-Myeducationtimes.com The 12th Five-Year Plan will be focusing on the Right to Education (RTE) Act. Vatsala Shrangi reports The 12th Five-Year Plan, which has been delayed and likely to be released by April, is going to focus on the Right to Education (RTE) Act as its central theme. Apart from RTE, the other key areas will include higher education and the setting up of central universities. "The 12th Five-Year Plan is still in...

-The United Nations Globalized food systems and the spread of Western lifestyles has spawned an international public Health disaster with over a billion people suffering from undernourishment while another billion remain overweight or obese, an independent United Nations expert warned today. “Our food systems create sick people,” said Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, as he presented his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council...

The US has dragged India to the World Trade Organization for banning poultry products in alleged violation of trade rules, but Indian officials say the country is ready to defend its measures in the formal consultations expected to begin soon.  India claims that the import ban is aimed at preventing avian influenza, but it has not given scientific evidence in line with international standards on avian-influenza control, US Trade Representative Ron...

-The Hindustan Times    Poor households of urban India are emerging hotspots for hunger and ill-Health and children there live in worse conditions than in rural areas, says a new UN report released on Wednesday.   The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) report -- state of the world’s children 2012 -- say that like most parts of the world, children living in around 49,000 slums in India are "invisible". Half of these slums are in...

-The United Nations The goal of reducing by half the number of people without access to safe drinking water has been achieved, well ahead of the 2015 deadline for reaching the globally agreed development targets aimed at ridding the world of extreme poverty, hunger and preventable diseases, the United Nations said today. Between 1990 and 2010, over two billion people gained access to improved drinking water sources, such as piped supplies and...