President Obama will announce Friday that the once elite club of rich industrial nations known as the Group of 7 will be permanently replaced as a global forum for economic policy by the much broader Group of 20 that includes China, Brazil, India and other fast-growing developing countries, administration officials said Thursday.

Floods, storms, drought and other climate-related natural disasters drove 20 million people from their homes last year, nearly four times as many as were displaced by conflicts, a new UN report said on Tuesday. The study tried to quantify for the first time the number of people forced to flee their homes because of climate change.

Two-thirds of the world's major deltas, home to nearly half a billion people, are caught in the scissors of sinking land and rising seas, according to a study published on Sunday.

The new findings, based on satellite images, show that 85 per cent of the 33 largest delta regions experienced severe flooding over the past decade, affecting 260,000 square km.

short of food: Asia could face chronic food shortage if the region fails to improve irrigation management, a UN report said. A joint report of the UN

Asia Pulp and Paper, one of the largest paper producers in Asia, said on Thursday it has no immediate plans to expand its two Indonesian pulp mills and would only do so if it secured sustainably produced timber.

Farmers worldwide managed 32.2 million hectares of agricultural land organically in 2007, nearly 5 percent more than in the previous year and a 118-percent increase since 2000. Organic farming is now reported in 141 countries; about two thirds of this land area is in industrial countries, and nearly half of the producers are in Africa.

Mumbai Many believe Dharavi, India