From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. Welcome to the 21st-cenTury food wars. In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in...

* Only a less ambitious deal on climate change expected * Process is dead in the water - de Boer "Ask for a camel when you expect to get a goat," runs a Somali saying that sums up the fading of ambitions for United Nations talks on slowing climate change -- aim high, but settle for far less. Developing nations publicly insist the rich must agree far deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions,...

The Singur land take-back bill has spurred a group of farmers in Burdwan to demand reTurn of their plots that were acquired for a proposed health city. The 84 farmers had Turned down cheques in exchange for 23 acres — all multi-crop land — that had been acquired in 2005 for the project in Goda. Fifty-seven acres from 350 landowners were marked for acquisition at the rate of Rs 12 lakh an...

Out of 228 panchayats chosen at random from one block out of the 249 blocks in the state, for comparison of NREGA wages, a maximum of 35% have got wages between Rs 21 to Rs 30 in 2010. The figures also show that in most of these panchayats, it is only a handful of families that have completed 100 days of work. In fact, it is hardly alarming that the...

Eco-activism has Punjab’s polluters in a tizzy Operation Clean-Up     * Industrial and organic pollution from the Sutlej and the Beas is affecting southern districts of Punjab and parts of Rajasthan     * A popular movement straddling both states and helmed by eco-activist Baba Balbir Singh     * Seechewal has the election-bound state government worried     * Seechewal organised a massive exercise to prevent the Kala Sanghian, a highly polluted Sutlej tributary, from draining...