-The Hindu IR8, the high-yielding rice variety helped India fight famine, turns 50 this month In 1967, when a 29-year-old N. Subba Rao sowed a semidwarf variety of rice in over 2,000 hectares in Atchanta, West Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh, he wouldn't have thought he would be part of a revolution in rice cultivation. What Dr. Rao sowed in his farm was IR-8, a rice variety developed by the International Rice Research...

-The Hindu The UN conference on climate change held in Marrakech, with an emphasis on raising the commitment of all countries to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is particularly significant as it provided an opportunity to communicate concerns about the future climate policy of the U.S. It would be untenable for the U.S., with a quarter of all cumulative fossil fuel emissions, to renege on its promise to assist vulnerable and...

-The Hindu Business Line Villagers of Nageypur, which was adopted by the PM, allege corruption in the cleanliness drive The people of Nageypur, the model village in Varanasi adopted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are agitated. The village mainly has two problems—open defecation and clogging of water that flows from kitchens and toilets. Out of its 525 families, less than 200 in this village have pucca toilets. Understanding this, the Prime Minister’s Office offered...

-The Telegraph The death of more than 50 dengue patients in eight city hospitals this year offers a peek into the severity of the menace but the extent of the crisis remains unknown in the absence of figures from the government. To put things in perspective, the disease caused by the Aedes aegypti mosquito had claimed less than 20 lives across the state last year. The Mamata Banerjee government's decision to prefer secrecy...

-Livemint.com Healthy, living soil is the most essential element in ensuring food security. Yet it is often ignored by policy planners The global population, which stood at 6.1 billion in 2000, is estimated to reach 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050. India has 2.4% of the world’s arable land and more than 17% of the global population. Meeting the demand for fibre and food to feed this growing population...