-The Hindu Hyderabad: There are an estimated 4,000 homeless persons in the city, whose 13 shelter homes come a cropper in November's chilly nights Every night, for the last one week, Kumar Subramanyam (45) has been roaming the pavements of Padmarao Nagar, trying to find a warm spot to nestle in. He is homeless, and the winds are not too kind in November. This has been his ordeal, year after year. Like him,...

-Live Mint In the past year, ration cards are being replaced with smartcards that can track food doled out through the PDS system New Delhi: Mohanlal Kapoor, a street vendor in north India, holds a card entitling him to subsidized food for his wife and four children. To get supplies, the Kapoors must battle an estimated 15 million families in their state toting similar pieces of paper that they're not entitled...

-The Hindu The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a specialised arm of the World Health Organisation, has sounded an alert for policymakers with its conclusion that there is sufficient evidence now on outdoor air pollution as a cause of lung cancer. A separate evaluation of particulate matter in the air has led to its classification also as a ‘Group 1' pollutant, indicating firm evidence of cancer-causing properties. Given that rapidly...

-World Resources Institute COPENHAGEN//WASHINGTON - The World Resources Institute (WRI) today announced the first step in designing a global standard for measuring food loss and waste. The forthcoming guidance, called the "Food Loss and Waste Protocol," will enable countries and companies to measure and monitor the food loss and waste that occur within their boundaries and value chains in a credible, practical, and consistent manner. The announcement was made at the Global...

-Newsclick.in Recent studies have shown that even as India fares better than many developing regions of the world on several indicators of growth and development such as GDP, per capita, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), literacy, life expectancy, etc., the number of malnourished children in India is significantly high. What explains this paradox? The Union Cabinet recently approved a multi-sectoral nutritional programme proposed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to reduce...