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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

At least 32 people have died and 132 injured after a bridge collapsed at a political event in India's tea-producing region of Darjeeling on Saturday night.  More than 150 villagers were standing on the bridge for talks by local separatist leaders on Saturday night when it collapsed.  Officials say the victims fell at least 70ft (21m) into the fast-flowing Rangeet Khola river. The army, fire brigade and police helped residents in the rescue effort. Up to 60 people were rescued on Saturday night, but the search on Sunday was mainly focused on areas down river, reports say.  Government help People had gathered in the village of Bijonbari, 30km (20miles) from Darjeeling, to listen to speeches by leaders of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) party. The GJM is fighting for a separate state for the tea-producing Darjeeling hills. "A cultural programme was being held on one side of the bridge, while a meeting was being held on the other," GJM General Secretary

President Barack Obama on Friday (October 21, 2011) announced that virtually all U.S. troops will come home from Iraq by the end of the year -- at which point he can declare an end to America's long and costly war in that Middle Eastern nation. "After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over," Obama said. "The coming months will be a season of homecomings. Our troops in Iraq will definitely be home for the holidays."  Of the 39,000 troops in Iraq, about 150, a negligible force, will remain to assist in arms sales, a U.S. official told CNN. The rest will be out of Iraq by December 31.  The president said he was making good on his 2008 campaign pledge to end a war that has divided the nation since it began in 2003 and claimed more than 4,400 American lives.The announcement also came after talks that might have allowed a continued major military presence broke down amid disputes about whether U.S. troops would be immune to prosecution by

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud died in New York due to illness, officials said Saturday (October 22, 2011), raising succession questions in the key oil-producing country of the world.  No other details about his death were immediately available, but arrangements are under way to transport his body back to Saudi Arabia, officials said.  Crown Prince Sultan, thought to be in his 80s, was Saudi Arabia's minister of defense, and was one of the top figures in the Saudi kingdom. He's had various medical issues in recent years. In 2009, he was in New York for surgery for an undisclosed illness and had also flown to Morocco for medical treatment over the years.  The country's royal court released a statement about the death Saturday. "King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud mourns the death of his brother and his Crown Prince ... Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud," the statement said.  The statement also said he died "outsi

"We mounted a complex operation with unprecedented speed and conducted it with the greatest of care," Rasmussen said. "I'm very proud of what we have achieved."  NATO also called an end to its air war in Libya. At an understated and sparsely-attended news conference late on Friday (October 21, 2011), NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had taken a preliminary decision to call a halt to Operation Unified Protector on October 31.  Like other Western officials, Rasmussen expressed no regrets in public about the gruesome death of the deposed Libyan dictator, who was captured alive by the forces of the National Transitional Council but was brought dead to a hospital.  The NATO operation, officially intended to protect civilians, effectively ended on Thursday with French warplanes blasting Gaddafi's convoy as he and others tried to escape a final stand in Sirte.  NTC officials have said Gaddafi later died of wo

The clan of Muammar Gaddafi demanded a chance to bury the body that lay on display in a meat locker after a death as brutal and chaotic as his 42-year rule.  In a statement on a Syria-based pro-Gaddafi television station, the ousted dictator's family asked for the bodies of Gaddafi, his son Mo'tassim, and others who were killed on Thursday by fighters who overran his hometown Sirte. "We call on the UN, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International to force the Transitional Council to hand over the martyrs' bodies to our tribe in Sirte and to allow them to perform their burial ceremony in accordance with Islamic customs and rules," the statement said.  Like other Western officials, Rasmussen expressed no regrets in public about the gruesome death of the deposed Libyan dictator, who was captured alive by the forces of the National Transitional Council but was brought dead to a hospital. "We mounted a complex operation

Dragged from hiding in a drainage pipe, a wounded Moammar Gadhafi raised his hands and begged revolutionary fighters: "Don't kill me, my sons." Within an hour, he was dead, but not before jubilant Libyans had vented decades of hatred by pulling the eccentric dictator's hair and parading his bloodied body on the hood of a truck. The death Thursday of Gadhafi, two months after he was driven from power and into hiding, decisively buries the nearly 42-year regime that had turned the oil-rich country into an international pariah and his own personal fiefdom. It also thrusts Libya into a new age in which its transitional leaders must overcome deep divisions and rebuild nearly all its institutions from scratch to achieve dreams of democracy. "We have been waiting for this historic moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed," Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said in the capital of Tripoli. "I would like to call on Libyans to put aside the g

Deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has been killed, interim Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril told reporters in Tripoli on Thursday (October 20, 2011). There are conflicting reports surrounding the circumstances of his killing, which reportedly happened in or near Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte on Thursday. Libya's ambassador to the United Kingdom says that Gadhafi's body is in Misrata, Libya. A different source – a spokesman for a member of the Tripoli military council – says that one of Gadhafi's sons, Mutassim, and Moammar Gadhafi's chief of intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi, also have been killed.  A grisly video that aired on the Al Jazeera Arabic network appears to show a lifeless Gadhafi with a wound to his head. A photograph distributed by the news agency Agence France-Presse also appeared to show the longtime dictator severely wounded.  CNN could not independently verify the authenticity of the images. In another major development, revo

Google earned a record $7.5 billion in the third quarter, and announced that its three-month-old Google+ social network now has 40 million users. That's a big increase from the 10 million users Google+ had at the end of Google's last quarter, when it remained in a "limited" trial phase. The network opened to the public in late September.  In an earnings release late Thursday, Google said it earned $9.72 per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast earnings of $8.74 per share.  Investors are looking to Google's advertising figures as a barometer of the overall economy, and the numbers were good -- though the cost-per-click increase was not as high as it was last quarter. Profit rose as both the number of clicks on Google's ads and the amount that advertising partners pay per click increased.  Paid clicks rose 28% and cost per click ticked up 5% compared to last year. Sales for the Mountain View, Calif., company rose 33% over the yea

