-Greenpeace Genetically engineered (GE) food is a hot button topic in India. What happens here often sends ripples throughout the GE debate worldwide, but what happened last week is surely a major milestone. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, made up of members of parliament (MPs) from across party lines, tabled its latest report (http://164.100.47.134/lsscommittee/Agriculture/GM_Report.pdf) on GE food and GE crops following intense consultation with farmers, environmental groups, scientists and consumer groups. The...

-PTI Environment Ministry has constituted a high-level Working Group headed by eminent space scientist and Planning Commission member K Kasturirangan to examine the Western Ghats ecology expert panel report "in a holistic and multidisciplinary fashion". The nine-member Group will examine the Madhav Gadgil committee report released recently "in a holistic and multidisciplinary fashion keeping in view the comments received from the concerned state governments, central ministries, stakeholders", the Ministry said. The panel will...

-The Hindu There is at last some clarity on the politics of the anti-corruption movements. Baba Ramdev’s dramatic call for Congress- hatao and the ‘political turn’ of the Anna movement have confirmed that a movement aimed at rooting out corruption cannot defer a direct encounter with party politics for very long. The manner in which both decisions were announced left something to be desired. The announcement by ‘Team Anna’ invited serious...

-The Economic Times The power failure in India on July 30-31 was big news in US media. When the radio and TV stations began calling with the question whether this spelt the end to India's claims to global-power status, my first reaction was to remind them that a similar failure of the grid in 2003 had drowned the entire Northeast and Midwest in the US and Ontario in Canada into darkness. But,...

-The Business Standard The Odisha government has decided to resume the land acquisition process for South African steelmaker Posco’s project, which was stalled indefinitely in June last year following protests by villagers and Left leaders. The decision was taken in a meeting convened by Chief Secretary B K Patnaik on 16 August, where officials of the Central Revenue Division Commissioner, Posco-India, Jagatsinghpur district administration and Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation of Odisha (Idco)...