Reports

Here's exactly what meets even to the undiscerning eye. The empirical evidence of so many young foreigners has found a sound statistical basis — about one in every four foreign students in India pursues his or her studies in Karnataka. The state is reported to have around 10,100 foreign students, which constitutes around 36.7 per cent of the total number of foreign students studying in the country. It is the leading state in attracting students from overseas, followed by neighbouring Andhra...

Most river basins in India are under duress, and stand in the mortal danger of moving to the "extremely high" level of baseline water stress. Though India does not figure in the list of 37 countries which face “extremely high” levels of baseline water stress, using more than 80 percent of their available water supply every year, it is close enough at 41 position, according to the first-ever global water stress rankings. The rankings, created by the US-based World Resource Institute's Aqueduct...

India is leaking like a tap. Money is flowing out of the country, and there seems no way of plugging the breach. Crime, corruption, and tax evasion drained US$344 billion from India between 2002 and 2011. Illicit financial flows, in fact, have jumped more than 10 times from $7.9 billion in 2002 to roughly $85 billion in 2011. The findings—which peg cumulative illicit financial outflows from developing countries at US$5.9 trillion —are part of a new study published Thursday by Global Financial...

When the swank, new terminal of Bengaluru International Airport opens for the public sometime soon, it will cater to rich taste. And the flavour of the new airport will be a brand new brand — the Malgudi Tiffin Centre restaurant. The ethnic South Indian restaurant in the middle of one of the most modern airports in India has been planned and positioned (both physically and otherwise) as a pleasant surprise to the visitor. It's the first thing that meets the eye after one exits the security check...

Development is taking its toll on birds, and it is getting worse every year. Fifteen bird species that are found in India have been declared 'Critically Endangered' in the just released IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. If that's not all, three other bird species now face greater danger than before. These have been uplisted to Near Threatened (NT) and Vulnerable (VU) categories. Earlier, these were better off and classified under the Least Concern (LC) category by IUCN. Four of these birds...

Just 90 companies have been responsible for almost two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions generated since the Industrial Revolution began, new research has suggested. It found that 83 of these companies are energy companies producing oil, gas and coal. If that is not worrying enough, the study by Richard Heede of the Colorado-based Climate Accountability Institute has concluded that half of all emissions have been produced in the last 25 years alone. What has got the goat of climate change...

Mysore will host India's first exclusive film and digital arts festival, which will showcase a buffet of curated films, and the latest in game cinematics, and visual effects. The ABAI Fest 2013, organised by the Association of Bangalore Animation Industry (ABAI) is aimed at professionals and aficionados of cinema and television, and computer games developers to give them and the audience a taste of what it is to be part of this revolutionary new world of digital content creation. The two-day...

Things and times certainly have changed. Definitely from the times when you ordered a custom-configured computer from a manufacturer. Now, one can configure a high-end luxury television, and that too with a mobile app. The company that has come up with this cutting edge innovation is US-based Vu Technologies, that also operates out of Mumbai. One of the R&D centres of the company, which is known for its super TVs, is located in Bangalore. Vu Technologies CEO Devita Saraf, who was in the city for...

Leading medical researchers have called for a total overhaul of the global healthcare system. The entire structure of health-care delivery for effective antibiotics – from research and development, to distribution and rational use – needs to be re-engineered to address the looming global threat of antibiotic resistance, a global team of 26 scientists asserted in a report in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Sunday. The report presents a comprehensive global overview of the growing...

Even as Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi on Saturday was exhorting the IT sector to lead the country towards progress and his media managers putting brains together for the much-hyped rally here on Sunday, a fast one was being pulled on him. And that too in Bangalore itself — a multi-purpose cargo berth and a barge jetty of the Kandla Port Trust (which is located in the Gulf of Kutch) were remotely inaugurated by Union minister for shipping GK Vasan at a function in the city. The ostensible...