-Business Standard Govt Procurement target fixed at 30 mt in 2016-17, a bit more than in ongoing season; rice buying would be 35 mt Despite rough weather, wheat output would rise a little over seven million tonnes (mt) in 2015-16, enabling an increase in overall foodgrain production of one mt over the previous year, official advance estimates showed on Monday. Production of wheat is estimated at 94 mt, from 86 mt in 2014-15....

-The Hindu India has close to 1,00,000 cases of drug-resistant TB, most of which remain undiagnosed and untreated. So India’s state of preparedness to fight DR TB remains questionable. In a small, airless room in Dharavi, Owais sat chatting with his wife and two children. Outside, the famous rains of Mumbai beat down relentlessly on the thousands of tiny rooms that dot Dharavi. “I hope it doesn’t flood,” said Owais’s wife as he...

-The Hindu The Health Ministry’s plan for a malaria-free India by 2030 is laudable, but grand pronouncements are meaningless as long as manipulated data distort our knowledge and bad governance impedes genuine attempts to fight the disease This month, the Health Ministry will unveil an ambitious new plan to eliminate malaria from the country by 2030. A malaria-free India certainly sounds like a dream, or maybe an early campaign promise: the disease...

-The Hindu In order to have a chance of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need suitable technologies to make low-carbon transitions in development right away Now that the Paris Conference of the Parties (COP) meet is long over, countries need to concentrate on global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which need to peak soon and go to zero by mid-century if there is to be a chance of preventing average...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Dreaded gangster Sriprakash Shukla built his criminal empire on illegal money earned from railway contracts worth crores in places with big railway establishments like Gorakhpur and Banaras. But this could be a thing of the past as the state-run transporter is set to start online tendering of all contracts related to civil works within a month's time. Contracts for civil works worth around Rs 30,000 to...