Prices in China continued to rise at a steady pace in September, a sign that the world's largest nation still faces significant inflation pressures even amid signs of a slowing global economy.  Overall prices were up 6.1% from a year ago, little improved from the 6.2% rise in August. The reading matched the consensus forecast, according to Jay Bryson, international economist at Wells Fargo Securities. Food prices continued to lead the way, increasing 13.4%, the same as the previous month, and adding 4.1 percentage points to the overall increase. "Food price increases seems to be, at a minimum, stabilizing, maybe even beginning to recede for some products," Bryson said.  Food prices were increasing at a 14.8% annual rate as recently as July. The Chinese government has been taking steps to try to curb inflation. The People's Bank of China has raised it key interest rates five times since October. And it has also allowed the Chinese currency, the yuan, to

AT&T sold more than 2.00 lac of latest iPhone made by Apple Inc's in the first 12 hours its first unveiling and said it had seen "extraordinary demand" for a gadget unveiled a day before the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. The iPhone 4S was unveiled on Tuesday (October 4, 2011) and immediately underwhelmed fans who had hoped for a revolutionary design after a wait of more than 15 months. But Wall Street analysts are betting that hardware updates and software enhancements, including a well-reviewed voice-recognition software system, will pull in buyers.  AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint began taking U.S. online orders for the device on Friday(October 07, 2011). Comparisons are difficult because the iPhone is now carried by three wireless operators, versus just one.  Last year AT&T was the only carrier to sell the phone. But the previous generation of the smartphone, the iPhone 4, was the fastest-selling mobile in Apple's history, with

London Heathrow Airport has topped the world’s busiest airport list (by international passengers) for the past 11 years, but the rank will certainly change when Beijing’s Daxing airport opens. Currently under construction, the new airport will be Beijing’s third airport -- after Beijing Capital International Airport and the semi-military Nanyuan Airport -- and will occupy a total of 54 square kilometers with nine runways. Due to be completed in 2015, Daxing airport is expected to handle 120 to 200 million passengers a year. That’s twice, or even three times, the capacity of Heathrow’s current annual passenger flow. The airport is planned only three years after the third terminal of Beijing Capital International Airport was put into operation. Designed to manage air traffic during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the terminal was then the world's largest airport building, with more floor space than all five Heathrow terminals combined. Even that is not enough to handle China’

As "All My Children" fans get ready to say goodbye to the soap on September 23, they're also bidding farewell to "AMC" actress Mary Fickett, who has passed away. According to the New York Times, Fickett died Thursday at her home in Callao, Va., at the age of 83. Her daughter tells the Times the cause was complications from Alzheimer's. Fickett was one of the original cast members, and portrayed the outspoken nurse Ruth Martin from 1970-1995 and again from 1998-2000. In 1973, the character earned Fickett the first Emmy given to an actor for a daytime drama on the strength of a speech delivered against the Vietnam War. The network says in a statement that they're "very saddened to learn about the passing" of Fickett. "As we honor 'All My Children’s' 41 years on ABC, we cannot help but recognize and remember Mary’s wonderful depiction of Pine Valley’s revered Ruth," the statement continues. "Ruth’s marriage to chief

A passenger train rammed into a waiting train in southern India, killing nine people and leaving dozens injured, officials said Wednesday. The accident happened Tuesday at a stop sign in Tamil Nadu state. At least 60 passengers onboard the stationary train were injured, railway spokesman Anil Kumar Saxena said. Emergency crews have rescued all the survivors trapped in the wrecked carriages, he said. India's massive rail network, used by hundreds of thousands of passengers daily, has a poor safety record. Official figures show 100 train accidents occurred in India in the 2009-10 fiscal year and 115 in 2008-09.

Khairul Anam borne in a village of Bangladesh in the late of 1980s. Mr. Anam passed his early life in the village Khojarhut under the Sadar Upazila of Jessore, a south-west District of the country. He used to go to school every morning taking bath from a pond situated beside their house. He saw that farmers were cultivating paddy without any under-ground water at least two seasons of the total three seasons every year. People used to catch fish from the tiny river flowed beside their village. Meanwhile, Mr. Khairul passed his Primary and Secondary education during mid of the last decade of the last century. He looked change of environment of his society very consciously. The water flow of the river had been flowed for about unknown number of years came to totally plain field in the dry season during the first five years of the first decade of the new century.  Besides, the only pond where Mr. Anam used to take bath and catch fish with his father also has turned into a  dry field duri

The decisive victory by Yingluck Shinawatra and her Pheu Thai party was "a very strong punch in the gut" to Thailand's ruling elite and will in fact lend the country some stability for now, said one political observer of Thailand. The new reality for Thailand is that Yingluck's brother Thaksin, the former prime minister who was ousted in a 2006 coup, remains extremely popular, and that fighting the electoral will would be dangerous, said Roberto Herrera-Lim, a director at Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm. In a strong message to those who would consider being a turncoat to Yingluck's party, former Thaksin supporters who had defected in 2007 and enabled Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's rise to prime minister, lost in Sunday elections, Herrera-Lim pointed out. The ensuing months will also be a time for the military to reassess strategy, to assess whether the pro-Yingluck sentiment is a temporary development or not, he added. Yin