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Canada will formally withdraw its stand from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the country's minister of the environment Peter Kent has said, making it the first nation to pull out of the global treaty.  The protocol "does not represent a way forward for Canada" and would have forced it to take "radical and irresponsible choices", Mr. Kent said in Toronto on Monday. He added that it was a mistake for Canada to have signed up for Kyoto: "As we have said, Kyoto for Canada is in the past ... We are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto." "The Kyoto protocol does not cover the world's two largest emitters, China and the US, and therefore cannot work," he said. China, which argues that it should be exempt from emissions reduction targets because it is a developing nation, said Canada's decision was "regrettable" and went against international efforts to tackle climate change. "We

The World Bank is a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world. Its mission is to fight poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results and to help people help themselves and their environment by providing resources, sharing knowledge, building capacity and forging partnerships in the public and private sectors. WB is not a bank in the common sense; it is made up of two unique development institutions owned by 187 member countries: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA).  Each institution plays a different but collaborative role in advancing the vision of inclusive and sustainable globalization. The IBRD aims to reduce poverty in middle-income and creditworthy poorer countries, while IDA focuses on the world's poorest countries. Their work is complemented by that of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Invest

These are challenges to poor countries to demonstrate good governance and a commitment to poverty reduction. And these are challenges to wealthy countries to make good on their promise to support economic and social development of the world. The Millennium Development Goals have captured the world's attention, in part because they can be measured.   In September 2000, leaders from 189 nations agreed on a vision for the future: a world with less poverty, hunger, and disease; greater survival prospects for mothers and their infants; better-educated children; equal opportunities for women; and a healthier environment—a world in which developed and developing countries worked in partnership for the betterment of all.  This vision took the shape of eight Millennium Development Goals, which provide a framework for development planning for countries around the world, and time-bound targets by which progress can be measured.  To help track progress on the commitment made

At least 89 killed so far in the massive fire at AMRI private hospital in Kolkata, at West Bengal of India.  Nearly, 160 patients were admitted in the Hopital, The Times Of India said quoting hospital sources.  Additional director general, Fire Services, D Biswas was quoted as saying that patients who died were admitted in the critical care and orthopaedic units and were unable to move.  The private nursing home said a "sudden fire was detected in the basement" of an annex around 3:30am. Among the dead, there are 70 patients and three staff of the multi-storeyed private hospital which turned into a towering inferno in the early morning. The bodies of the other victims are being identified. The fire spread fast from the basement of the hospital, engulfing one ward after the other and trapping hundreds of people. While many patients died of burns, several others died due to suffocation. Kolkata police said 60 patients were rescued and shifted to other part

Samsung Electronics' tablet computer, the Galaxy Tab, will be available to consumers in Australia in the coming days, after the South Korean electronics giant scored a victory against Apple in a legal battle that had blocked the product from going on sale. Samsung welcomed the court's decision and said the Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be ready for sale in Australia in time for the Christmas shopping season. The Australian High Court denied Apple's appeal to an earlier court ruling that overturned an injunction placed on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 citing violation of its patent.  The recent ruling is expected to give Samsung a stronger footing in a legal battle it is involved in with Apple in several countries across the world, including the United States.  "The Full Court of Australia decision on November 30 clearly affirmed our view that Apple's claims lack merit and that an injunction should not have been imposed on the Galaxy Tab 10.1," Samsun

Researchers find planets by examining the brightness of stars as a function of time; brightness drops when a potential planet crosses the star. Three transits are required for a planet confirmation. The period of the transit of the newly discovered second earth 'Kepler 22-b' was 7.4 hours. It did not appear to give off its own light, indicating it is a planet and not a star. Scientists do not yet have a measurement of the mass of Kepler 22-b, which would tell them more about the composition of the planet. This summer, when the planet's star will be high in the sky, ground-based telescopes can attempt to get its mass. The planet is even more mysterious because its radius is between that of Earth and Uranus and Neptune, both of which have radii about four times the size of Earth's. So we don't know what a planet in this size range typically looks like. Is life restricted to Earth, or could it exist somewhere like Kepler 22-b? It may be that the char

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 'a new Earth' for the first time in the history of science of the world.  The newly discovered 'Kepler-22b' is the first confirmed planet in the "habitable zone," the area around a star where a planet could exist with liquid water on its surface. The planet's radius is about 2.4 times that of the Earth. It is located about 600 light years away. Its orbital period is shorter than that of the Earth: a "year" on Kepler-22b is 290 days instead of 365. There were two other planets confirmed this year by other projects in the habitable zone, but their stars are much cooler than our Sun, and their orbits are more like that of Venus or Mars, scientists say. Kepler-22b is 15% closer to its star and we are to the Sun. But since Kepler-22b's star is dimmer, lower in temperature and smaller than our Sun, researchers' modeling suggests it is a similar temperature to the Earth, said Bill Borucki, Ke