The German Parliament has approved the introduction of the country's first national minimum wage, which will guarantee most workers in Europe's biggest economy at least 8.50 euros ($11.60) per hour starting next year. Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is taking the step at the insistence of her coalition partners since last December, the center-left Social Democrats. Some employers will have two years to phase in the minimum wage, which takes effect Jan. 1. Merkel's conservatives have gone along with the plan unenthusiastically; for d...

Emma Gibson, a Greenpeace campaigner from Kent who participated in the Kingsnorth power station protest in 2009, has been worried she could be deported from India ever since an intelligence report accusing several foreign-funded NGOs of stalling major infrastructure projects was leaked this month. The intelligence bureau (IB) report was submitted to Narendra Modi days after he took over as prime minister. Modi won last month's general election on an aggressive development plank. He had risen to national prominence due to his encouragement of big...

There is growing outrage in India after an MP threatened to kill opposition workers and have women raped. Trinamool Congress (TMC) party MP Tapas Pal made the controversial comments warning the rival Communist party while addressing his party supporters. His wife has apologised for his remarks and his party has asked him to explain his comments within 48 hours, reports BBC. Several opposition parties and the National Commission for Women have also condemned his comments. Mr Pal made the threat weeks ago, but a video clip of his comment...

France and Germany yesterday looked set to ramp up pressure on Russia to stem the Ukraine conflict in frantic negotiations as the clock ticks down on a shaky truce. French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were due to hold four-way telephone talks with Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin and new Kiev leader Petro Poroshenko ahead of a 1900 GMT deadline for an unsteady ceasefire to end in violence-hit eastern Ukraine, reports AFP. The last-minute talks follow a two-hour conversation between the quartet on Sunday in which Merk...

Western governments are rushing to visit Prime Minister Narendra Modi, drawn by the prospect of multi-billion-dollar deals as the government prepares to open the nascent defence industry to foreign investment. Senior politicians from France, the United States and Britain arrive in quick succession over the next 10 days as PM Modi prepares to accelerate the modernisation of the country’s mostly Soviet-era weaponry. [caption id="attachment_7581" align="alignleft" width="300"] PM Narendra Modi sitting in the cockpit of a MiG 29 K ...

Landlocked Tripura is set to get its foodgrain supply from mainland India through sea, land and river routes via Bangladesh. Such a move was necessitated with the monsoon rain lashing the state will be likely a six-month ‘mega block’ of the only rail link between Guwahati and Agartala from October. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) will send 10,000 tonne of foodgrain — rice and wheat — as a pilot from Andhra Pradesh to Tripura via Bangladesh. The transportation is likely to take two weeks and if the “experiment works well”, then the process will continue for eight months. [caption id="attachment_7466" align="alignleft" width="300"]