-The Hindu Member nations have basis of agreement: UNCTAD official An agreement on elimination of ‘harmful’ fisheries subsidies is likely to be the only major outcome at the forthcoming meeting of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) highest decision-making body called the ‘Ministerial Conference’, according to the head of the principal United Nations (UN) agency handling issues related to trade, investment and development. On what could probably be among the ‘deliverables’ at the WTO’s...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Mamata Banerjee government has petitioned the Supreme Court against the Centre's alleged push to make Aadhaar cards mandatory for extending the benefits of social welfare schemes. The petition is scheduled to be heard on Monday. The matter has been listed before the bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan along with another petition, moved by social activist Raghav Tankha, that challenges the government's order to link...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The government has instructed states not to deny benefits under the public distribution system to beneficiaries who don't have Aadhaar numbers or haven't linked their ration cards to the biometric identifier, the directive coming after a Jharkhand girl's recent death from alleged starvation. It has also asked state governments not to delete eligible households from the list of PDS beneficiaries for non-possession of Aadhaar cards and warned of...

-The Hindu Business Line Price incentives for farmers should be followed up by better marketing infrastructure The Centre, while announcing the minimum support prices for the oncoming rabi season, has stuck to its policy of announcing moderate increases in the case of cereals, while promoting a shift towards pulses and oilseeds. MSP increases have moderated after 2013, after double-digit spurts that were the norm in the preceding four years. Hence, the rise...

-Livemint.com Global Hunger Index 2017 is a grim reminder of the huge disconnect between India’s relatively high levels of growth and its low ranks on human development It took the death of 11-year-old Santoshi Kumari from Jharkhand’s Simdega district to remind the country that hunger and starvation of young children is still a reality in India. This was not the first such incident. Last month, three brothers in Karnataka also died under...