-The Guardian  Oxfam calls on World Bank to stop backing foreign investors who acquire land for biofuels that could produce food International land investors and biofuel producers have taken over land around the world that could feed nearly 1 billion people. Analysis by Oxfam of several thousand land deals completed in the last decade shows that an area eight times the size of the UK has been left idle by speculators or is...

-The Telegraph Consensus eluded a meeting of the group of ministers (GoM) on the land acquisition bill today amid divergent views on the applicability of the proposed law to mining and coal exploration and a retrospective clause for ongoing projects. The panel will meet again in the first week of October. The revised Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill is expected to be reintroduced in the winter session. The original bill had a...

-PTI The Group of Ministers, formed to examine certain provisions of the controversial Land Acquisition Bill, has deferred its decisions on the legislation today. "We will decide next time. This week, I am going to Vietnam and I will be back on October 4. After that, we will meet. Three members gave their views. No decision happened today," Agriculture Minister and GoM Chairman Sharad Pawar told reporters after the meeting. The government had...

-Bloomberg It wasn't the Gettsyburg Address -- unless it's poker faces we're comparing. Future historians aren't going to be parsing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech for hidden meanings, and rhetoricians won't be delighting in the majesty of its style and the compression of its effects. It inflamed no passions, as did Mitt Romney's words about the "47 percent," and asserted no big idea or thesis, unless there was one contained in the...

-The Economic Times Ahead of the first meeting of the Group of Ministers on the land bill, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has asserted that the proposed land bill balances the needs of economic growth with concerns of the common man. In a note for the meeting scheduled for Thursday, Ramesh has argued that the existing Land Acquisition Act, 1894 shows little regard for those whose land is acquired. The note draws...