-United Nations News Countries are expected to spend a staggering $1.8 trillion importing food they need this year; this would be a new world record but worryingly, it’s going to buy them less food, not more. That’s according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) which on Thursday suggested that for some countries, the situation potentially heralded “an end of their resilience to higher prices”. Ever-higher fixed costs for farmers of so-called...

-The Hindu They write to Prime Minister asking him to renegotiate the draft proposal to waive intellectual property rights on vaccines and highlight the need for active engagement to improve it A group of non governmental organisations has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to prod the Union Commerce Ministry into “proactively engaging” with a draft proposal at the World Trade Organisation-TRIPS in Geneva to waive intellectual property rights, mostly controlled by...

-IndiaToday.in A study published in the prestigious medical journal Lancet has found that some antiviral medications might have the potential to shorten symptoms of monkeypox and reduce the amount of time a patient is contagious. Nearly 20 countries where monkeypox is not endemic have reported outbreaks of the viral disease, with more than 100 confirmed or suspected infections mostly in Europe. The outbreaks are raising alarm because monkeypox, which spreads through close...

-Foundation for Agrarian Studies The project report titled “Public Spending on Agriculture in India: 2010-11 to 2019-20,” has been released in April, 2022. The report has been prepared by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies with the support of Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung, New Delhi. In 2021, the Foundation for Agrarian Studies conducted a research project to analyse the trends in public spending on agriculture in India for the most recent decade (2010-11 to...

-Press release by World Meteorological Organization (WMO) dated 18 May 2022 Geneva, 18 May 2022 (WMO): Four key climate change indicators – greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification – set new records in 2021. This is yet another clear sign that human activities are causing planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean, and in the atmosphere, with harmful and long-lasting ramifications for sustainable development and...