-The Guardian  Governments spend years negotiating environmental agreements, but then willfully ignore them – it's a dismal record It's global agreement time again. In two weeks, 120 world leaders and 190-odd countries will go to the Rio+20 Earth summit and – unless the talks collapse – sign up to new international goals, pledges, targets, protocols and treaties, and promise to commit to sustainable development, protect the earth and use resources more wisely....

There are major issues at stake in the Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development to be held on 20-22 June. Yet governments of developing countries have not given adequate importance to the run-up to the conference. As has happened in the climate change negotiations, the outcome draft now under negotiation shows a concerted move to rewrite the terms of global environmental governance. There is an attempt to push through the decidedly...

-The Hindu The World Health Organisation (WHO) has put in place a mechanism to define counterfeit medical products. The set of definitions of sub-standard, spurious, falsely labelled, falsified and counterfeit products will be globally accepted and help to bring about uniformity in identifying such drugs, without interrupting worldwide supplies. The decision to establish a member state mechanism was taken at the World Health Assembly, the WHO's policymaking body, at a meeting held recently. The...

-PTI Jan Myrdal, son of the celebrated Nobel laureate couple--Gunnar and Alva Myrdal--is banned from visiting India because the government believes he is a Maoist supporter. The government of India is contemplating a ban on the future visits of 85-year-old Jan Myrdal, whose parents were close friends of former Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, for his alleged backing of pro-Maoist ideology. The home ministry has found that the Sweden-based author had attended...

What stops the government from using good harvests to reduce, if not eliminate, hunger? For ordinary folk, a 3 per cent increase in food grain production over that of last year, combined with strong procurement operations and good buffer stocks of rice and wheat would be a cause for some celebration. It would be seen as an opportunity to tackle the widespread food insecurity that exists in India today. Instead, we...