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WASHINGTON ─ The World Bank today approved a $30 million IDA grant to support a new initiative by the Government of Afghanistan designed to boost employment and incomes for people living in rural areas of the country.

New Delhi: The Government has decided to renumber the National Highways across the country as the system of numbering of National Highways (NHs) presently being used is not on scientific method.

New Delhi: The Departmentally Related Standing Committee on Agriculture under the Chairmanship of Shri Basudeb Acharia, MP has selected the subject “Cultivation of Genetically Modified Food Crops - Prospects and Effects” for examination during the year 2009-10.

New Delhi: Sea cucumber, a highly protected species under Schedule-1 of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 has been seized from a restaurant at a five star Hotel in Delhi. The species is commonly called as Black Fish. The seized material was sent to Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), Kolkata for analysis and the Sea-cucumber were identified as Actinopyga milliaris, an official release said today.

The United Progressive Alliance was re-elected to power with a greater majority in 2009 primarily because it promised inclusive, equitable growth benefiting the aam aadmi. Its victory stood in sharp contrast to the National Democratic Alliance's rout in 2004, which was attributable principally to the Gujarat pogrom and its strident “India Shining” campaign, which claimed that GDP growth without equity is fine even though it did little for ordinary people. As the conservative Right-wing Economist magazine put it: the UPA was “returned to power with a mandate that did not include [neo]liberal reforms, which most Indians mistrust”.

When the government set itself the deadline of March 8, the International Women's Day, to pass the women's reservation bill in the Rajya Sabha, it ignored two factors. One was the stiffness of the resistance from opponents of the measure and the other was that in a democracy, a majority was not enough to enact a law.

New York: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed concerns about the lack of progress on political reconciliation, the treatment of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the setting up of an accountability process in Sri Lanka since the United Nations signed a joint statement with the Government last year in the wake of the end of its civil war with separatist Tamil rebels.

New York: The International Criminal Court (ICC) has announced it is pushing back the start date of the trial of a former senior official of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who has been charged with war crimes.

New York: The countries of Asia and the Pacific have not duplicated their economic success in the realm of gender equality, according to a new United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report, which found that discrimination and neglect are threatening the very survival of women in the region.

New York: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said he hopes the upcoming meeting in the Russian capital of the diplomatic group supporting the Middle East peace process will lead to direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians.