-IPS News UXBRIDGE, Canada- Growing water shortages in many countries are a major threat to global security and development and should be a top priority at the U.N. Security Council, a panel of experts said in a new report. However, that report ignores the biggest threat to water security: neoliberal policies of the free market economic system laying waste to the natural world and turning water into a commodity, activists counter. China...

-The Wall Street Journal/ Live Mint More than 60 million pushed below poverty line in India by healthcare costs in 2011 More than 60 million people were pushed below the poverty line in India by healthcare costs in 2011, said the Lancet medical journal, making a case for universal health coverage (UHC) in its latest issue. This comes amid international debate on the role of insurance, affordable medicines and access to healthcare. The...

-The Telegraph India is watching three Dutch and Danish non-government organisations that have allegedly “cultivated” voluntary organisations in the Northeast to gather data for anti-India reports to be presented to the United Nations. Officials of these foreign agencies may face visa restrictions too. Reports prepared by voluntary organisations on human rights violations by the security forces in India’s northeastern states, particularly Manipur, have become “base material” for reports to the UN that are...

-The United Nations The world needs to take a hard look at speculation on the financial markets and its potential impact on food price volatility, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today. “Excessive food price volatility, especially at the speed at which price swings have been occurring since 2007, has negative impacts on poor consumers and poor producers alike all over the world,” FAO’s Director-General, José...

There are major issues at stake in the Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development to be held on 20-22 June. Yet governments of developing countries have not given adequate importance to the run-up to the conference. As has happened in the climate change negotiations, the outcome draft now under negotiation shows a concerted move to rewrite the terms of global environmental governance. There is an attempt to push through the decidedly...