-Frontline There are no effective vaccines against Japanese encephalitis, but its spread can be controlled in India through vector management.  JAPANESE ENCEPHALITIS, or JE, has become endemic in many parts of the country, occurring repeatedly in epidemic form in many of them—for instance, in parts of Gorakhpur in northern Uttar Pradesh. One can expect JE-type epidemics year after year in States where prolonged drought-like conditions are followed by heavy monsoons. This leads to...

-Mainstream Weekly Dr Binayak Sen, an internationally renowned medical practitioner and social activist (a leading figure in the People’s Union for Civil Liberties), was incarcerated in Chhattisgarh and held in detention in Raipur having been branded as a Maoist for his activities in defence of poor tribals in the State. He is now out on bail. The following is the text of the Arvind Narayan Das Memorial Lecture he delivered in...

-IPS News Calls are mounting for the world’s big fishing powers to stop subsidising international fleets that use destructive methods like bottom trawling in foreign coastal waters, drastically reducing the catch of local artisanal fishers who use nets and fishing lines. Such subsidies total 27 billion dollars a year, with nearly two-thirds coming from China, Taiwan and Korea along with Europe, Japan and the United States, according to a University of British...

-The Hindustan Times India contributes more hungry people to the world each year than all other countries put together, and despite efforts, new figures suggest that hunger is far from contained - in fact we are worse off than we were more than a decade ago. According to the Global Hunger Index 2012, recently released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). India's rating was 22.6 in '96, 24.2 in '01...

-The Hindu It will be a blow to Indian science, it says The Centre on Friday informed the Supreme Court that the recommendations of the Technical Expert Committee (TEC) seeking a 10-year moratorium on field trials on Genetically Modified (GM) crops will be highly detrimental and will not be in national interest. “Based on current overall status of food safety evaluation of Bt. Transgenics, including the data on Bt. Cotton and Bt. Brinjal...