India earned another dubious distinction in child mortality with the highest number of deaths of children under-five-years of age, according to a UNICEF report released in September 2012. India's toll is higher than the deaths in Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan put together. Globally, almost 19,000 children under five years of age die every day across the world a quarter of which is in India alone. India accounted for...

-The United Nations Argentina’s announcement that it would export an additional 2.75 million tonnes of maize this year will help ease tight international markets, the United Nations food agency said today, adding that while this is a welcome measure, countries must remain vigilante to avoid a global food crisis. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the announcement was made by Argentina’s Minister of Agriculture, Norberto Yauhar, who had just...

Between 2009 and February 2011, at least 14 people were charged with sedition in India London: The typical citizen could be forgiven for fearing that the world’s largest democracy is hurtling towards George Orwell’s 1984 rather than 2013. In late August the government’s department of telecommunications, citing the “communal tensions” around Assam, blocked more than 300 individual web addresses, including the Twitter profile pages of some journalists. It also ordered a limit...

-The Hindu In an atmosphere of mistrust of the government, only an independent safety regulatory mechanism can counter the scaremongering against civilian nuclear power I work at an institution funded by the Department of Atomic Energy (which, however, does no nuclear research: the DAE funds a wide variety of institutions and areas in science). About a year ago, I had an e-mail from a journalist who wondered why scientists (including colleagues at...

-The Times of India For the first time in the history of Indian automobiles, cumulative sales of utility vehicles (UVs) have overtaken those of sedans - all three-box cars, from the entry-level to the super-luxury segment - in the first five months of the fiscal year 2012-13. New launches such as the Mahindra XUV500, Maruti's Ertiga and Renault's Duster pulled in buyers still looking to benefit from the huge price differential...