—Xinhua Deepening degradation and scarcity of land and water resources pose a severe challenge to the world's capacity to meet human demands by 2050, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Director-General Jacques Diouf said on Monday. FAO report In the last 50 years, a significant increase in food production combined with demographic pressure and unsustainable agriculture practices have spoiled the land and water systems upon which food production depended, Diouf told a press...

The High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage for India on Sunday held a brainstorming session here to address concerns raised by the World Bank over some of the recommendations in its report for the 12th Five Year Plan. Among the issues raised were marginalisation of the private sector and the “elimination of intermediation by insurance companies.” The expert group, which will revert to the Planning Commission on Monday with...

The killing of Sister Valsa John over tribal rights is another episode of land dispute in the coal belt Why would 40 people kill a solitary nun in a remote village in coal-rich Dhumka in Jharkhand? Sister Valsa John is better known as an activist than a nun of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus & Mary. She left her home in Kerala and moved to Jharkhand two decades ago as...

-Globe and Mail Sister Valsa John wanted to go home. Living in self-imposed exile hundreds of kilometres away, she pined for the hut in an aboriginal village where she had built a life. She talked about the people she loved there, and the quiet of the nights. Then she added, in a voice both wistful and matter-of-fact: “If I go home, most probably they will kill me.” They did kill her. In...

While higher income levels mean countries have more money to improve women's health, ultimately it comes down to how governments decide to spend the money We know that economic growth and human development do not always go hand in hand, as evidenced by the very different position of countries in per capita GDP rankings compared with human development rankings. But the link between health conditions and economic growth is usually thought...