-FAO FAO today forecast that 2012 world wheat production will be the second highest on record at 690 million tonnes and also announced that  international food prices rose one percent in February —  the second increase in two months.  Published today, FAO’s quarterly Crop Prospects and Food SITuation report forecast a 2012 wheat crop 10 million tonnes or 1.4 percent down from the record 2011 harvest but still well above the average...

A young IPS officer was crushed to death by the mining mafia in Madhya Pradesh's Morena district, over 450 km from here, on Thursday. Narendra Kumar, 30, who was posted as a Sub-Divisional Police Officer at Banmore in Morena on probation, tried to stop a tractor carrying illegally quarried stones but the driver ran over him, DIG Chambal range D.P. Gupta was quoted in the press as saying. Mr. Kumar...

-The Hindu Business Line   Hubli: Radiation and chemical-induced mutation and subsequent use in recombination breeding at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has resulted in the release of 39 improved crop varieties in oilseeds and pulses in India, said Dr Ratan Kumar Sinha, Director, BARC, Mumbai. Delivering the 25th Annual Convocation address of the UniverSITy of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, Karnataka, Dr Sinha said nuclear techniques in agriculture is particularly helpful in creating new...

BINDOL (NORTH DIANJPUR): In these arid, impoverished parts, Bindol has another name - kidney village. The wasted, skeletal men and women you would see slumped under the shade of trees are awaiting death with feeble breaths. This is the kidney sale capital of the state, perhaps of the country. Every second home here has someone who has sold his kidney to escape starvation. Many die within years.  Now, the dying men...

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to immediately order an impartial probe into the role of the Chhattisgarh police in the case of alleged torture of tribal teacher Soni Sori, now detained in the Raipur jail on charges of helping Maoists. It wants proper medical facilities provided to the 35-year-old mother, who was tortured so badly that “...two foreign body [sic] recovered of size 2.5 x 1.5...