-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: As patent wars heat up in the pharma space, mobile phone messages and Right to Information filings have emerged as potent weapons in the hands of multinationals keen to delay competition from low-cost generic versions of their patented products in India. Innovator drugmakers, who used to strike with patent suits after generic drugmakers released their versions in the market, have started gleaning information from text messages sent...

As fatal rains batter parts of the north Indian hill state of Uttarakhand, following a summer that also saw hundreds of deaths from heat waves, a new assessment out on June 19 from the World Bank warns of increasingly difficult effects of climate change on several parts of South Asia in the next 20-30 years. It argues that extreme weather events are likely to get more frequent, as temperatures rise. The...

-The Business Standard India is not working hard enough on climate change Shortly before World Environment Day on Wednesday, it was reported that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had soared to its highest level in three million years. Data captured by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revealed that environmental incidence of the gas mostly responsible for trapping heat had crossed 400 parts per million - a level...

-Bloomberg The corpse of Indian farmer Bengali Singh burned to ash atop a blazing funeral pyre on the banks of the river Ganges in 2006. Five years later, the dead man was recorded as being paid by India's $33 billion rural jobs program to dig an irrigation canal in Jharkhand state. Officials in his village and the surrounding region used at least 500 identities, including those of Singh, a disabled child of...

-The Indian Express The Doha climate talks must extract tangible action plans from all countries Delegates from more than 190 countries have met at Doha for the 18th session of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 8th session of COP, serving as Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. To build on the aspirations of last year’s Durban climate summit,...