Sandeep Dikshit

NEW DELHI: The United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, on Thursday hoped that the upcoming meeting of world leaders in Washington on November 15 would take measures to minimise the risk of financial crises impacting poverty alleviation and climate change goals.

At first glance, clean technology, which either improves the efficiency or reduces the environmental impact of energy-related products, appears to be a booming industry. It is estimated to be worth $150bn now but will reach $600bn by 2020, a United Nations report says.

Biofuels are doing more harm than good, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation said yesterday, in its strongest call yet to review "current policies supporting, subsidising and mandating biofuel production and use".

ROME: A UN agency called on Tuesday for an urgent review of agriculture and biofuel subsidies and trade barriers, saying their removal would increase opportunities for developing countries to take advantage of rising biofuel demand.

Cities are as old as settled human history. This is abundantly clear in South Asia, with Harappa and Mohenjodaro being early indigenous examples and Varanasi representing a living embodiment of this tradition.

After several years of robust growth, the world economy today faces some serious and unenviable challenges. The US housing bubble of 2007 and the unfolding credit crisis, the decline of dollar vis-a-vis other major currencies, the persistence of large global imbalances and high oil prices threaten the sustain-ability of global growth in the coming years.

Japan has called for emerging economies to set mid-term targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, aimed at bringing them into a structure of binding levels to combat global warming.

For 1st Time In Human History, Arctic Ice Cap Can Be Circumnavigated

London: It

IN APRIL 2007 the World Bank announced that 986m people worldwide suffered from extreme poverty