-The Times of India NEW DELHI: India, with the highest malaria burden outside Africa, will need an investment of $18 billion to achieve its 2030 deadline to eliminate the disease, says a latest estimate by the health ministry and malaria advocacy groups. Severe malaria outbreaks in India, aggravated by poor sanitation and drainage, underline an urgent and growing need for financial commitment to deal with a menace estimated to inflict nearly $2...

-Hindustan Times When launching the International Solar Alliance (ISA) during the United Nations Climate Change summit in 2015 at Paris, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, “The sun is the source of all energy, the world must turn to solar, the power of our future.” Last week, a solar power plant in Kamuthi, Tamil Nadu became the world’s largest plant. With a capacity to produce 648 MW of electricity, the plant comprises...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The government has declared 362 towns and cities in 15 states free of open defecation, with Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra topping the chart and Bengal scoring a duck. The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan aims to make the whole of India open-defecation-free by 2019. In Gujarat, 167 urban local bodies have been provided with open-defecation-free certificates, followed by 91 in Andhra Pradesh and 70 in Maharashtra. (See chart)     "A ward...

-IANS The Supreme Court on Thursday sought response from 13 drought-affected states as to why they were not lifting enough food grain to made available at subsidised rates to the priority and vulnerable sections of the people in affected areas. The bench of Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice N.V. Ramana sought response from the 13 states as NGO Swaraj Abhiyan told the court that they were not lifting sufficient food grains...

-The Times of India In the finely balanced but lucrative economy of vegetable and fruit trade, demonetisation has had a bizarre effect. In distant rural areas, local vegetable prices — both wholesale and retail — have crashed as the oxygen of currency has been suddenly sucked out. Since the whole economy depended on cash, from transport to mandis to purchase prices, this is unsurprising. But in cities, where there is more liquidity,...