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It is almost as if the BJP is seized by a death wish. The reverses it suffered in the parliamentary polls have been followed by a setback in Maharashtra and internal tussles in Rajasthan and Karnataka.

The latest update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Speciesâ„¢ shows that 17,291 species out of the 47,677 assessed species are threatened with extinction. The results reveal 21 percent of all known mammals, 30 percent of all known amphibians, 12 percent of all known birds, and 28 percent of reptiles, 37 percent of freshwater fishes, 70 percent of plants, 35 percent of invertebrates assessed so far are under threat.

New York: The plight of the hungry in developing countries is needlessly aggravated by farmers losing up to half of their crops after gathering the harvest, the United Nations agricultural agency said today, stressing that adequate investment and training could drastically cut the losses.

The International Monetary Fund announced today the sale of 200 metric tons of gold to the Reserve Bank of India. This amount represents almost half of the total sales volume of 403.3 metric tons that was approved by the Executive Board in September.

New York: Some 300 million children in South Asia, or half of the region's under-18 population, suffer from chronic levels of poverty, according to a new United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) study.

The UPA Government appears all set to corporatise Indian Railways as the Indian Railway Corporation Limited to make it run in keeping with the free market mechanism ostensibly to make all segments of its functioning a business oriented profit centres. In this connection, there has been a flurry of activity in the Prime Minister's Office recently. Plan Panel led by Montek Singh Ahluwalia has presented a revamp Indian Railways module. The Prime Minister Dr. Man Mohan Singh has reviewed the functioning of the Railways. Accordingly, Railways are sought to be revamped in keeping with the new strategy to make it a driver of infrastructural growth.

New Delhi: The combined live storage in these 81 reservoirs at the beginning of monsoon i.e. 1st June 2009 was 11 % of their designed capacity and stood at 62% of the designed capacity as on 29 October 2009. The present storage is 87% of last year's storage and 93% of last 10 years average storage during the same period. Out of these 81 reservoirs there are presently 34 reservoirs where this year's storage is 80 % or less than the average of previous 10 years and in remaining 47 reservoirs the storage is more than 80 % of the average of previous 10 years.

Developing Asia is on a fast rebound from the global downturn, with China and India leading a world recovery, and this should get reinforced with US economy's unexpected 3.5 per cent growth in the third quarter (July-September). For the world's largest economy, the outcome breaks four successive quarters of decline but it is still early to conclude that its longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression has come to an end. 2009 is a year of contraction for the global economy as a whole with the worst slump undergone by Europe and USA. Recovery is expected to be sluggish for most of the advanced economies through 2010.

When governance takes a backseat, rulers usually find themselves in a catch-22 situation. Punjab's 32-month old Akali-BJP government finds itself in such a situation both financially and politically. Its problems on the financial front have been multiplying, pushing the fund-starved state towards bankruptcy. Implementation of most of the projects stands stalled for paucity of funds. If the government mobilises additional resources to meet the crisis, the step will prove politically counter-productive.