-The Telegraph Fareed Zakaria, long thought of by New Delhi’s leadership as the first American secretary of state of Indian origin in the future, fell from grace yesterday when Time suspended his column in the weekly magazine for plagiarism. CNN, where Zakaria is a star Sunday morning international affairs television host, followed suit with a statement that he wrote a blog post on CNN.com “which included similar unattributed excerpts. That blog post...

-The Business Standard State must get out of insulin price-setting The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority, or NPPA, has turned down the request of drug companies to raise insulin prices. Domestic insulin-makers Biocon and Cadila had argued that the cost of production and packaging had become higher, and multinational corporation Eli Lilly wanted the depreciation in the rupee vis-à-vis the dollar to be factored into the price. The NPPA says it has...

-The Indian Express As drought pushes up food prices, India must invest in new irrigation methods The speculation on the delay of the monsoons and below-normal rainfall this year is not new to India. But the drought in the maize belt of the United States — that is, in the Midwest — was unexpected. The impact of the drought will be felt on wheat and soya bean production. This will eventually lead...

-The Economic Times With a weak monsoon, farmers and farm labour, agri-investors and policy makers, everyone is looking up in the sky and praying for more water to pour. Farm analysts are debating whether this will lead to a drop of 16 million tonnes of foodgrain, as it happened in 2009, or 38 million tonnes, as it did in 2002. NCAER is projecting 20 million tonnes drop in grain production in...

-The Times of India The empowered group of ministers headed by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is likely to meet again on Wednesday to discuss measures to counter the impact of spreading drought. The meet, the second in successive weeks, will take place after the India Meteorological Department officially announced a 15% deficit in rainfall for the monsoon season of 2012. Pawar has just concluded his first tour of drought affected states...