ANYONE following the climate negotiations, especially since the disastrous pattern set at Copenhagen in 2009 and even more so given the tepid progress made since the wishy-washy Durban summit in 2011, could have seen it coming. There were low expectations from the Lima Conference of Parties (COP 20) to begin with and, true to form, the summit ended with a whimper of a statement, low on ambition on all fronts, emissions reduction, finance and technology, but full of statements with dark portents for the future.

VETERAN leader of the railway workers of India, former general secretary and president of the National Railway Mazdoor Union (NRMU), former vice president of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation (AIRF), one of the senior most members of the CPI(M) Maharashtra state committee and chairman of the Comrade B T Ranadive Memorial Trust, Comrade P R Menon passed away in Mumbai at the age of 81 on December 5, 2014.

TEN Left and communist parties of Telangana have launched two bus jathas that traversed across the state of Telangana highlighting the need for immediate measures from the state government to prevent the spate of farmer suicides. Ever since the new state came into existence on June 2 this year, over 450 farmers took their lives in Telangana. The Left parties have declared that both private loans and the policies of the government are responsible for these suicides.

THE current impasse in the parliament, with the Rajya Sabha not functioning for the third consecutive day, as we go to the press, is, once again, primarily due to the obduracy of this Modi government in not giving the House even a modicum of assurance on contentious issues.

THE Human Resources Development ministry has taken yet another offensive and unjustifiable decision to ask CBSE and other government-run schools to observe “good governance day” on Christmas day, December 25. Already the Navodaya schools’ management have decided that the schools will remain open on December 24 and 25.

This is a crude interference in the schedule of schools which go on Christmas vacation from December 24 and is an assault on the religious right of the Christian community.