-BBC   More than a million people have been displaced and at least 16 killed as floods in India's Orissa state submerged entire villages, officials say. Heavy monsoon rains submerged about 2,600 villages across 19 districts. Several rivers, including the Mahanadi, are overflowing and flood Waters have severed a number of key road links. In Pakistan, the UN has begun relief operations after weeks of rain affected millions in the south. At least 199 people have...

-IANS   Floods triggered by heavy rains over the past week and huge discharge of Water from Hirakud dam have killed at least 16 people in Orissa and displaced thousands, an official said Sunday. There were reports of six people being swept away in Nayagarh and Bargarh districts but their dead bodies were yet to be found. The situation continued to be grim in several places of the affected 19 of the state's 30...

Studies by the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Academic Forum on food security issues in the three countries suggest that providing food access works best when backed by cash transfers. A paper on food security brought out by the UNDP’s Brasilia-based International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG), under the Forum, shows that despite the great strides in food production made by India people in this country are just not eating enough. Citing indices...

-The Business Standard   Demand-side control cannot be an answer beyond a point to India’s persistently high food price inflation, the World Bank said on Monday. Consumer price-based food inflation in India has been at 10-20 per cent for quite a long while, noted its report on ‘Food inflation in South Asia’. The Bank’s chief economist for the region, Kalpana Kochhar, said controlling inflation in India was a difficult job for the Reserve Bank...

The next 72 hours will be crucial for the state as it battles to keep its head above rising floodWaters in the Mahanadi basin. Authorities kept an anxious watch on the situation today as Hirakud town was cut off from Sambalpur and the Pipli-Konark road was closed with several rivers still in spate. The government directed collectors of the 19 flood-hit districts to close down schools and colleges in the marooned...