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New York: The Security Council today voted unanimously to impose sanctions against the Libyan authorities, slapping the country with an arms embargo and freezing the assets of its leaders, while referring the ongoing violent repression of civilian demonstrators to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The plan for strategic sale of PSUs basically differs from disinvestments in droplets of the government equity in PSUs to raise revenue for the exchequer. Disinvestment by itself too is a narrow concept, which has been blown up into big-ticket privatisation of industrial development in India as an ideological platform. This stands at the top in policy priorities of the UPA- II seeking political, if not national consensus on issues such as even security, Indo-US and Indo-Pak relations.

LUCKNOW: Congress workers in Uttar Pradesh have started a campaign to bring Priyanka Gandhi as the leader of the Party in the state to take on the BSP supreme and Chief Minister Mayawati in the 2012 assembly elections. They feel that only Priyanka has the charisma to challenge the CM and she can galvanise the masses at the grassroots level.

New Delhi: The Railway Budget 2011-12, presented by the Union Minister of Railways Mamataa Banerjee in Parliament on February 25, 2011, seeks to borrow Rs.20, 000 crores from the capital market as part of its total plan outlay of Rs.57, 630 crores compared to Rs. 41,426 crores in 2010-11. The 2011-12-plan size is undoubtedly the highest ever so far. Obviously, the Government has not infused additional budgetary support, leaving the railways to depend on the debt market mechanism.

New Delhi: The leaders of the BASIC countries, representing the developing world today urged that the Bali Roadmap should continue to be the template for future negotiations on combating global climate change. They also agreed to take up the issue that the developed nations under Annex-I make their second commitment period for emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol.

New York: The leaders of Equatorial Guinea and Gabon today reiterated their commitment to submit their longstanding border dispute to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), with the aim of resolving the matter as soon as possible, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reported today.

New York: Guinea-Bissau still has a long way to go in fighting impunity, drug trafficking, organized crime, and other “remaining triggers of instability” in a country that has for years been dogged by war, coups, coup attempts and assassinations, a senior United Nations official warned today.

New York: The United Nations Human Rights Council today strongly condemned the recent violence in Libya and ordered an international inquiry into alleged abuses.

Directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has agreed that, overall, during this period Benin had maintained macroeconomic stability, despite a challenging environment. However, Directors noted GDP growth had fallen below historical and regional averages because of the slow implementation of structural reforms.

New York: With 20 years of strong investment producing “stunning” gains for children up to the age of 10, including a 33 per cent drop in under-five mortality rates, the United Nations is calling for equal focus on the world’s 1.2 billion adolescents to break entrenched cycles of poverty and inequity.