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New York: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today exhorted States to take effective legislative, administrative and judicial measures to prevent torture, calling the practice a brutal attempt to destroy a victim's sense of dignity and sense of human worth that can never be justified.

New York: The historic section of the capital of Barbados today became the Caribbean country's first entry on the United Nations-managed World Heritage List after a committee of experts approved its inscription and that of two other sites.

In spite of bumper kharif crop and expectations of normal monsoons this year, the food inflation has gone up and the union finance minister has helplessly admitted that he has no magic hand to control it.

In the intense summer of Delhi, ministers and other important persons find better work in cooler climes. Invariably come May-June, the VIPs fly out to attend other very important tasks in Europe and America. Sharad Pawar is in France, Anand Sharma in USA and Pranab Mukherjee is about to leave for the same destination next week. Many other smaller functionaries are all hovering around in western capitals. But India-US relations appear to be the season’s flavor. Next month, the India-US Strategic Dialogue will take place, this time however in New Delhi.

New York: Illicit drugs and transnational organized crime can undercut security and development in countries and across regions, a top United Nations official told the Security Council today, stressing the need for concerted action to tackle these growing threats.

New York: The Kenya Lake System in the Great Rift Valley, Australia’s Ningaloo Coast and the Ogasawara Islands of Japan were today added to the World Heritage List, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported.

For the past few days, there is a lot of speculation about the impending cabinet reshuffle. Aspirants are sitting near the telephone waiting for that important phone call form the Prime Minister’s residence while those in the council of ministers are nervous about their continuance as it has been said that the Prime Minister may axe those who had not performed well. This has provoked a tongue in cheek remark that it should begin from the top.

KOLKATA: It is just over a month that the new Government headed by Mamata Banerjee came to power in West Bengal. The beginning has been good. She has already addressed herself to some of the trickly problems of the State and the initial response has been encouraging.

When it comes to material pursuits, educated modern Tamils are certainly not behind Gujaratis, Marwaris or even Punjabis. But, in terms of business vision, today’s Tamil Nadu (TN) beats all other Indian states. A generation-old political dogfight between DMK and ADMK and a prolonged absence of Congress rule had no impact on Tamil Nadu’s economic progress and its stunningly high growth rate of gross state domestic product (SDP), which has ruled above the national growth (GDP) level for successive recent years.

Mid-2011, the world economy is battered by a host of challenges, fiscal and monetary, as post-crisis recovery slows - fiscal imbalances, weakened consumer and business confidence and unrelenting joblessness (USA), the protracted sovereign debt crisis in euro-zone periphery threatening a contagion across borders, and the toll on Japan’s economy and neighbourhood from its natural disasters.