-The Telegraph Ranchi: Childbirths at home, no immunisation. Allegedly, this continues to happen in capital Ranchi, within city limits in a locality some 2km from Khel Gaon. A Jan Sunvai or district-level public hearing, held today under the aegis of National Urban Health Mission (NUHM), Jharkhand, had stunning disclosures like these from lower-tier urban healthcare workers, which may have ringing implications at a time Ranchi is eyeing the Centre's coveted Smart City...

-The Economic Times NAIROBI: In a major setback to India, the first draft of the WTO's committee on agriculture is silent on the two issues that the country has been pitching for- a permanent solution for food security concerns and a special safeguard mechanism (SSM) to protect from sudden surges in imports.  The draft has dismissed the SSM issue in a few lines and linked it with the broader context of agricultural...

-The Hindu The Paris Agreement on climate change marks a milestone in preserving the earth’s environment and provides a floor on which to build ambition and action. It is the outcome of a long struggle by millions of citizens around the world, aided by the weight of scientific evidence linking severe, more frequent weather events such as cyclones and droughts to man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The 195 country-parties to the UN...

-The Telegraph Nearly 200 countries this evening reached a climate accord that some analysts have called a "turning point" in human history designed to drive the world towards 100 per cent clean energy. "It's a compromise... but it is a historic accord for the world," said Laurent Fabius, the president of the Paris conference of parties and the French foreign minister. "Our responsibility to history is immense." But others have warned that the...

-Economic and Political Weekly Why has pulse production stagnated despite measures to boost production being well known? This season, the prices of pulses (dals) have been on fire. According to the Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India, the average retail price of red gram (tuar) doubled from around Rs 80 a kg in March 2015 to Rs 150–Rs 160 a kg in November 2015. What could...