-The Telegraph New Delhi: A scientific panel has identified flaws in India's existing regulatory system that governs genetically modified (GM) crops and called for an indefinite moratorium on trials of GM food crops until the regulatory system is fixed. The regulatory system, which the Indian government has used to process dossiers of several GM crops, has "major gaps" and will require "rethinking, investment, and relearning to fix," a technical expert committee (TEC)...

-The Business Standard The Uttarakhand floods have put the spotlight on the competence of the national body which was created with a vision 'to build a safer and disaster-resilient India' When thousands got swept away by floods in Uttarakhand on the night of June 16, little help reached the mountains till at least a day had passed. Though the weather department had issued a warning, the magnitude of the disaster shows that...

-The Telegraph Sonia Gandhi has questioned the laxity in monitoring midday-meal quality in the wake of the deaths of over 20 children in a Bihar school. The UPA chairperson called Union human resource development (HRD) minister M.M. Pallam Raju yesterday and expressed strong displeasure over the monitoring of the programme on which the Centre spends around Rs 10,000 crore a year, a source said. She said she was saddened by the death of...

-The Guardian Half of Indians have no toilet. It's one of many gigantic failures that have prompted Nobel prize-winning academic Amartya Sen to write a devastating critique of India's economic boom The roses are blooming at the window in the immaculately kept gardens of Trinity College, Cambridge and Amartya Sen is comfortably ensconced in a cream armchair facing shelves of his neatly catalogued writings. There are plenty of reasons for satisfaction...

-The United Nations   Member States kicked off a three-day meeting at the United Nations in New York today with the aim of finding ways to improve living standards and employment for the more than one billion people worldwide living with disabilities. About 80 per cent of the people with disabilities are of working age and face physical, social, economic and cultural challenge to their access to education, skills development and employment, according...