UN says poverty in India higher than Pakistan

New Delhi: India has the world’s largest number of citizens living under the poverty line, with 612 million, according to a UN report.

Despite of the impression that India economy is fastest growing in the world, it has been ranked as poorer than its neighboring Pakistan, Daily Telegraph said quoted report of United Nations on global poverty.

The report also finds more ‘gender equality’ in conservative Pakistan than in ‘tolerant’ India.

Its findings amount to a wake-up call for a nation which has taken great pride in its rapid economic growth and the increasing clout of its billionaire business leaders but has failed to share the spoils with its poor. Britain’s Department for International Development has pointed to this chequered progress to justify its continuing aid to India.

The Human Development Report reveals that while India ranks slightly above Pakistan in its level of ‘human development’ – based on life expectancy, schooling and per capita income – its wider poverty level is worse than Pakistan.

In absolute terms, 41.6 per cent of India’s 1.1 billion people earned less than 78 pence per day compared with 22.6 per cent of Pakistan’s 173 million.

The report quotes its ‘multi-dimensional poverty index’ which includes measures of schooling, child mortality, nutrition, access to electricity, toilets, drinking water, and hygienic living conditions, and reveals India is poorer.

More surprisingly, India is ranked below Pakistan and Bangladesh on gender equality which reflects maternal death rates, teenage pregnancies, access to education, and the number of women parliamentarians and in the workplace.

Read more »

Indo-Pak Express-Aisam,Bopanna wins Paris Masters final

Paris: Pakistani tennis star Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi and his Indian partner Rohan Bopann defeaed Julien Benneteau and  Nicolas Mahut to clinch the title of Paris Masters Tennis Tournament.

Aisam and Bopanna defeated the French duo in straight sets with score 6-2,6-4.

Earlier in semi-finals, the seventh-seeded Pak-Indo pair won straight sets 6-3, 7-6 (7)  over the third seeded Belarusian-Canadian combination after battle of one hour and 27 minutes.

On Friday, they had shocked second seeds Michael Llodra and Nead Zimonjic 3-6, 6-4, 10-6 in the quarter-finals of the euro 2,750,000 event.

Read more »

Climate change to bring more floods: World Bank

 

A girl reacts as she gets hit with a wave of flood water while walking with her family in Bangkok November 9, 2011. - Photo by Reuters

HANOI: Climate change will bring more floods and extreme weather to Southeast Asia, a World Bank official said on Thursday on a visit to the region, where hundreds have died in severe inundation.
“What we are seeing is there are more floods, more extreme weather events, higher temperature, more variable rainfalls and we believe that is caused by the climate change.
And we should expect this to increase, sadly,” Andrew Steer, the World Bank’s special envoy for the climate change, told reporters in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.
Thailand’s worst floods in half a century have killed 533 people and damaged the homes and livelihoods of millions around the country.
In the neighbouring Cambodia, the deadliest floods since 2000 have killed at least 247 people while more than 100 have died in Vietnam, mostly in the southern Mekong Delta.
Steer, who cancelled plans to visit Thailand on his regional tour because of the disaster, said the floods there were “consistent with what we know to be true about climate change.”
The United Nations says climate change, fuelled by hydrocarbon-based energy systems, is the world’s most pressing environmental issue.

Read more »

Award shows and reunions- entertainment this week

A collection of images from concerts and award shows that took place this past week. -Photos by agencies

The audience watch Reyli perform “Al fin Me Arme De Valor” at the 12th annual Latin Grammy Awards in Las Vegas, Nevada November 10, 2011.

Read more »

Bopanna-Qureshi Reach First ATP World Tour Masters 1000 Final

Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi advanced to their first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 doubles final on Saturday at the BNP Paribas Masters.
The seventh seeds defeated in-form third seeds Max Mirnyi and Daniel Nestor 6-3, 7-6(7) in 89 minutes.
Bopanna and Qureshi, who form 'The Indo-Pak Express', took a 6-3, 3-1 lead before Mirnyi and Nestor won four straight games to lead 5-4 in the second set.
Bopanna and Qureshi could not convert two match point opportunities at 6-4 in the tie-break and were forced to save one set point at 6-7, before making it third-time lucky at 8-7 to record their 37th match win of the season (37-23 record).
The duo have lifted two ATP World Tour titles at the Gerry Weber Open in Halle (d. Haase-Raonic) and the If Stockholm Open (d. Melo-Soares) this year. Nestor and Mirnyi dropped to a 42-19 season mark, which includes a 3-3 record in finals.
Bopanna and Qureshi will meet Julien Benneteau and Nicolas Mahut in Sunday's final after the French wild cards broke serve three times from 12 opportunities to defeat Santiago Gonzalez and Christopher Kas 6-1, 7-6(3) in 80 minutes.
Benneteau and Mahut are through to their first ATP World Tour doubles final together since 2009 Lyon, where the duo won their second team title.

Read more »

Bollywood actress Ashwarya's Pregnancy news hits the world

Aishwarya’s pregnancy is touching people in creepy ways. Whereas various are just glad with have a good time with the moment, nurses of the Seven Hills Hospital declared a strike, thinking that it’s a good time for this!

As Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan plan for their moment of joy, we discover someone else ‘cashing’ in on this moment too! Well, exactly. they say that the nurses at 7 Hills Hospital, where Aishwarya had spent for a check up previous night, have exposed to go on strike if their wants are not met. So, what precisely are these demands? It seems that the nurses were promised a 10 percent trek after joining, but in real term they were given a trek of only four percent. So, their demand from the administration is to fulfill their promise. Also this is not all, on November 9, 2011 the nurses went on a shutter down-strike, called the flash strike, now the management takes notice. While the officials of Eight Hills don’t really believes that the promise should be fulfilled, it looks like the nurses will probably keep theirs. Well, talk about mauke pe chauka! But we don’t blame the nurses, because in Mumbai & a bit of elegance does go a lengthy way! Anyway, we expect all this gets solved before Ashwarya goes into labor room. Also we wouldn’t want to see Ashwarya delivering her baby with the help of her husband Abhishek.

Read more »