Inflation concerns emerged on Thursday as global food prices rose for a second straight month in February, the United Nation’s food index showed.
World food prices were up one percent month on month in February, driven by gains in cereals, vegetable oils and sugar, but were still some 10 per cent off a record high hit in February 2011, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said.

India is the second largest source of global migrants after Mexico and is the ninth top destination for all migrants, a new report said today. According to a study released by the Pew Research Center, over 77 million migrants, or about 36 per cent of the worldwide total, have come from the 10 leading origin countries. Overall, Mexico has been the largest single source of migrants (12.9 million), followed closely by India (11.8 million) and Russia (11.3 million).

Iran’s nuclear work will defiantly go on, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said today, after UN inspectors left Tehran following talks that failed to lift their suspicions of atomic weapons research. “The Iranian nation has never been seeking an atomic weapon and never will be. It will prove to the world that a nuclear weapon cannot create supremacy,” Khamenei told Iranian nuclear scientists.

India today lodged a strong protest with the UN for including absolute cuts in CO2 emissions and reduction in the use of ozone depleting substances among the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in a new assessment report launched here today.

New Delhi: It’s official — India is the most dangerous place in the world to be a baby girl. Newly released data shows that an Indian girl child aged 1-5 years is 75% more likely to die than an Indian boy, making this the worst gender differential in child mortality for any country in the world. Infant (0-1 years) and child (1-5 years) mortality are declining in India and across the world, though not as fast as was hoped in India.

Report Also Breaches Firewall Between Rich & Poor. A high-profile panel of the United Nation Secretary General (UNSG) on Global Sustainability has recommended that the world adopt sustainable development targets. The move has been opposed by India and several other developing countries as creating a backdoor for caps on emissions and green targets, while breaching the firewall between developing and rich countries that is enshrined in the Rio declaration and the United Nation convention on climate change.

NEW DELHI, 17 JAN: Almost in line with the government’s estimate, a UN report has said that India’s economic growth rate will remain at 7.7 per cent in 2012 and 7.9 per cent in 2013. “India’s economy is forecast to expand at a pace similar to 2011 in the following two years... at 7.7 per cent in 2012 and 7.9 per cent in 2013,” the UN report on ‘World Economic Situation and Prospects 2012’ said. The report cautioned: “The downside risks to the regional outlook have sharply increased in recent months... particularly in case of India.

As a succession of crises break out on three continents, extreme weather events have added a new challenge to the world economy. By disrupting the tightly woven supply chain that is the backbone of world commerce — witness the flooded manufacturing plants in Thailand choking off supply of hard disks to the world — natural disasters have caused heavy losses to global corporations. Over the medium term, austerity measures and painful reforms could help economic recovery, but extreme weather conditions seem destined to become the new normal.

India’s burgeoning cities and interventionist policies have aggravated the threat from natural disasters, the World Bank and United Nations said on Thursday.
They emphasised the importance of preventive measures to minimize loss of life and property from natural hazards and the need to raise awareness so that governments are pressed to take the issue seriously.

The world economy faces the risk of a sharp slowdown in 2012 with governments hard-pressed to spur growth, a United Nations report has said. The report, ‘World Economic Situation and Prospects 2011’, published on Friday said global growth could fall from 3.6 per cent this year to less than 2 per cent in 2012.
Developed countries might again lapse into recession as policymakers are unable to match the increases in government spending and liquidity two years earlier.