-Outlook Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz is one of the world’s leading economists. A former chief economist at the World Bank and currently University Professor at the Columbia Business School, he was recently in India to attend an international conference on development and to promote his new book, The Price of Inequality. He spoke to Pranay Sharma about growing inequality in the world and the challenges facing India. Excerpts: * Your coinage,...

Rising corn prices in the United States brought about by biofuel mandates have cost developing countries 6.6 billion dollars over the past six years, says a study by Global Development And Environment Institute at Tufts University (GDAE).  Net Food Importing Developing Countries, among the most vulnerable to food price increases, incurred ethanol-related costs of $2.1 billion, the study concludes. (See highlights and the links below). The recent spike in world food prices...

-Outlook Could scientists have got the impacts of climate change on food supply wildly wrong? I believe we might have made a mistake: a mistake whose consequences, if I am right, would be hard to overstate. I think the forecasts for world food production could be entirely wrong. Food prices are rising again, partly because of the damage done to crops in the northern hemisphere by ferocious weather. In the US, Russia...

-The United Nations Amid economic crises, climatic shocks, and high and volatile food prices in a world of plenty where nearly 870 million people still go hungry, the United Nations today marked World Food Day by highlighting agricultural cooperatives as vital weapon in the war on poverty and hunger. “Owned by their members, they can generate employment, alleviate poverty, and empower poor and marginalized groups in rural areas, especially women, to drive...

-The Hindu Cyber security threats have recently emerged as the new defining security challenge in a networked global Internet economy. This explains why National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and his deputy Vijay Latha Reddy Reddy are focussed on engaging the private sector. Like others with similar responsibilities, the national security administration is more deeply concerned about security breaches and attacks through computers, mobiles and other devices than a physical act of war,...