The passport office in Hyderabad reported the highest number of passport applications recorded in Indian history (at least 450,000) and it expects an increase of 15-20% this year Jamuna Kunta sits stiffly in a plush red chair at the Hyderabad press club, holding her head proudly erect as she quietly recounts the events leading to her husband’s suicide in Dubai. A farmer from Karimnagar, a rural district in Andhra Pradesh, her husband...

-The Hindu   Court wants Centre to “distribute foodgrains on an individual basis” The Supreme Court on Saturday asked the Planning Commission to revise the per capita norms to determine below poverty line looking to the price index of May 2011 or any other subsequent dates. A Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma, at a special sitting to hear the case relating to streamlining of the public distribution system, pointed out...

To prevent starvation deaths and malnutrition To ensure that no starvation death takes place and people are saved from malnutrition as far as possible, the Supreme Court on Saturday directed the Centre to release five million tonnes of foodgrains immediately for distribution in 150 most poverty-stricken districts or other poorer segments in the country. Though it was a holiday for the court, a Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma held...

The world is experiencing a change in the geographic distribution of diseases. Traditionally, infectious diseases, which claim the lives of so many children, affected poor countries, and noncommunicable diseases like diabetes, cardiac ailments and cancer plagued rich countries. But the latest statistics released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Friday show that the income level of nations is no longer so important, and that all countries now face the burden of...

Humanity’s current voracious consumption of resources cannot be sustained, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) cautioned in a new report today, warning that the world was already running out of cheap and sources of some essential materials such as oil, copper and gold. According to the report by UNEP’s International Resource Panel, by 2050, human beings could devour an estimated 140 billion tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and biomass per...