Finance minister Mukherjee in a time warp as India’s success story wobbles

DELHI: Hidden away in the timid and inconclusive but mildly populist annual Budget speech that Pranab Mukherjee, India’s finance minister, delivered on Monday, were a few tiny sops for the country’s blighted environment. Just £85m was allocated for clean energy and cleaning rivers, and there were some customs duty cuts for solar lanterns and for [...]

By John Elliott | The Foreign Desk | Wednesday, 2 March 2011 at 9:01 am

Online House Hunter: Arsenal’s early win

Whether you’re a Gunners’ fan or a Leyton Orient fan, you can pick up some winning house-hunting tips from our Online House Hunter.

By Alan Cleaver | Property | Wednesday, 2 March 2011 at 7:00 am

iBet: Leyton Orient won’t be a pushover for Arsenal

Arsenal v Leyton Orient, FA Cup, 7.45pm

Lay under 1.5 goals at 5 to one with Betfair
Leyton are on a fantastic run and proved their resilience to snatch a draw against Arsenal to force this lucrative replay, which The Gunners could do well without. Arsenal could end up with nothing and games like this could contribute [...]

By Gareth Purnell | Sport | Wednesday, 2 March 2011 at 1:00 am

Is David Cameron eclipsing Barack Obama as a world leader?

Number 523 in a series that keeps on giving, of Questions to Which the Answer is No. This one is asked by Nile Gardiner, one of the Pharaoh’s attendants at the Telegraph. No idea what he is on about.

Thanks to Graham, Mark Ferguson and Paddy Briggs.

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 1 March 2011 at 9:52 pm

You can never be too thin…

Well, not thin (or scantilly clad) enough for Burda Magazines, The People and Femail.
As part of last week’s activities to spread awareness of Eating Disorders, especially the challenge to the media of how they go about reporting mental illnesses such as Anorexia and Bulimia, I agreed to give an interview to a freelance journalist who [...]

By Ilona Burton | Notebook | Tuesday, 1 March 2011 at 7:23 pm

When History first came to a .

Delighted to discover two things about the title of Francis Fukuyama’s* famous essay and book.
One is that the essay was in fact one of the earliest entries in my series of Questions to Which the Answer is No, in that it had a question-mark. It was called The End of History? (while the book was called The [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 1 March 2011 at 3:21 pm

In it for the long run: half marathon

On Sunday I spent a lovely couple of hours running round the Kent countryside with a rhino by my side. Not a normal Sunday by any stretch of the imagination but fun nonetheless. It might have come a little later in my training schedule than I’d hoped, but finally after all the injury anguish, I [...]

By Jane Bainbridge | Sport | Tuesday, 1 March 2011 at 12:53 pm

Aid and Indian Billionaires

I would have thought that the case against the UK taxpayer funding development aid to India was open and shut (although the Guardian inevitably tries to keep it ajar), but have been intrigued by repeated references to India having “three times as many billionaires” as Britain.
I traced it to this report in the Daily Mail [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 1 March 2011 at 12:06 pm

World of weather: under the sea

The oceans are filled with sound – from marine life, ships and even raindrops hitting the surface. Until recently, this noise was mostly seen as being a nuisance or a danger to ocean-dwelling creatures. But a study has found an important benefit to that noise – using it to study the physics of the ocean, [...]

By Dr Liz Bentley | Notebook | Tuesday, 1 March 2011 at 11:50 am

Caught & Social: A toast for Oscar

Daily gossip from the world of celeb

By Luke Blackall | Notebook | Tuesday, 1 March 2011 at 11:41 am