Agreement may be worked out before closure of conference   India maintained silence on listing of endosufan under the Rotterdam Convention at the fifth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention, which opened in Geneva on Monday. The Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade requires the exporting countries of listed chemicals to provide the importing countries with advance information on...

The health ministry has erected bureaucratic hurdles against a bio-Pesticide for mosquito control developed by Indian researchers, denying it entry into the public health programme while accepting similar imported products, scientists and entrepreneurs have said. The bio-Pesticide was developed at the Vector Control Research Centre (VCRC) in Puducherry during the 1980s. It is a powder or spray formulation containing a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis that can kill the larvae of several...

From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. Welcome to the 21st-century food wars. In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in...

A report by the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) reveals that there is a strong link between farmers’ suicides and denial of social and gender justice. It says that farmers’ suicides, which are a grim marker of India’s agrarian crisis, will become more severe in times to come due to the existing gender and caste-based discrimination. Issued by CHRGJ and the International Human Rights Clinic (at New York...

-The Hindu   Prolonged aerial spraying Endosulfan in the State-owned cashew estates claimed two more lives in the district. Silverster Manera, 45, a resident of Enamkudal near Badiyadukka, and T.K. Mani, 69, of Kallar village near Rajapuram, who had been undergoing treatment for diseases suspected to have been caused by the Pesticide, died on Thursday, sources said. Family members of Mandera lamented that the patient did not get adequate medical treatment . ...