-The Times of India NEW DELHI: If you were to ask any random aam aadmi anywhere in India what is the single biggest failing of the UPA, the answer would be - price rise. This is so because the most important items of family spending - food items - have relentlessly risen for the past several years despite repeated promises to bring them down by the economic mandarins and policy wonks...

-Outlook Gandhinagar: A more stringent safety regime will be in place for genetic engineering in agriculture or medical sciences once the National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority (NBRA) Bill is cleared by Parliament, a senior official said here today. "The NBRA bill has been introduced in Parliament and being debated. Once it (bill) is cleared, a more stringent safety regime shall be in place for genetic engineering, be it in the agriculture space or...

-The Hindu     Questioning a technology, especially of the kind that has serious unknowns and lacks clear social benefits, is not an attack on science Jairam Ramesh, former Environment Minister for India, made the brave decision in 2010 to tell his then apex regulator of genetically modified organisms (GEAC) that it had failed to properly use available science to determine the safety - to human health and the environment - of Bt brinjal,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: India's march towards being an economically stable nation is threatened not just by global financial issues. Poor health indicators pose an equally big threat. The Harvard School of Public Health has, in a study on economic losses due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs), estimated that the economic burden of these ailments for India will be close to $6.2 trillion for the period 2012-30, a figure that is...

-The Business Standard FSSAI will put the draft guidelines in front of a seven-member expert committee Mumbai: In what would alter the consumption pattern of products such as burgers, pizzas, sandwiches, snack foods and soft drinks in schools, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is putting in place final guidelines to determine what counts as healthy food in educational institutions. The guidelines, to be released by December this year, would...