-Frontline DAVID SANDERS, Professor Emeritus and founding Director of the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa, is a specialist paediatrician with postgraduate qualifications in public health. One of the founders of the global public health movement, he has over 30 years' experience in health policy and programme development in Zimbabwe and South Africa, having advised governments as well as organisations such as...

-The United Nations A United Nations independent rights expert called today for policy changes that will allow developing countries the freedom to use their reserves to help secure the right to food without the threat of sanctions under current World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. "Trade rules must be shaped around the food security policies that developing countries need, rather than policies having to tiptoe around WTO rules," said Olivier De Schutter, Special...

-The Business Standard Expenses such as employment guarantees and loan waivers are, in effect, subsidies that are classified differently in government accounts Over the last few years, the government announced many policy initiatives that purportedly help the weaker sections of our society. Schemes initiated under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) or the distribution of free and affordable food items under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) are examples...

-IANS Believe it or not, salt was selling at an exorbitant Rs150 per kg in parts of Bihar amid rumours of an acute shortage of the essential ingredient of food. The state government rebutted the rumours on Thursday. There is no truth in reports that the state is facing shortage of common salt, Bihar's Food and Civil Supply Minister Shyam Razak told media persons in Patna. "It is purely a rumour, nothing else....

-PTI BHUBANESWAR/JAJPUR (ODISHA): People in various parts of Odisha started panic buying of salt on Monday following a rumour that it would disappear from the market, like potato, stretching the price even to Rs 60 a kg. Hit hard by the ongoing potato pinch for the last several days, people made a beeline to grocery shops to buy as much salt as they could, thus leading to mad scenes in the...