-The Telegraph New Delhi: The US today pledged financial and technical assistance to help India expand its renewable energy programme, monitor air quality over its cities and improve India-specific climate forecasts among new initiatives on energy and climate. A joint statement issued tonight after delegation-level talks led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama outlined proposed actions that could help India curb its growth of greenhouse gas emissions and...

-The United Nations Private sector services, such as business and administrative services, and real estate, as well as related industries, will employ more than a third of the global workforce over the next five years, according to new data released by the United Nations labour agency. "Service sector employment will remain the most dynamic with respect to job creation in the next five years," said Raymond Torres, a head researcher of...

-The Indian Express Having decontrolled petrol and diesel, the government's next focus is on containing fertiliser subsidies. Key to this is decontrol of urea and ushering in a system of crediting subsidy payments directly into the bank accounts of farmers. HARISH DAMODARAN explains the existing subsidy regime and the road ahead. * What's so special about urea decontrol? Urea is the only fertiliser whose maximum retail price (MRP) is still fixed...

-Kafila.org With depressing regularity, the newspapers have been reporting farmers' suicides in many states. Recently, P Sainath wrote on BBC that around 296,438 farmers have committed suicide since 1995. He also mentions that cash crop cultivators of cotton, sugar cane, vanilla, pepper, groundnut etc account for the bulk of those suicides. According to a PIL heard by the Supreme Court in December 2014, around 3146 farmers in Maharashtra have committed suicide...

-The Indian Express The Centre is reportedly considering decontrol of urea over a period of three years, at the end of which retail prices would be totally market-determined, with farmers getting a fixed per-bag subsidy to be credited directly to their bank accounts. If this happens, it will probably be the most politically challenging economic reform the Narendra Modi government undertakes. Given the crash in global oil prices, decontrol of diesel...