In order to plug the pilferage of food items meant for distribution to people below the poverty line, the Supreme Court on Friday directed the Union food secretary to hasten the process of computerisation of entire PDS system.

A bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Dipak Misra set a deadline of two months to put in place the computerisation process for the PDS in entire country while asking the food secretary to take up the matter with each state and then submit a report.

Following meetings with both minister for aviation Ajit Singh and environment minister Jayanti Natarajan on the controversial carbon emissions levy that EU has introduced, Connie Hedegaard, European Union climate action commissioner, claimed the tax is inevitable “as aviation is increasing and emissions from aviation are also increasing.”

India, along with the international community, led by International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICOU), has fiercely opposed the tax introduced from January 1 with airlines accusing the EU of having taken an extra territorial decision.

In the run-up to the Rio+20 Earth Summit, India continues to emphasise the principle of equity as forming the foundation for climate change negotiations.

“I would like to reiterate that the bottom line remains equity,” said minister of environment Jayanthi Natarajan addressing a special session on Biodiversity at the 12th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit. Ms Natarajan’s statement came a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had endorsed her stand at the UNFCCC meet at Durban conference

The International Advisory Panel (IAP) on National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) on Thursday attributed India’s better health indicators to work accomplished under various components of NRHM.

In a meeting held on Thursday, Jeffery D. Sachs, head of IAP along with his team of experts with Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. Prof. Sachs commended India for the incredible progress.

More than two crore trees were uprooted by cyclone Thane in the district and their disposal would take over six months due to various reasons including shortage of manpower, a senior Agriculture department official said on Wednesday.

The severe storm accompanied by gale force wind with speed touching 135 kmph that hit the district coast on December 30 brought down more than two crore jackfruit, mango, banana, coconut and cashew trees among others across the district, Assistant Director of Agriculture P. Hariharan said.

Days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described malnutrition as national shame, the Centre’s move to pump in massive resources into hunger-related schemes are pending the Planning Commission’s approval.

The project appraisal and management division (PAMD) of the Planning Commission has objected to women and child development (WCD) ministry’s demand of over `2 lakh crores for restructuring of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme Launched in 1975, the ICDS scheme aims at providing supplementary nutrition to children in the age group of 0-6 years.

Activists protesting against the nuclear power plant staged a mock funeral of the controversial project 'cremating' its model here today.

Thousands of residents of this coastal village took part in the 'funeral procession' organised to coincide with Mahatma Gandhi's death anniversary and cremated the model of the Indo-Russian plant.

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates in London on Monday launched an initiative along with 13 pharmaceutical firms, World Health Organisation, World Bank and the US, UK and UAE governments to eliminate or control 10 neglected tropical diseases by the end of 2020.

Japan's stricken nuclear power plant has leaked more than 600 liters of water, forcing it to briefly suspend cooling operations at a spent-fuel pond at the weekend, but none is thought to have escaped into the ocean, the plant's operator and domestic media said.

The Fukushima plant, on the coast north of Tokyo, was wrecked by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March last year, triggering the evacuation of around 80,000 people in the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.

The latest data put together by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) trashes the automobile industry contention that personal cars account for only 0.6 per cent of India’s diesel consumption.

Estimates recently released by the Society for Indian Automobile Manufactures (SIAM) and the 12th Planning Working Group on Petroleum Sector (WGP) had highlighted that personal cars, SUVs and taxis jointly accounted for five per cent of total diesel use in the country.