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.

The United Nations has warned that the world is at the cusp of another recession, pointing to the slowdown in economic growth in all countries including the growth engines— India and China.
In a report 'World Economic Situation and Prospects 2012’, released Thursday the UN has downgraded its global economic growth forecast by one percentage point for 2012 to 2.6% and 3.2% for 2013.

An analysis of forty years of global marriage and fertility data shows that the real effect of the decline in fertility in India has been a massive decrease in the number of women in their thirties having children. In western and northern Europe, on the other hand, women are more likely to have their first child at 30.

India is against climate goalpost being shifted for the third year in a row, and has drawn the Major Economies Forum’s attention to it during the ongoing meeting in Washington.

Vienna: Iran has worked on developing an atomic bomb design and may still be conducting research relevant for such weapons, the UN nuclear watchdog said in its most detailed and hardest-hitting report on military dimensions to Tehran’s nuclear programme.