The United States remained the primary backer of biotech crop technology in 2011, but adoption spread internationally as the total global planted area of genetically modified seeds grew 8 percent from a year ago, according to a report issued Tuesday.

Roughly 160 million hectares, or 395.2 million acres, were planted with biotech crops in 2011, up 8 percent from 2010, said the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) in its annual report on biotech seed use.

Jindal Steel and Power, India’s biggest producer of the alloy by market value, plans to spend $300 million in developing new and existing mines in Africa. The move is part of the company’s strategy to source coal assets abroad to meet raw material demand of its steel and power plants at home. Jindal Africa, the company’s Africa subsidiary, would invest $250 million in developing a coalmine in Mozambique’s coal-rich Moatize region, Ashish Kumar, CEO of Jindal Africa, told ET on the sidelines of an international mining meet.

An exceptional harvest after good rains and food deliveries by aid agencies have ended famine in Somalia although conditions remain fragile and could worsen, the United Nations said on Friday.

The U.N. declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia last July and extended the famine warning in September to six out of eight regions in the anarchic Horn of Africa country.

Talk of a Middle Eastern green energy boom is likely to prove no more than a mirage with little hope of the region saving clean technology companies from the shrinking project pools of Europe.

Instead India, China and Latin America offer some hope for green energy companies struggling in a European market drowning in debt and a North American market awash with gas.

The number of malaria deaths worldwide in 2010 was 1.24 million, nearly double the number previously estimated by the 2011 World Malaria Report (WMR). This is despite a 31-per-cent reduction in such deaths globally in the last five years.

This was stated in a study published on February 3 in The Lancet.

The harvest of rice around the world in 2011-2012 should hit a new record of 721 million tonnes and lead to lower prices, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation said Wednesday.

With the growing season nearly over in the northern hemisphere and well underway in the southern, the FAO predicted in its latest quarterly report that rice production should increase by three percent from the previous year.

Adverse weather in Cambodia, the Philippines, and Pakistan had less of an effect than initially feared, it said.

Conservationists working in Central Africa to save the world's rarest gorilla have good news: the Cross River gorilla has more suitable habitat than previously thought, including vital corridors that, if protected, can help the great apes move between sites in search of mates, according to the North Carolina Zoo, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and other groups.