-The Times of India VARANASI: In an extremely cold and shivering night, a man with torn clothes was eating something picked up from a dustbin at platform number 4 of Charbagh railway station of Lucknow. Some passenger may have thrown the leftover eatable. But, finding it insufficient to satiate his hunger the man started looking for some more stuff in other dustbins at the platform. When this correspondent tried to interact with...

-SunStar.com FARMERS, particularly those growing rice, can help reduce methane emissions into the atmosphere by adopting controlled irrigation or alternate wetting and drying (AWD) technology. Developed by the Laguna-based International Rice Research Institute (Irri), AWD is a technology that allowed rice fields to dry for a certain period before applying irrigation water. Also called controlled irrigation or intermittent irrigation, AWD technology can actually save farmers almost one-third of irrigation water without sacrificing yields....

-Frontline A report by ActionAid and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences highlights the vulnerability and tragic living conditions of thousands of children who take shelter in Mumbai's streets. IN 1988, the acclaimed film-maker Mira Nair made Salaam Bombay!, a poignantly revealing film on street children in Mumbai. The plot revolves around the protagonist, Krishna or "Chaipau", who is kicked out of his home by his mother for having damaged his...

-The New Indian Express   Most people would have been shocked to read the year-end report that India has been ranked 63rd, much below countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, on the Global Hunger Index (GHI), a yardstick used by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to comprehensively measure global hunger. The index is calculated as an average of three indices-undernourishment, underweight children and low child mortality rate-and is measured on a...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: More people are smoking in India now, 110 million, compared to just 74.5 million smokers over three decades back, despite smoking being recognized as the third biggest health risk for Indians and despite all the anti-tobacco and smoke-free laws. While smoking prevalence among men had gone down in 2012, it remains unchanged at 3.2% since 1980 among women. In fact, India with 12.1 million women...