-The United Nations Despite the growing number of nature reserves, national parks and other protected areas around the world, half of the globe’s richest biodiversity zones remain entirely unprotected, according to a United Nations report presented today. Amongst the report’s other main findings are that protected areas are being managed in a more equitable way, with a greater role for indigenous communities – but current investment in protected areas is only around...

-The Hindu Ahmedabad: The Election Commission (EC) has directed the Gujarat government to set up a Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) to check the menace of paid news during the build-up to December’s State Assembly election. The EC identified paid news masquerading as news as a major problem during elections. It has also issued guidelines to the MCMC to not only monitor all the political advertisements to be aired on television...

-Outlook The aim of achieving food security across the globe will become increasingly elusive unless countries take into account the planet's nature-based services into agricultural and related planning, said a report released by the United Nations Environment Programme today. Safeguarding the underlying ecological foundations that support food production, including biodiversity will be central if the world is to feed the seven billion people, climbing to over nine billion by 2050, according to...

-Outlook Hyderabad: India could win 105 claims on international patents due to its Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here today, opening the high-level segment meeting at the Conference of Parties to Convention on Biological Diversity. "We decided to build this knowledge database because of the patent on the use of neem extract in Europe and another patent on the use of turmeric as a healing agent. Since...

-The Hindu Details of partnership will be unveiled this week Signs of potential private sector participation in cyber security has opened new and unchartered territory in India’s national security regime. The first hint of such collaboration came from Deputy National Security Adviser Vijay Latha Reddy, who, in her opening remarks at an Internet governance conference last week, spoke of a deeper engagement with the private sector in cyber security issues. Details of the...