Reports

India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, has moved into his new home in Mumbai — a 27-storey mansion worth $1 billion. The house, named Antilia, has three helipads, a dance studio, a ball room, a 50-seat theatre and an underground car park for 160 cars. The 27-floor building (560 ft or 173 m) will be home to Ambani, the richest man in India and the fourth richest in the world, plus his wife Nita, their three children - daughter Isha and sons Akash and Anant - and mother Kokilaben. The family will...

Rich nations such as the United States of offloading food it would not feed its own children to poorer countries as food aid, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has said. "Foods we would never give our own children are being sent overseas as food aid to the most vulnerable children in malnutrition hotspots in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia," MSF's international president Unni Karunakara said in a statement. "This double standard must stop." MSF said food aid largely does not...

The floods that ravaged Pakistan since July caused an estimated $9.7 billion in damage to infrastructure, farms, homes, as well as other direct and indirect losses, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank (WB) have said. "$9.7 billion is almost double the amount of damage caused by the 2005 Pakistan earthquake," said Rune Stroem, ADB Country Director for Pakistan, on Friday. The two organisations made the estimate in their Damage and Needs Assessment (DNA), a survey conducted...

India has been found to rank 27th among 35 countries in providing civil access to justice, according to the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, a new tool designed to measure countries’ adherence to the rule of law. Strengths in open government and other areas were also found. Formally unveiled for the first time in Washington, Thursday, the Index provides new data regarding a variety of dimensions of the rule of law—such as whether government officials are accountable under the law, and...

The rule of law thrives best in wealthy nations like Sweden and the Netherlands but is dismal in poorer countries like Pakistan, Kenya, and Liberia, according to the Rule of Law Index released by the World Justice Project (WPJ). The Rule of Law Index, which assessed 35 countries around the world, noted that high-income countries generally respect the rule of law more than poor countries. At the same time, however, it found wide differences in performance on specific variables within and between...

Those who rely on Fox News are more inclined to believe rumours, a study looking at the behavioral patterns of viewers of reports pertaining to the Ground Zero mosque in has concluded. According to the study, a typical viewer who reported a low reliance on Fox News believed 0.9 rumors on average, while a similar respondent with a high reliance on Fox believed 1.5 rumors – an increase of 66 percent. On the contrary, people who relied heavily on CNN or NPR believed fewer false rumors. High...

With Egypt’s parliamentary elections drawing closer, the Hosni Mubarak government has begun cracking down on the media. The moves include clamping down on broadcasts of live shows and the manipulated sacking of a prominent newspaper editor. Egypt’s High Committee for Elections has not yet announced an exact date, but the elections are expected to be held in November. Mubarak, 82, has not yet announced his intention to contest, but speculation is rife that he would prop up his son Gamal. The...

Germany is increasingly turning xenophobic. One in three Germans believe that the country has too many foreigners, and over one in ten want a Führer at the helm of affairs, a survey released by a left-wing Berlin think-tank said Wednesday. The Friedrich Ebert Foundation, affiliated to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), published the study titled Die Mitte in der Krise - Rechtsextreme Einstellungen in Deutschland 2010, or “The mainstream in the crisis – Right-wing extremist attitudes in Germany,”...

Survival International has named its ‘Top 5 Hall of Shame’ – the key companies violating tribal peoples’ rights worldwide. But Vedanta Resources has missed out by a whisker – more by default, than by design. After the Indian government scrapped its mining project in the Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa, it is not getting the chance to trample on tribal peoples. But there are others who continue to do so with impunity around the world. Survival International has named them in its Top 5 Hall of Shame...

Nordic countries continue to show the world how to bridge inequality between men and women. Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden are the top four, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2010. The index’s scores can be interpreted as the percentage of the gap that has been closed between women and men. The 2010 report features a total of 134 countries, representing over 93% of the world’s population. Others in the Top 10 are New Zealand (5), Ireland (6), Denmark (7)...