-IANS LONDON: The future of the private sector will increasingly hinge on the ability of businesses to adapt to the world's rapidly changing environment, according to a UN report. The report titled "GEO-5 for Business: Impacts of a Changing Environment on the Corporate Sector" was released by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in the British capital, Xinhua reported. It analysed the potential risks to 10 different sectors of the economy, and also the...

-The Hindu Switching to renewable energy sources in the country's midday meal programme will save millions of rupees. But only a few kitchens are doing anything about it, says the author. This is a story of facts and figures and sheer size. Of an auditorium-sized room dense with hot steam from cooking. Of seven tonnes of cooked rice and four tanker-loads of steaming sambar that needed 70 pairs of hands for cutting...

-Live Mint Exporting one's way out of the surplus is a losing proposition as global prices have fallen rapidly in the past few weeks India held 77.5 million tonnes (mt) of food stocks in its central pool on 1 May. These stocks had reached a record high of 82.4 mt on 1 June 2012, and that level could be crossed if wheat procurement this May is similar to the procurement a...

-The Guardian Farms processing insects for animal feed might soon become global reality as demand grows for sustainable feed sources   The best way to feed the 9 billion people expected to be alive by 2050 could be to rear billions of common houseflies on a diet of human faeces and abattoir blood and grind them up to use as animal feed, a UN report published on Monday suggests. Doing so would...

-IPS News India's planners worry about ‘jobless growth', but perhaps nothing illustrates this phenomenon better than a policy of handing over the collection and disposal of the capital's refuse to large private corporations, leaving close to 50,000 ragpickers unemployed. For decades ragpickers provided a service to this city, scavenging waste for recyclable plastic, aluminium, glass and other materials, and earning a livelihood by selling their pickings to contractors with equipment to process...