Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives looked on course Friday for a surprise victory in Britain’s general election that could herald more economic austerity and redefine the country’s future in Europe. Exit polls upended pre-election forecasts of a knife-edge contest between the Conservatives and Labour, and also pointed to a landslide for Scottish nationalists that will reopen the question of Scotland breaking away from the United Kingdom. The pound rallied on currency markets as the poll commissioned by Britain’s national b...

Hardly any country in the world hosts as many companies accused of severe human rights violations as Germany, according to a recent survey by the University of Maastricht. EurActiv Germany reports. Of 1,800 human rights violations analysed by the University of Maastricht, 87 can be traced to German companies. This places Germany in fifth position, according to the number of such cases, behind the United States (511 cases reported), the United Kingdom (198), Canada (110) and China (94). The list of potential human rights violations ...

Dozens of migrants are feared to have drowned Sunday after falling from a boat into the Mediterranean Sea, the aid organization Save the Children said Tuesday. [caption id="attachment_15672" align="alignleft" width="300"] Italy reports more than 5,800 migrants were rescued off the Libyan coast over the weekend Photo : AFP[/caption] The report is one of many describing migrants dying at sea. Thousands of people are leaving North Africa every month aboard crowded vessels to escape desperate conditions and reach...

If the Indian media has devoted wall-to-wall coverage of the Nepal earthquake, they were shown their place on social media on Sunday, the top trending hashtag being #GoHomeIndianMedia, which until evening had collected about 144,000 tweets. The online outrage is connected to the accusation that Indian TV channels have engaged in “insensitive” reporting of the aftermath of the earthquake. The TV channels, with their penchant for shoving microphones at suffering victims, have been accused of gross misconduct, in some situations even c...

With reports emanating from New Delhi that the BJP-led government at the Centre was keen to exclude Assam from implementation of Land Boundary Agreement between India and Bangladesh, Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi on Saturday requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to take such a decision. [caption id="attachment_15599" align="alignleft" width="300"] The Assam Chief Minister also reminded Prime Minister Modi of his statement made during his visit to Assam in November 2014 that the Protocol 2011 to the Indo-Bangladesh Boundary Agre...

Over the last two days, Nepal has been rattled by its worst earthquakes since 1934. More than 3,000 people have lost their lives, and villages, roads, highways and ancient buildings have been devastated. The total economic losses from the damage could be between $1 billion and $10 billion, according to the US Geological Survey’s best estimate. In all, the destruction could push the economy of Nepal—already one of the world’s poorest countries—back by a decade or more, significantly hurting the small Himalayan nation’s efforts to...