-Agencies/ United Nations World leaders accustomed to fine dining had a surprise on their plates on Sunday at the United Nations. Lunch made from food waste -- like “Landfill Salad” -- was served to about 30 world leaders who attended a global summit on sustainable development agenda. Chefs cooked up a lunch made entirely of food that would have ended up in garbage bins, hoping to highlight the extraordinary waste in modern...

-Hindustan Times Bhubaneswar: A 13-year-old girl from Odisha’s backward Koraput district bagged a prestigious $10,000 award at the finals of the Google Science Fair in the United States late on Tuesday for her low-cost water purifier using corn cobs. Lalita Prasida Sripada Srisai will be supported in her research for one year by the well-known journal, Scientific American, for winning the Community Impact Award that honours projects which make a practical difference...

-DNA   A poisoned country   A few weeks ago, India entered into an agreement with the UN to end the use of the insecticide DDT by 2020. DDT had been used in agriculture for decades until it was restricted in 1989, but 6,000 tonnes of DDT are still produced annually for the eradication of mosquitoes and other pests. This would be perfectly understandable, except for the simple fact that DDT has become...

-India Today Agriculture powerhouse Madhya Pradesh still suffers from high levels of malnutrition, a contrast that exposes our flawed food policies Madhya Pradesh in mid-March is heavy with the scent of the Mahua blossom. Heaped at village bazaars, and now restricted largely to brewing liquor, its pungent smell is fast disappearing from indigenous tribal stews and curries. On the road to Petlawad and Alirajpur on the western edge of the state, farmers...

-The Hindu District Mineral Foundations were set up to protect the interests of Adivasi communities who have borne the costs of mining. But they are flawed in their current form Through 2011-13, dogged investigators from the Justice M. B. Shah Commission on illegal mining toured the rust-red villages, forests and rivers of northern Odisha, and trawled through reams of official records including from the environment, minerals, railways, and revenue departments. They met...