-The Telegraph New Delhi: A petition seeking a ban on 99 pesticides already outlawed or restricted in advanced nations has prompted the Supreme Court to seek responses within four weeks from the ministries of agriculture and chemical-and-fertilisers besides the Central Insecticides Board. These pesticides are killing hundreds in India and causing serious illness to thousands, the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud heard on Monday. Moved...

-The Hindu Aadhaar-based Biometric Authentication does nothing in the battle against graft — there are better alternatives In a sickening way, October 2017 was like October 2002. Fifteen years ago, in Rajasthan’s Baran and Udaipur districts, there was a spate of starvation deaths. The government of the time made up fanciful stories to deny that the deaths had anything to do with hunger or government failure. In October 2017, the death of an 11-year-old...

-Firstpost.com Delhiites are cursed by geography to be prone to a meteorological phenomenon called inversion where warm air rests above the colder air closer to the ground, preventing it from mixing upwards thereby trapping all that we put into it – almost like a lid Delhi’s pollution episodes at this time of the year have become an annual affair - the latest one has the Chief Minister comparing Delhi to a gas...

-Tehelka.com Learning from the recent starvation deaths in Jharkhand, the nation’s leaders must pay heed to the necessity of ensuring food security for all Food and hunger have been important issues this past month and the news has not been welcome. First it was India’s dismal rank in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2017 released by the International Policy Research Institute rankings — 100th among 119 countries. GHI looks at undernourishment, child...

-NDTV Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan said air pollution in Delhi had gone beyond an acceptable level and would have an adverse health impact but it wasn't right to call it a health emergency. Panaji: Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan appears to question recent global studies that claim lakhs of people die in India due to pollution. Dr Harsh Vardhan told NDTV in an interview that "to attribute any death to a cause like...