-TheWire.in Irrespective of the marital status of women, access to safe abortion services and quality post-abortion care, including counselling, need to be legally guaranteed. On February 28, 2017, the Supreme Court refused to allow a woman to abort her 26-week-old foetus that would be born with Down syndrome, a congenital disorder that postpones the onset of developmental and intellectual features. Admitting that the child may suffer from physical and mental abnormalities, the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan today urged environment minister Anil Dave to reject a regulatory panel's recommendation to release genetically modified mustard for commercial cultivation, questioning the regulatory process and claims about the plant's superiority. In a letter to Dave, Bhushan cited a Supreme Court hearing on GM crops and described India's regulatory mechanisms for such crops as "farcical". He asked Dave to "withhold" his approval to the...

-Business Standard Activists, others question yield and bio-safety data; GM mustard can improve yields by 25-30% After many ifs and buts, the commercial release of genetically modified (GM) mustard seems to have reached a decisive phase after the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) recommended on Thursday that it be allowed.   The ministry of environment and forests will now decide on whether this herbicide-tolerant variety can become the first GM food crop to be...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: India's central biotech regulator, Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), on Thursday cleared the genetically modified (GM) Mustard for commercial cultivation and recommended its approval to the environment ministry. The fate of this transgenic variety of oil-seed will now be in the hands of the MoS environment Anil Madhav Dave who may either accept it, reject it or sit over the file till the Supreme Court takes...

-The Hindu Scope for the middlemen has increased, says IIT professor Reetika Khera In Bandaveedhi village in Paderu in Visakhapatnam agency, 400 residents had gone without the basic food items from the public distribution system (PDS) in April, as the officer concerned had a marriage at home and had no time to switch on the biometric machine that would record the finger prints of the beneficiaries. In Kasimkota, Padma, 70, was sent...