-Outlook Hyderabad: New approaches such as Public Private Partnerships(PPP) and community-based activities would go a long way in maintaining healthy ecosystems and improving livelihoods, a senior World Bank official said here today. Observing that there is not enough public money to invest in the biodiversity needs of the world, Rachel Kyte, World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development, said new approaches are needed to finance nature conservation efforts. The World Bank has a...

-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 Times of India The Centre on Thursday promised to notify a new drug pricing mechanism for essential medicines by the end of November, but the Supreme Court said a change in policy must not force a sharp rise in drug prices to hurt an already hassled common man. Additional solicitor general Siddharth Luthra informed a bench of Justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhaya that a Cabinet note on the...

-The Indian Express The Supreme Court on Thursday gave one month’s time to the Centre to come up with the final version of the drug pricing policy. Maintaining that the Centre must follow a pricing formula that will prevent the prices of the drugs from shooting up, the SC agreed to wait till mid-November for the Cabinet to come up with its final version of the new pricing policy. “Drugs prescribed by doctors......

-The Economic Times With reports of groundwater level going down in Punjab and Haryana, considered the rice bowl of India, scientists and analysts suggest its cultivation be shifted to eastern states which have better water resources. They say Punjab and Haryana should focus on basmati rice, which is largely exported, and the eastern states should produce non-basmati varieties for meeting the domestic demand. Talking to ET, Dr Swapan Kumar Dutta, deputy director general...