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Results in the ten by-polls to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly are apparently not surprising to political analysts in general. They would not have been stupefied, had the ruling CPI(M)-Left Front lost in all ten seats.

A yawning rift has opened up in the climate negotiations just ahead of the Copenhagen conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change beginning on December 7. It centres on the issues of responsibility for climate change—unfolding through extreme weather events, rising sea-levels and rapid melting of ice-sheets and glaciers — and sharing the burden to remedy it.

Two recent events have exposed, yet again, the ugly fascist face of the RSS and the BJP. One was the shocking disclosure by a witness deposing before one of the many probes into the Narendra Modi government's conduct during the Gujarat riots. According to him, when Ehsan Jafri, the former Congress MP who was killed by a fanatical saffron mob, contacted Modi to seek help, the chief minister's response was to abuse him.

New York: An independent United Nations expert has warned that the United States is an increasingly expensive place to find housing, leaving many more people homeless at a time when the financial crisis is hitting hard across the country.

New York: Poor countries, already hit hard by the global financial and economic crisis in their efforts to fund social and health programmes, are facing a double blow this year with debt servicing increasing by over 17 per cent as a proportion of government revenue, a top United Nations trade official warned today.

New York: The United Nations crime tsar today blamed shady trading for the financial crisis that rocked most of the world last year, urging governments to use an international anti-corruption treaty to outline measures to restore trust in the financial system.

New York: Many of the world's countries continue to fail to meet the health-care needs of women at key stages of their lives, such as when they reach adolescence or when they are elderly, a new United Nations report has found.

Orders for buying 11185 buses have been placed by various States under the one time economic measure of funding of buses by the Ministry of Urban Development to boost their urban transport under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). Government has sanctioned purchase of 15,260 buses for the various mission cities under JNNURM.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The People's Republic of China (PRC) is moving to develop secondary towns and cities to help stem the flow of rural migrants into larger centers, which has caused a sharp urban-rural income gap and put pressure on the environment.

TOKYO, JAPAN - Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) President Luis-Alberto Moreno signed a partnership agreement today in Tokyo that will see their two institutions work more closely in areas ranging from trade facilitation and regional cooperation to climate change.