France and Istanbul in Turkey during the 1920s and 1930s. The train was made even more famous by the detective story writer Agatha Christie in her “Murder on the Orient Express”.

China's one of the biggest telecom companies, ZTE corporation, has apologized for the distressing operating results for the first nine months of this year, which projected net loss attributable to shareholders between RMB1.65 billion and RMB1.75 billion, a reversal of between 254.42% and 263.78% compared to the same period of a year earlier, though the results indicate an increase in its revenue as compared to the corresponding period of 2011. However, the question is, can the company overcome the financial challenges and restore customers' confidence?

The 2012 Annual Meetings of IMF and the World Bank in Tokyo (October 9 -14) turned out to be an anti-climax, belying expectations of a determined push for urgent co-ordinated actions in the near future by major powers to reverse the synchronised global slowdown and promote growth recovery and financial stability.

Opposition organized a successful bandh in Bihar at a very short notice. This demonstrates people are turning against the Nitish Kumar government. The Chief Minister was facing the heat of anti incumbency even during his Adhikar Yatra. He was facing protest from many sections of society and particularly from those para teachers, who have got jobs during his first tenure as Chief Minister. At many places the protest created ugly scenes and even got violent at some places.