-The New York Times     Small-scale farmers in the developing world, using low-tech sustainable agricultural techniques, may just hold the key to ensuring global food security, writes Andrea Stone The challenge is huge but the solution may be small, very small. Faced with global warming and a population that will swell to 9 billion by 2050, a growing number of experts say that the way to feed the masses as climate change makes...

-The United Nations   In the aftermath of the global economic crisis, more than 70 per cent of the world population is without proper social protections, the United Nations labour agency today reported, urging governments to scale up investment in child and family benefits, pensions and other public expenditures. "The global community agreed in 1948 that social security and health care for children, working age people who face unemployment or injury and older...

-The Hindu   That over 27 per cent of tobacco consumers in India fall in the 15-24 year age bracket amply demonstrates how successful the tobacco companies have been in continually enticing the vulnerable sections of the population into the suicidal practice. The addition of new customers every year even as thousands of patrons die annually ensures that the tobacco companies' customer base remains wide and tall. If the global tobacco-related mortality...

-The Diplomat   Climate change is stressing an already struggling farm sector, but there is a way forward. Over the last decade, India's official position in global climate negotiations has been one of opposition to agricultural mitigation. At Doha (COP18), India joined other developing countries in demanding that any talk about agriculture must be in the realm of adaptation, not mitigation. India considers the farm sector out of bounds with respect to emissions...

-Grist Media   The people of the Thar desert have their ways. This story unfolds over a year and recounts history through contemporary lives lived gently and with the land. It experiences first-hand the extraordinary old magic of growing lush crops in the desert. The land was the color of burnt caramel. It was flat and it was featureless: there was no tree in sight, no blade of grass, no ditch, no dune,...