-Livemint.com United States refuses to budge on relaxations demanded by developing countries to provide for food security programmes, matter in deadlock as India, China stick to their stance The 11th ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Buenos Aires hung in the balance on Tuesday after the US refused to budge on relaxations demanded by developing countries to provide for their food security programmes. The matter went into deadlock after India...

-Right to Food Jharkhand Ranchi (Jharkhand): Close to 1,000 NREGA workers and other rural labourers converged to Birsa Chowk from 12 districts of Jharkhand today and sat on dharna to protest against repeated attacks on their right to food and right to work. The event was jointly organised by Right to Food Campaign Jharkhand and NREGA Watch.     The dharna was prompted by a series of recent starvation deaths in Jharkhand. The...

-The Indian Express As the government tries to allay swirling apprehensions, The Indian Express explains the background, aims and rationale of the proposed new FRDI law. Some provisions of The Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017, popularly referred to as the FRDI Bill, which was tabled in Parliament this August, have given rise to concerns over protection for bank deposits in the proposed law. An online petition against the Bill — “Do not...

-The Indian Express The advertisement industry itself is no stranger to innuendo and double entendre – and it is a blatant hypocrisy to make advertisements for condoms the scapegoat in this issue. India’s reproductive health is the unsuspecting casualty in the recent tussle on the appropriateness of condom advertisements. The advisory issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Monday, December 11, directs television channels to restrict the broadcast of condom...

-The Hindu In the cotton belt of Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district, pesticide poisoning through inhalation has caused 21 deaths in three months. Serish Nanisetti reports on the deadly cocktail of absent regulation, government apathy, and farmers’ desperation that continues to claim lives Geeta Bandu Sonule doesn’t cry any more. Not even when she relives the final moments of her husband Chandrakant Bandu Sonule (40), who died two months ago, after spraying pesticide on...