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New York: It's no longer than a grain of rice. But the mountain pine beetle is an insidious environmental predator, laying waste to swathes of forest in north-western Canada and exposing the local ecosystem to what could be a devastating new front in the battle against climate change.

The world economy is not set for any smooth transition from crisis to recovery and sustainable growth with banking systems yet to be fully repaired and unemployment raging at peak levels, mainly in USA and European Union Though signs of some major economies emerging out of recession became visible, Germany and France in the second quarter, and USA in the third quarter of 2009, the forecasts remain one of weak recovery and continuing global imbalances into 2010 and perhaps beyond.

NEW DELHI: The Centre has brought about major changes in its mega power projects programme to allow more role for the domestic power utilities and the equipment manufacturers. The requirement of undertaking international competitive bidding by the developers for procurement of equipment for mega power projects would not be mandatory, if the requisite quantum of power has been tied up through tariff-based competitive bidding.

LUCKNOW: The Bahujan Samaj Party has consolidated its position by winning nine out of 11 assembly seats in the by-elections held in the state. The Congress also improved its position while BJP and Samajwadi Party suffered major setbacks.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - Removing barriers to trade and investment will help advance integration efforts in South Asia and deliver sweeping benefits to the region, a new Asian Development Bank (ADB) study shows.

Governments should consider the potential of financial institutions to severely damage global financial and economic stability in assessing when firms are “too complex to fail,” according to the IMF.

New York: Despite good global cereal harvests this year, millions of people in dozens of poor countries are in desperate need of emergency humanitarian aid due to stubbornly high food prices, the United Nations agricultural agency warned in a report.

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.